St. Maxmilian Kolbe is my favorite saint. He lived a truly eucharistic life of missionary zeal, radiant holiness, and sacrificial love. Yet, his life of holiness was no accident; he did not wake up one morning a saint. Rather, his holiness was the result of constant spiritual effort that cultivated an intimate relationship with our Blessed Mother, with whom he was deeply in love, and a burning love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Maximilian, born Raymond, entered the Conventual Franciscan Novitiate at the young age of 16. Much of his spiritual development occurred during these formative years, as well as his years in preparation for the priesthood. Reading his journal entries during this period of his life, one is struck by three major themes: his ongoing health problems, his transformative relationship with his spiritual director, and his struggles with scrupulosity.

The whole arc of his interior journey is too long to relate here, but suffice it to say that young Raymond struggled with deep scrupulosity, due in part to his own tender conscience, as well as to the intense Franciscan formation he had to undergo. This scrupulosity was healed by Fr. Luigi Bondini, his spiritual director, who essentially ordered him to stop worrying have confidence and faith in the Immaculate Virgin and in the mercy of God. Maxmilian developed a close relationship with Fr. Bondini, and his spiritual wisdom and advice on everything from taking care of his health to practical details of organization literally transformed young Maximilian’s life.

By the time of his ordination on April 28, 1918, his journal entries reflect that the fearful, anxiety-ridden Maximilian is gone, and a portrait of a humble, confident, and holy young friar emerges. He speaks ceaselessly of the virtues of trust and humility, and of his burning desire to be the greatest saint possible.

In preparation for his ordination, Maximilian engaged in a series of spiritual exercises. Thankfully, he recorded some of his key reflections in his journal from April 21-27, 1918. While the whole entry is too long to share here, the young Maximilian sketches out a plan, a rule of life that every Catholic man should imitate. It is rich with wisdom on the ascetical and spiritual life, and it is a profound glimpse into the mind of one of the last century’s greatest saints.

Below are his beautiful words, edited for brevity. Any emphasis is from Maximilian himself.

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Follow your daily schedule very faithfully and you will be saved.
Start serving God this very day.
This may be the last day of your life. Live as if this day were your last.
Tomorrow is uncertain, yesterday no longer belongs to you, only the present is yours.
There is an ear that listens to all things, an eye that peruses all the most secret emotions of your heart, a hand that notes down each thing.
Not being punished is the worst of punishments.
“I judged no one, therefore I trust God will not judge me either” [cf. Mt 7:1]
St. Francis de Sales: “Loyalty in the observance of rules is the most pleasing sacrifice to God: it is mortification and penance.”
Be in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Each of your actions will be recorded forever.
Choose the worst things in eating, dressing, and in tasks, and you will be dear to Jesus.
Silence.
Souls in purgatory. For sinners, for the Holy Church: pray and work.
Make up for wasted time with fervor.
Maximilian, be holy; if others have managed, why could you not do it as well? If you believe it, if you desire it, with God’s help you may still become a saint. Yes, you can, you can.
Be a man, be a Christian, be a friar.
Be a man.
Do not be ashamed of your convictions.
Do unto others what you wish were done unto yourself.
Have a sense of duty, perform it well, without worrying that someone is watching (with noble ambition).
Do not worry about the evil that is in others.
Be a Catholic.
When you kneel before the altar, let people know that you are aware of Whom you are kneeling before.
Be a religious.
Good intention in work is like the number “1” in front of zeroes.
Men deprive themselves of great treasures when they work without good intention.
As you rise up, so you will spend the whole day.
Your every action is recorded. Nothing is left without punishment or reward.
You could die even today!
Be collected; he who breaks away soon loses the graces he as acquired. A full drawer is always closed.
Humility.

[At this point, St. Maximilian enters an extended reflection on humility, and how to practice it.]

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Excerpt from:
Kolbe, M. (2016). The writings of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe. Lugano : Nerbini International.

At night the river looked deeper than ever as the woman rowed across it with her three small children. That was dangerous enough but they were being pursued. They were being shot at. They were fleeing for their lives.

The Civil War had just begun. The woman and her children were slaves. They had fled Missouri and were crossing over into the Northern state of Illinois, and to freedom. That night, the woman evaded her pursuers. When she landed on the northern bank of the river she pulled her children to their knees and prayed: ‘Now, you are free; never forget the goodness of the Lord‘. And, with that, one of her children, Augustine Tolton, later to become the first African-American to be ordained priest, was ‘freed’.

Augustine Tolton was born 1 April, 1854. His parents were slaves, so he too became one. His parents were Catholics, so he too was baptised into his parents’ Holy Faith. His father, Peter, was an honest and good man well liked by his slave owner for whom he worked hard. Seven years after Augustine, or Gus as he was known, was born, war broke out between the States. Peter talked to his wife, Martha, of his desire to escape and enlist in the Union army. As he did so he gazed at the three children sleeping and began to talk of his hopes for their future, one in which they would be free.  The Toltons’ Catholic faith was deeply held and urged them on to action. Martha readily agreed that her husband must go – and that some day they would all be together again, and free. They embraced. With one last look at his children, Peter headed out into the night, to the North, and to war. The couple were never to see each other again; the children were never again to play with their father.  He lies in an unmarked grave near the scene of a battle, having fought and died that his children would one day be free.

Racial prejudice was not confined to the South. When, finally, the Tolton family arrived in the Illinois town of Quincy, they were to live in a segregated neighbourhood.  Nevertheless, Mrs Tolton soon found work and, thereafter, supported her children as best she could. Before anything else, however, the nearest Catholic Church, St. Peter’s, was identified and the family started to worship there. But, racial prejudice was also found there. Northern congregations resented the recent influx of blacks from the South.  The Parish Priest was an Irishman, Brian McGirr, and he was having none of it. He knew that there was a simmering resentment in his congregation. He tackled it head on with sermons reminding all listening that as children of God there was but one Father and whatever you do to the least you do to Him.

Gus grew up quickly. A bright and intelligent boy, with a good heart, aged nine, he was helping support his family by working at a local tobacco factory. His employers liked him; he worked hard and was reliable. The future for the Tolton family began to become clearer when the Civil War finally ended with victory for the North and an end to slavery throughout the United States. Gus was not insensitive to what that ‘victory’ actually meant to many of the freed slaves whom he lived alongside, including his own family: servile work for some, lives of poverty for most.

Just as with his father before him, Gus was an idealist. His idealism was not political though; it was religious. He loved his Catholic faith. The Tolton family had remained regular worshippers at St. Peter’s. Gus participated as much as he could in parish activities: learning to serve Holy Mass, and then going on to be a lay catechist. His human virtues and obvious piety did not go unremarked by the redoubtable Fr. McGirr. One day the Parish Priest saw Gus praying alone in church. That was not an unusual sight; however, that day there was a change. As he looked at the face of the young man he noticed something…Later he asked Gus what he had been praying about. The young man looked embarrassed. For some time previously Fr. McGirr had wanted to ask him a question. That day he did. It shocked Gus because it was on that very subject he had been praying namely, a possible vocation to the priesthood.

Fr. McGirr was keen to progress this proposition. Gus was delighted; for, with all his heart, he wanted to be a priest; it was a sense that had been growing for some years. The formality of applying to a seminary proved, however, more complicated for the young recently freed slave, especially as there had never been a man of his race at any seminary in America. In reply to his letters, excuses were made as to why he could not be accommodated. Religious orders were also tried, but to no avail.

So Gus was left to continue working at the cigar factory. For years he persevered; eventually promoted by his employers, it proved a small consolation. Still, he went to Holy Mass as often as he could; he prayed daily. He waited. During this period, only his mother and Fr. McGirr knew the frustration and sadness that clung to the outwardly smiling Gus Tolton. He refused to be discouraged or to blame anyone. He knew the human heart was weak; he knew too that the Church was unimpeachable in its treatment of all as brothers and sisters in Christ but that she was made up of sinners, and so human frailty was never far away. He continued to pray, to give classes to his fellow parishioners, to wait, and to hope.

He never was to study at a seminary in the United States. After many years he was eventually accepted at a Pontifical university in Rome. On 21 February 1880, Gus left America bound for Europe, destined to be a missionary in Africa. He loved his time in the Eternal City. His fellow students loved him too, and his professors held him in high regard. For the first time in his life he lived in an environment free from racial discrimination.  He thrived. He was an apt scholar. Having picked up German in Quincy, he was to leave Europe with French and Italian mastered, to say nothing of Latin. During these relatively carefree years, the only question was where he would be posted. In the end, to his surprise, he was sent back to where he had come from.  The authorities in Rome could see no reason why he could not minister to his co-religionists there, not least those of his own race.

In July 1886, Fr. Tolton’s homecoming caused a stir. At Quincy station there was a large and noisy crowd to welcome him. Both black and white, Catholic and non-Catholic came to see the young man who had left a much-loved friend and fellow worker and who now returned in a black soutane with a red sash. That day, however, there was one who stood apart from the crowd and quietly watched with tears in her eyes as her son returned to her a priest. He was always conscious that his vocation was as a result of his mother’s example and the Christian home she had provided for him, in spite of everything. In hindsight, however, looking at that day’s generous welcome from all quarters, it was bitter sweet. One could even say it was Fr. Tolton’s Palm Sunday. Despite his open and generous manner, his learning and piety, his hard work and dedication, and above all his priestly heart and its desire for souls, he was to be defamed, insulted and ultimately rejected. Not least by a fellow priest, part inspired by jealousy and part by racial prejudice, that, in the end, caused the young priest’s removal.

Just over three years after his triumphal return, Fr. Augustine Tolton was alone on a night train in a segregated carriage heading to Chicago where he had been assigned to care for that city’s growing black population.

Trusting all to Providence, the same fervour and energy that Fr. Tolton had brought to Quincy was now loosed upon a poor district of Chicago’s south side. With his bishop’s approval, the young priest set about raising funds for a church. Funds were raised and the basis of a great and beautiful church, St. Monica’s, dedicated to the service of the city’s black population was started. He was more than a fundraiser though. He was first and foremost a priest. His congregation was largely poor, ill-educated ex-slaves, with all the resultant ills of depression and violence attending those who, for varying reasons, had given up on life. The young priest worked tirelessly to minister to them, reminding them of the one thing no human power could remove or tarnish: their Catholic Faith.

A visiting priest met Fr. Tolton at this time and stayed with him and his mother – who by then also had come to be live in Chicago as her son’s housekeeper. Unlike the city’s richer parishes, Fr. Tolton lived in reduced circumstances. Nevertheless, the visiting priest found a hearty welcome. He also found a cultured and holy priest, one who complained of nothing and prayed for everything. At the end of the evening, when dinner had finished, the visitor observed how the younger priest took a set of Rosary beads hanging from a nail on a wall nearby and, with his mother beside him, knelt on the stone floor to recite that ancient prayer – just as they always had done, not least when they had arrived frightened and anxious having fled slavery those years previously.

Unexpectedly, when aged only 43, having at last been able to attend a retreat for priests, on returning by train, Fr. Tolton felt unwell. Just outside the train station he had been seen to stumble and then collapse on the city street. As an ambulance was called, a crowd gathered around the unusual sight of a black man dressed in a faded cassock. He was taken to a nearby hospital. Around his bedside were the hospital chaplain who had administered the Last Rites, some nuns praying, and his mother. On 9 July 1897, he died as a priest should – worn out in the care of his flock.

Fr. Tolton had asked to be buried in Quincy. His body was returned there and interred in a simple grave by St. Peter’s Church. It was the same church where he had served Mass and given catechism classes after he had finished his work at the local factory. Some were surprised that he had chosen to be buried in the town that had shunned him. Perhaps they had forgotten that it was there, decades earlier, that a frightened black woman had come with her three small children having fled slavery to find freedom, and where a hope for a better future was born for her and her children.

Laid to rest on that July day in 1897, and having entered into the mysterious freedom of the Children of God where there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither freed nor slave … Fr. Augustine Tolton was now, at last, truly free.

By all accounts, his mother, having continued to work as a priest’s housekeeper died an equally holy death in 1911. St. Monica’s, the church for which her son had expended so much energy and time, was abandoned in 1924 and later raised to the ground.

The Faith is more than bricks and mortar, however, and, in 2011, after an initial investigation at the behest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Fr. Augustine Tolton was declared: Servant of God. The ‘stone’ rejected had become a ‘living stone’, one upon which now future generations would build.

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K. V. Turley is a London based freelance writer and filmmaker with a degree in theology from the Maryvale Institute. This post originally appeared at Catholic Exchange and is reprinted with permission. 

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.

On board in all directions there was the sound of running feet. It was clear there was something wrong. Before hearing anything, however, one had somehow sensed it. Some indiscernible threat had impacted and was quickly making its presence felt throughout the ship. At that moment a priest with breviary in hand was praying Night Office as he walked on the upper deck; nevertheless, as the alarms sounded he knew something had gone seriously wrong. The priest in question was Fr. Thomas Byles, and the ship’s name was Titanic.

Relatives in America had bought his ticket. Towards the end of 1911, Fr. Byles had been invited to officiate at the marriage of his brother, William, to Miss Isabel Katherine Russell of 119 Pacific Street, Brooklyn. The ceremony was due to take place at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn, on April 21^st, 1912. His initial booking had been with the White Star Line but due to industrial action he was unable to sail so at the last minute his ticket was transferred and an alternate berth secured upon a new ship, Titanic.When she set sail on her maiden voyage in 1912,Titanic was the largest vessel in the world, with a passenger capacity of 2,435; it was also claimed that she was unsinkable. In any event, no one considered such a possibility, as the ship left England before calling at Ireland and thereafter steaming out into the Atlantic. Fr. Byles had boarded at Southampton, having left his Essex rectory early on the morning of Wednesday April 10^th. Dressed in clerical black and with a single case he caught the train to London before the boat train on to the English port.  The glamour of the occasion was not lost on the ship’s passengers or indeed the priest as when, just after 12 Noon on that Easter Wednesday, they set sail to the sound of a band playing…

On departing Southampton, Fr. Byles wrote a letter to his elderly housekeeper, one that was later to be posted when the ship docked briefly in Ireland. His concerns in that were both temporal and spiritual.  He feared he had lost his umbrella whilst travelling on the train to the dock and, perhaps more importantly, that he wouldn’t be able to say Mass until the ship cleared the Irish port of Queenstown (Cobh); it was only after that that he expected to be able to do so each day.  In conclusion, he promised to write when he landed at New York.

Byles had been born at Leeds, England, on February 26^th 1870. The eldest of seven children, perhaps understandably the family atmosphere was devout as his father was a Protestant minister. He was educated locally and at Leamington in the English Midlands where the family moved when he was aged 12. In 1885, he won a scholarship to a boarding school in Lancashire. It was here that he discovered two things: that he suffered from epilepsy and that he had doubts about the Protestantism he had been raised in. As with another famous English convert some decades earlier, Byles began a study of the early Church Fathers. But, as the doubts slowly started to subside it became apparent that he was being lead to an unexpected place: Rome.

In 1888, he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, having secured a Mathematics Scholarship, however, he was eventually to change to Theology, gaining a Third Class degree in 1894. It was whilst at the university that he decided to embrace Anglicanism. Earlier it had been his brother, William, who had shocked the wider family by converting to Catholicism whilst also at Oxford. His brother’s conversion was to have a markedly different effect upon the younger Byles, however, especially as his study of the Church Fathers deepened. Soon after, having previously considered taking Anglican Orders, he decided to postpone any such decision.

What he was later to describe as a ‘fog’ now descended. Having left the Protestantism of his family, and no longer content with his recently acquired Anglicanism, Byles found himself struggling to discern what was the true course.  Perhaps, by then, he knew in his heart that there was only one way left, but still he hesitated in taking it. Then, unexpectedly, on the eve of the Feast of Corpus Christi, during a prolonged period of meditation, the definitive way finally revealed itself. Thereafter, there was no hesitation. On the Feast itself, Byles was received into the Church at the then Jesuit church in Oxford, and, in so doing, received Holy Communion for the first time and, now free of all doubts, was also given a new Christian name, Thomas.

Byles wrote to his family that the ‘fog had cleared’, but in their case an altogether different mist thereafter descended.  Still, he had made his decision, and soon after he attended Oscott Seminary, but his health, never good, prevented his persisting in his theological studies; soon he was forced to leave. What was next, he wondered? He taught for a while, as well as writing a short work: A School Commentary on the Second Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, later published by the Catholic Truth Society, in hindsight, his choice of epistle is a curious one, for it is one of the few places in Scripture that reference a shipwreck.

Still dogged by illness, he was not a success as a schoolteacher. By 1899, however, Byles was sufficiently restored to leave for the Beda College in Rome where he was to pursue further both his studies and a possible vocation. Eventually, confirmed in the latter, he was ordained priest on June 15^th 1902. Further studies precluded his leaving Rome for another year, finally returning to England early in 1903. Initially, his ministry was in London, but was interrupted by ill health. Thereafter, he was sent to the country to convalesce. The following year, he was to return to his priestly ministry albeit now in the country parishes of Essex. And it was here he was to stay until he received a telegram that told of the forthcoming wedding of his brother, now resident in New York, and with it an invitation…

On board Titanic there were passengers of all social classes and of different nationalities and amongst them there were three priests: alongside the Englishman, a brother priest from Bavaria and another from Lithuania.

As the ship made its way into the Atlantic, Fr. Byles was in 2nd Class, but it was to be mainly in steerage, where many of the passengers were Irish, that he was to spend those initial days. On Saturday, April 13^th, he was hearing confessions for hours in preparation for the next day: Low Sunday. When Sunday did come, he said Mass for the passengers in steerage, giving a sermon that reflected the circumstances of the then congregation, talking as he did of the need for the ‘lifeboat of faith’ in the ever changing waters of life.  He could not have foreseen how prescient these words were to become only a few hours later.  On that fateful Sunday, the afternoon was given over to more devotions before concluding with the recitation of the Rosary. And, as night fell, the unsinkable Titanic ploughed on through the Atlantic with all appearing to be in order. It was an illusion, however, and one that was to shatter when later that evening at 11.40PM the alarm began to sound wildly.

On hearing its shriek, Fr. Byles immediately descended below decks to steerage. There, as on all decks, fear was rapidly changing to a suffocating panic; the priest moved through the confusion realising that this was the moment not just for the saving of lives but also for the salvation of souls. And as this thought came to him, he perceived what was now to be his role in this. It was as if it was for that moment he had been preparing all his life, the culmination of his whole life’s varied journey. This was a role that had fallen to him as unexpectedly as what was now needed suddenly crystallised in the priest’s mind – and with that he got to work.

The first thing he did was to call for calm, doing so by asking for ‘silence’. Slowly, the frightened crowd in front of him quietened. He then called upon all present to make an Act of Contrition before, having explained the present dangers, starting the evacuation of women and children to the top deck, with the priest escorting these upwards through the various decks.

Here is not the place to speak of how the route for steerage passengers was initially barred, or how those on the upper decks were given preference over the poorer passengers from ‘below’. Needless to say, Fr. Byles paid no attention to such class distinctions and worked as quickly and as calmly as he could to usher the women and children he led to the lifeboats then being deployed. The one characteristic of the priest most in evidence, and most remarked on later by survivors, was his presence of mind throughout. It was indeed as if it was for this that he had been preparing all his life. Seeing the first batch of women and children safely aboard lifeboats, and declining an offer to join them, he descended once more below decks.

The ship’s band had been brought on deck to try and calm the increasingly fraught atmosphere with what must have seemed surreal musical accompaniment. Nevertheless, very quickly it was becoming clear that there were not going to be enough lifeboats. Soon the priest was to stand on deck surrounded by many others who awaited rescue but who were now effectively stranded. In the growing terror, Fr. Byles again refused the offer of a place in one of the few remaining lifeboats.

Finally, all those stood on deck watched as the last lifeboat disappeared into the black horizon, and as they did so they knew that with it had departed all earthly hope. The band on deck changed to playing hymns, including Abide with Me.  As its melody sounded across the deck, one often heard at funerals, some began to cry, some stared ahead blankly, whilst others fell to their knees with heads bowed as they gripped the ships railings, but there were those who continued to pray – one being the English priest. This was the moment all Christian souls have to face, the final reality of the battle between life and death, faith and non-existence, and that moment had now come for those left on board, Fr. Byles included. He looked around at those stood, sat, or knelt in front of him – many of whom now looking to him; he noted too the first approaches of dark waters upon the deck…

Placing himself as high as he could, he raised his hand in one last act of blessing and absolution, then, remaining standing as he had done throughout, Rosary and its Crucifix in hand, Fr. Byles began once more to lead those gathered around him in the recitation of that ancient prayer as hymns continued to be played …

Those who had escaped watched helplessly from the lifeboats as the figures on deck grew ever dimmer and the sounds of prayer now seemed mingled with that of wailing. And yet, at the head of those so left, still faintly discernible in the distance, was Fr. Byles.

When, at last, it started, the sound was terrifying. Slowly, the ship lurched ever upwards, before thereafter a rapid descent as it crashed into the sea below with the resultant waves rolling outwards to the fleeing lifeboats that started to bob in its wake. And, looking back transfixed as the ship did so, some of its survivors made the Sign of the Cross offering prayers for those now departed who only hours earlier had been all too real flesh and blood. At that moment, in the enveloping darkness, they prayed too for their own safety and the precarious journey ahead, pushed on by the waves emanating from that now vanished vessel – no longer a sailing ship, but instead forever a grave to 1,516 souls, and a memorial to an English Catholic priest, Fr. Thomas Byles.

Hold… Thy cross before my closing eyes…

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

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K. V. Turley is a London based freelance writer and filmmaker with a degree in theology from the Maryvale Institute. This post originally appeared at Catholic Exchange and it is reprinted with permission.

In his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis, “On the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission,” Pope Benedict XVI recalls a passage from the Confessions of Saint Augustine, regarding the Holy Eucharist. Saint Augustine writes about the different effect of consuming the Heavenly Bread of the Holy Eucharist in comparison with the effect of eating earthly food. Earthly food is assimilated into our very being; it becomes a part of us. The Body of Christ, the Heavenly Food of our earthly pilgrimage, on the contrary, transforms us into the Food we consume, that is, Christ Whom we receive in Holy Communion.

Through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, our Lord Jesus Christ unites us to Himself, draws our hearts into His glorious Sacred Heart. By so doing, He heals and purifies our poor, fearful and doubting hearts. He gives rest and strength to our hearts. In short, He gives us the grace to live in Him always, to reflect His likeness in every moment of our lives, in everything that we think and say and do. In the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, we receive the strength to “remove from [our] midst oppression,” to “bestow bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted,” trusting that “the Lord will guide [us] always and give [us] plenty even on the parched land” (Is 58:10-11). In the Heart of Jesus, we find the refreshment and fortitude to become for our neighbor “a spring whose water never fails” (Is 58:11). In the words of Saint Paul, our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the grace to offer our bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1) (Pope Benedict XVI, Post-synodal Apostolic ExhortationSacramentum caritatis, “On the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission,” 22 February 2007, n. 70).

The Intrinsically Eucharistic Nature of Christian Life

Pope Benedict XVI comments on the reflection of Saint Augustine with these words:

Christianity’s new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here the intrinsically Eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (cf. Rom 8:29ff). There is nothing authentically human — our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds — that does not find in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full (Sacramentum caritatis, n. 71).

The Holy Eucharist is truly the fount and highest expression of the life of the Church. It is, therefore, the fount and highest expression of our personal life in Christ. Having communion with the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, we are called and given the grace to live in pure and selfless love of God and neighbor, observing always and everywhere the great commandment of love (Mt 22:37-40).

Saint Louis: Holding on to God with Faith and Good Works

Saint Louis IX of France is a remarkable example of an Eucharistic life, of a life in which the reality of the Eucharist formed every element. At the conclusion of his Credo, Saint Louis urges to hold on to God with two arms. He explains:

The two arms with which we must hold God clasped, are firm faith and good works. We need both of these together if we wish to keep hold of God, for either one of them is useless without the other (John of Joinville, The Life of St. Louis, tr. René Hague, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955, p. 236, n. 846).

The image of clasping or holding on to God underlines for us the intention and the devotion which are needed in our relationship with God, in our response of love to Him Who has first loved us and has loved us “to the end” (Jn 12:1; 1 Jn 4:10).

Our holy and noble patron also cautions us about the daily work of Satan and the forces of evil to lead us to give up our hold on one or the other, firm faith or good works, and thus to lose both:

We see, then, that we must combine firm faith with good works. Daily the devils fight with us to deprive us of one or the other, and on the last day, by which I mean the day of our death, they will strive even harder than they do now. On that day may God and His Mother and all His saints grant us their help!” (The Life of Saint Louis, p. 236, n. 848).

Saint Louis understood that taking up the Cross with Christ means also entering, with Christ, into the Garden of Gethsemane and resisting, with the help of God’s grace, the temptations to discouragement and despair.

Saint Louis heeded the admonition of Saint Paul:

Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the Devil…. With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones (Eph 6:11,18).

Saint Paul teaches us what we see embodied in the life of Saint Louis, namely, constant vigilance and prayer, so that we, with the help of God’s grace, do whatever God asks of us, at any moment of our life.

Saint Louis, Man of the Holy Eucharist

As son, husband, father, ruler and Crusader, Saint Louis strove, in everything, to embody his holding on to God by faith. If we read the account of his daily life, written by Jean de Joinville, who knew the King most personally and fought alongside the King in the Crusades, beginning in 1248, we discover the source of the faith and good works by which Saint Louis held on to God, steadfastly remaining in the company of our Lord. Jean de Joinville writes:

He so arranged the business of governing his country that every day he heard the hours of the Office sung, and a Requiem Mass without chant, and then a sung Mass of the day or the feast, if there was one. Every day after dinner he rested on his bed, and when he had slept and rested he said the Office of the Dead privately in his room with one of his chaplains, before hearing Vespers. In the evening he heard Compline (The Life of St. Louis, p. 36, n. 54).

Clearly, the every day of the life of Saint Louis was centered in the Sacred Liturgy, above all, the Holy Eucharist.

When we consider the richness of virtue in the life of Saint Louis, for example, his daily and generous provision for the poor, his establishment of institutions to educate the young and to care for the sick and those in need, and his devotion to the sacred places of our Lord unto the giving of his last energies, we ask how it is possible that so many Christ-like qualities could be embodied in one man, in one lifetime.

The answer to our wonderment is the Eucharistic Sacrifice in which Saint Louis participated daily and which transformed him more and more into Christ’s own likeness. When we consider the complexity of his life as father of a large family and as ruler of a nation, we marvel at his wisdom, truly wisdom from God, by which he formed his every activity in daily Mass and praying of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Conclusion

Recalling the memory of Saint Louis, let us ask him to intercede for us, so that we may become men and women of the Eucharist. May we imitate Saint Louis, finding in the Holy Eucharist the grace to live every moment of our lives in and with Christ for the glory of God the Father and for the good of our neighbor, especially our neighbor who is in most need.

Let us, each day, lift up our poor, sinful and doubting hearts to the Lord, placing them into His glorious pierced Heart. May we live every moment of our lives in the communion with the Lord, which is ours in the Holy Eucharist.

Cardinal Raymond Burke is the Cardinal Patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta. This post was written while Cardinal Burke was Archbishop of St. Louis. It originally appeared at Catholic Exchange and it is reprinted with permission.