01.06 - Saint Justin
He was born in Palestine around the year 100. He was well educated and became a professor of philosophy. He was interested in the meaning of life and why the world and people exist. He studied and taught about the great philosophers of his day, but nothing made sense to him until he followed the advice of a wise man who told him to study the Old Testament, especially the writings of the prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. Justin began to learn about Jesus's teachings, he was baptized and became the first Christian philosopher. He opened a school of Christian studies. He used the teachings of the Apostles that the Christian community shared with one another orally because the New Testament had not yet been written. He also relied on the example of the martyrs. He was arrested for being a Christian during the persecution that occured under Marcus Aurelius . He refused to offer a sacrifice to the pagan gods worhippe by the Romans and was executed around the year 165 with six other Christians. We owe Justin a great debt for being the first person to write about why and how the Christian community worhipped and his works help us to understand the early Church. We can ask St. Justin in prayer to help us to believe and live the truths of our faith.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/06/01/the-unapologetic-apologist-five-lessons-from-st-justin-martyr/
#apologetics #saints #june
He was born in Palestine around the year 100. He was well educated and became a professor of philosophy. He was interested in the meaning of life and why the world and people exist. He studied and taught about the great philosophers of his day, but nothing made sense to him until he followed the advice of a wise man who told him to study the Old Testament, especially the writings of the prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. Justin began to learn about Jesus's teachings, he was baptized and became the first Christian philosopher. He opened a school of Christian studies. He used the teachings of the Apostles that the Christian community shared with one another orally because the New Testament had not yet been written. He also relied on the example of the martyrs. He was arrested for being a Christian during the persecution that occured under Marcus Aurelius . He refused to offer a sacrifice to the pagan gods worhippe by the Romans and was executed around the year 165 with six other Christians. We owe Justin a great debt for being the first person to write about why and how the Christian community worhipped and his works help us to understand the early Church. We can ask St. Justin in prayer to help us to believe and live the truths of our faith.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/06/01/the-unapologetic-apologist-five-lessons-from-st-justin-martyr/
#apologetics #saints #june
Catholicworldreport
The Unapologetic Apologist: Five lessons from St. Justin Martyr
Our forebears in the Faith were much stronger than us morally and spiritually. Not for them the lax observance and flaccid sentimentality that characterize so
Saint of the Day, June 19th
St Romuald (c 951-1027)
Monk, Abbot, Ascetic, Founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century “Renaissance of eremitical asceticism”.St Romuald was born in c 951 at Ravenna, Italy and died on 19 June 1027 at Val-di-Castro, Italy of natural causes.
Patronages – the Camaldolese order and Suwalki, Poland. St Romuald’s body is incorrupt.
According to the vita (life) by St Peter Damian O.S.B. (1007-1072), himself a Benedictine and Doctor of the Church , written about fifteen years after Romuald’s death, Romuald was born in Ravenna, in northeastern Italy, to the aristocratic Onesti family. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins of the world common to a tenth-century nobleman.
At the age of twenty he served as second to his father, who killed a relative in a duel over property. Romuald was devastated and went to the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe to do 40 days of penance.
After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there.
San Apollinare had recently been reformed by St Maieul of Cluny Abbey (906-994) but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald.
His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity.
About 978, Pietro Orseolo I, Doge of Venice, who had obtained his office by acquiescence in the murder of his predecessor, began to suffer remorse for his crime.
On the advice of Guarinus, Abbot of San Miguel-de-Cuxa, in Catalonia and of Marinus and Romuald, he abandoned his office and relations and fled to Cuxa, where he took the habit of St Benedict, while Romuald and Marinus erected a hermitage close to the monastery. Romuald lived there for about ten years, taking advantage of the library of Cuxa to refine his ideas regarding monasticism.
After that he spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.His reputation being known to advisers of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Romuald was persuaded by him to take the vacant office of abbot at Sant’Apollinare to help bring about a more dedicated way of life there.The monks, however, resisted his reforms and after a year, Romuald resigned, hurling his abbot’s staff at Otto’s feet in total frustration.He then again withdrew to the hermetical life.
In 1012 he arrived at the Diocese of Arezzo.
Here, according to the legend, a certain Maldolus, who had seen a vision of monks in white garments ascending into Heaven, gave him some land, afterwards known as the Campus Maldoli, or Camaldoli. St Romuald built on this land five cells for hermits, which, with the monastery at Fontebuono, built two years later, became the famous motherhouse of the Camaldolese Order.
Romuald’s daunting charisma awed Rainier of Tuscany, who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.
Romuald founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027.
St Romuald’s Rule:
Romuald was able to integrate these different traditions in establishing his own monastic order.
The admonition in his rule places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation also reflected in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm.
Archbishop Cosmo Francesco Ruppi noted that, “Interiorisation of the spiritual dimension, the primacy of solitude and contemplation, slow penetration of the Word of God and calm meditation on the Psalms are the pillars of Camaldolese spirituality, which St Romuald gives as the essential core of his Rule.”
Romuald’s reforms provided a structural context to accommodate both the eremitic and cenobitic aspects of monastic life.
#saints #june
St Romuald (c 951-1027)
Monk, Abbot, Ascetic, Founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century “Renaissance of eremitical asceticism”.St Romuald was born in c 951 at Ravenna, Italy and died on 19 June 1027 at Val-di-Castro, Italy of natural causes.
Patronages – the Camaldolese order and Suwalki, Poland. St Romuald’s body is incorrupt.
According to the vita (life) by St Peter Damian O.S.B. (1007-1072), himself a Benedictine and Doctor of the Church , written about fifteen years after Romuald’s death, Romuald was born in Ravenna, in northeastern Italy, to the aristocratic Onesti family. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins of the world common to a tenth-century nobleman.
At the age of twenty he served as second to his father, who killed a relative in a duel over property. Romuald was devastated and went to the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe to do 40 days of penance.
After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there.
San Apollinare had recently been reformed by St Maieul of Cluny Abbey (906-994) but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald.
His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity.
About 978, Pietro Orseolo I, Doge of Venice, who had obtained his office by acquiescence in the murder of his predecessor, began to suffer remorse for his crime.
On the advice of Guarinus, Abbot of San Miguel-de-Cuxa, in Catalonia and of Marinus and Romuald, he abandoned his office and relations and fled to Cuxa, where he took the habit of St Benedict, while Romuald and Marinus erected a hermitage close to the monastery. Romuald lived there for about ten years, taking advantage of the library of Cuxa to refine his ideas regarding monasticism.
After that he spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.His reputation being known to advisers of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Romuald was persuaded by him to take the vacant office of abbot at Sant’Apollinare to help bring about a more dedicated way of life there.The monks, however, resisted his reforms and after a year, Romuald resigned, hurling his abbot’s staff at Otto’s feet in total frustration.He then again withdrew to the hermetical life.
In 1012 he arrived at the Diocese of Arezzo.
Here, according to the legend, a certain Maldolus, who had seen a vision of monks in white garments ascending into Heaven, gave him some land, afterwards known as the Campus Maldoli, or Camaldoli. St Romuald built on this land five cells for hermits, which, with the monastery at Fontebuono, built two years later, became the famous motherhouse of the Camaldolese Order.
Romuald’s daunting charisma awed Rainier of Tuscany, who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.
Romuald founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027.
St Romuald’s Rule:
Romuald was able to integrate these different traditions in establishing his own monastic order.
The admonition in his rule places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation also reflected in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm.
Archbishop Cosmo Francesco Ruppi noted that, “Interiorisation of the spiritual dimension, the primacy of solitude and contemplation, slow penetration of the Word of God and calm meditation on the Psalms are the pillars of Camaldolese spirituality, which St Romuald gives as the essential core of his Rule.”
Romuald’s reforms provided a structural context to accommodate both the eremitic and cenobitic aspects of monastic life.
#saints #june