The Interior Life, Meditation (6)

[Rich]

The Interior Life, Meditation (6)

He who learns to live the interior life and to take little account
of outward things, does not seek special places or times to perform
devout exercises. A spiritual man quickly recollects himself because
he has never wasted his attention upon externals. No outside work, no
business that cannot wait stands in his way. He adjusts himself to
things as they happen. He whose disposition is well ordered cares
nothing about the strange, perverse behavior of others, for a man is
upset and distracted only in proportion as he engrosses himself in
externals.
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Book 2, Ch. 1

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January 22nd - St. Vincent Pallotti
1795-1850

SS. Peter and Paul are considered Rome’s first apostles. St. Philip
Neri (1515-1595) is called the “second apostle” of the Eternal City.
St. Vincent Pallotti, who worked in Rome in the 1800s, is reckoned its
19th century apostle, because of what he did to revive its faith.

Vincenzo’s father was a prosperous grocer of noble lineage. The boy
did not do too well when he began grammar school. His teacher said of
him, “He’s a little saint, but a bit thickheaded.” However, he matured
rapidly enough to be ordained a year early. Soon he won his doctor’s
degree in theology and became assistant professor at the Sapienza
University in Rome.

Vincenzo was not called, though, to full-time academic work. He was a
born shepherd of souls. So he eventually resigned his professorship in
order to engage solely in pastoral work. In this, he had the
encouragement of St. Gaspar Del Bufalo and the English priest (and
future Cardinal) Nicholas Wiseman.

What did Vincent do to save souls? Everything he saw necessary. He was
appointed pastor of the Neapolitan Church in Rome (and there for ten
years he endured without complaint the petty persecution of the other
priests on the staff who were jealous of him and his zeal). He served
as confessor at several Roman colleges and monasteries. (One of the
monasteries was the Visitation Convent of Our Lady of Humility, which
would eventually be occupied by the North American College.) He was
always in pursuit of sinners as an exorcist or confessor. Once he
dressed up as an old woman in order to get to the bedside of a dying
man who had a gun under his pillow and threatened to shoot the first
priest who tried to approach him. He was, meanwhile, devoted to the
poor, giving away his shoes and his clothing; and more than once he
gave away his bed! (He used a bed very little anyhow, because he spent
long night hours at prayer.) He was, meanwhile, gifted with insight
into souls and often healed the sick.

Not content with the present, St. Vincent also built for the future.
He organized schools for shoemakers, tailors, coachmen, joiners, and
market gardeners. He started night schools for craftsmen. But he also
took an ecumenical view. In 1836, for instance, he inaugurated an
epiphany octave of liturgies in the various Eastern rites. Here,
prayers were offered (and still are) for the reunion of the Eastern
churches with the Holy See.

In 1835 Vincent founded a religious missionary order, the Society of
Catholic Apostolate, better known as the Pallottines. They were not to
be hermits, he said, but apostles to the wide world. “Holiness,” he
told them, “is simply to do God’s will.” This worldwide order also
gave rise to the Pallottine Missionary Sisters (1843). Both the
Italian and the German branch of the Pallottine Fathers are
represented in the United States, where they originally worked among
German and Italian immigrants. St. Vincent, likewise, inspired the
foundation of an English Catholic missionary order, the Mill Hill
Fathers, which, in time, gave rise to an American order devoted to the
Apostolate of the Blacks, the Josephite Fathers.

Hailed as a saint when he died, Vincent Pallotti was beatified in
1950, on his 100th birthday, and canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1963.
As a prominent cardinal once said of St. Vincent, “He did all he
could; as for what he couldn’t do--well, he did that, too.”
--Father Robert F. McNamara


Saint Quote:
We must give ourselves to God altogether; God makes all His own the
soul that is wholly given to Him.
--St. Philip Neri

Bible Quote:
And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his Angels battle
with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels, and they did
not prevail, neither was their place found any more in heaven
[Apocalypse 12, 7-8] DRV


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Angels-Their Confirmation in Grace

The trial of the Angels was one that required a far more complete
submission than that which God asks of us, for the Angels could not
help knowing the superior excellence of their own nature. Yet they
never hesitated for one moment in their obedience, but paid to the
Manhood of Jesus, to His Sacred Body, made though it was of the dust
of the ground, the supreme homage due to God alone. This it was that
made their obedience so meritorious, and earned for them the privilege
of sinlessness forever, and the joy of continually seeing the face of
their God. How God loves those who are willing to stoop!

Their intimate union with God makes it impossible for the Angels to
fall away, or even to depart in the least particular from the will of
God. The joy of serving God is so great that every other motive
disappears before it. The sweetness of the Beatific Vision is so
overwhelming that they could not find satisfaction in anything else
for a single instant. This is the reward of humility. It breaks down
the barrier that hides God from us.

Every one of the Holy Angels knows that he is safe for all eternity,
that he is beyond the power of any temptation. To many humble Saints,
God has often given in confidence. It does not make them careless, but
only more eager to serve God perfectly. It is the greatest happiness
possible for any created being. It turns the happiness of certain hope
into the happiness of an assured expectation. It makes their life on
earth an anticipation of the reward which is already theirs in spe
(hope) though in in re (reality).

by the Rev. R.F. Clarke, S.J.