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May 11
Spiritual Bouquet: I am the door. If anyone enters by Me he shall be safe. St. John 10:9
SAINTS PHILIP and JAMES
Apostles
(First century)
Philip was one of the first chosen disciples of Christ. On the way from Judea to Galilee Our Lord found Philip, and said, “Follow Me.” Philip straightway obeyed; and then in his zeal and charity sought to win Nathaniel also, saying, “We have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth.” And when Nathaniel in wonder asked, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” Philip simply answered, “Come and see,” and brought him to Jesus.
Another saying of this Apostle is preserved for us by Saint John. Christ in His last discourse had spoken of His Father; and Philip exclaimed, in the fervor of his thirst for God, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough!” The tradition of the ancients has established that he died a martyr at Hierapolis in Phyrgia. There the remains of a church known to be dedicated to him have been identified, north of the entrance to the great necropolis. His relics were later transported to Rome, to the church of the Holy Apostles.
Saint James the Less (the Younger), author of the canonical Epistle, was the son of Alpheus, the brother of Saint Jude and a cousin of Our Lord, whom he is said to have resembled. Saint Paul tells us that he was favored by a special apparition of Christ after the Resurrection. (I Corinthians 15:7) On the dispersion of the Apostles among the nations, Saint James remained as Bishop of Jerusalem, where the Jews held in such high veneration his purity, mortification, and prayer, that they named him the Just. He governed that church for 30 years before his martyrdom.
Hegesippus, the earliest of the Church’s historians, has handed down many traditions of Saint James’s sanctity. Saint James was a celibate Nazarite consecrated to God; he drank no wine and wore no sandals. He prostrated himself so long and so often in prayer that the skin of his knees was hardened like a camel’s hoof. It is said that the Jews, out of respect, used to touch the hem of his garment. He was indeed a living proof of his own words, “The wisdom that is from above is first of all chaste, then peaceable, modest, ready to listen, full of mercy and good fruits.” (James 3:17) He sat beside Saint Peter and Saint Paul at the Council of Jerusalem. When Saint Paul at a later time escaped the fury of the Jews by appealing to Caesar, the people took vengeance on James, and crying out, “The just one has erred!” stoned him to death. During his martyrdom he prayed for his persecutors in the same words pronounced by Jesus: “Heavenly Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
Sources: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894); Dictionnaire de la Bible, F. Vigouroux (Letouzey et Ané: Paris, 1912), Vol. 5, “Philippe, Apôtre”; “Jacques le Mineur, Apôtre”. Vol. 1: (1895), “Bartholomew, Apôtre.”
SAINT MAMMERTUS
Archbishop of Vienne
(†477)
Saint Mammertus, Archbishop of Vienne in Dauphiné during the 5th century, was a prelate renowned for his sanctity, learning, and miracles. He instituted in his diocese the fasts and supplications called the Rogations, during the three days before the Ascension, to remedy the neglect of religion which brought down on ancient Gaul many chastisements.
Almighty God, to punish the sins of the people, had visited them with wars and other public calamities and awakened the city of Vienne in particular from spiritual lethargy by the terrors of earthquakes, fires, and ravenous wild beasts, which were sometimes seen in the very market place. These evils were ascribed by the impious to blind chance, but religious and prudent persons considered them as tokens of the divine anger, which threatened their entire destruction.
Amid these scourges, Saint Mammertus received a pledge of the divine mercy. A terrible fire broke out on Easter night in the city of Vienne, which baffled the efforts of men; but by the prayers of the good bishop the fire suddenly went out. This miracle strongly affected the minds of the people. It was on this occasion that the holy prelate conceived the project of restoring the Rogations, which had fallen into oblivion. The Church of Auvergne, where Saint Sidonius Apollonarius was bishop of Clermont, also adopted this pious institution before the year 475, and in a very short time it became a universal practice. His pious reform was received by all the churches of France after the first Council of Orleans under Clovis the Great, and then by the Church of Rome under the authority of Leo III.
Saint Mammertus died about the year 477 in Vienne, but his body was transported to Orleans and placed in its cathedral. There, until the 16th century, it remained in great veneration, then was burnt by enemies of the Church.
Reflection. “Know that the Lord will hear your prayers, if you continue with perseverance in fasting and prayers in the sight of the Lord.” (Judith 4:11)
Sources: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 5.