Saint Bede & Saint Gregory VII & Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi
May 25
Lives of the Saints
by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition
[1894]
VENERABLE BEDE.
VENERABLE BEDE, the illustrious ornament of the Anglo-Saxon Church and the first English historian, was consecrated to God at the age of seven, and entrusted to the care of St. Benedict Biscop at Wearmouth.
He became a monk in the sister-house of Jarrow, and there trained no less than six hundred scholars, whom his piety, learning, and sweet disposition had gathered round him. To the toils of teaching and the exact observance of his rule he added long hours of private prayer, and the study of every branch of science and literature then known.
He was familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In the treatise which he compiled for his scholars, still extant, he threw together all that the world had then stored in history, chronology, physics, music, philosophy, poetry, arithmetic, and medicine.
In his Ecclesiastical History he has left us beautiful lives of Anglo-Saxon Saints and holy Fathers, while his commentaries on the Holy Scriptures are still in use by the Church.
It was to the study of the Divine Word that he devoted the whole energy of his soul, and at times his compunction was so overpowering that his voice would break with weeping, while the tears of his scholars mingled with his own.
He had little aid from others, and during his later years suffered from constant illness; yet he worked and prayed up to his last hour.
The Saint was employed in translating the Gospel of St. John from the Greek up to the hour of his death, which took place on Ascension Day, 735. “He spent that day joyfully,” writes one of his scholars. And in the evening the boy who attended him said, “Dear master, there is yet one sentence unwritten.” He answered, “Write it quickly.” Presently the youth said, “Now it is written” He replied, “Good! thou hast said the truth—consummatum est; take my head into thy hands, for it is very pleasant to me to sit facing my old praying-place, and there to call upon my Father.”
And so on the floor of his cell he sang, “Glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;” and just as he said “Holy Ghost,” he breathed his last, and went to the realms above.
Reflection.—”The more,” says the Imitation of Christ, “a man is united within himself and interiorly simple, so much the more and deeper things doth he understand without labor; for he receiveth the light of understanding from on high.”
Easter Weekday Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor of the Church; Saint Gregory VII, Pope; Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin Acts 22:30; 23:6-11/Jn 17:20-26 (300)
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/saints/bede-489
CATHOLICISM SAINTS ST. BEDE
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/saints/mary-magdalen-de-pazzi-693
CATHOLICISM SAINTS ST. MARY MAGDALEN DE PAZZI
*Venerable Bede – Roman.
Saint Bede was an eighth-century English monk, historian, and doctor of the Church, who composed many of the earliest pieces of Gregorian Chant. Artwork by Roman.
*Bede (/biːd/ BEED; Old English: Bǣda [ˈbæːdɑ], Bēda [ˈbeːdɑ]; 672/3 – 26 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (Latin: Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles (contemporarily Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in Tyne and Wear, England).
Born on lands belonging to the twin monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in present-day Tyne and Wear, Bede was sent to Monkwearmouth at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at Jarrow. Both of them survived a plague that struck in 686 and killed a majority of the population there. While Bede spent most of his life in the monastery, he travelled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles, even visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede
Lives of the Saints
by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition
[1894]
May 25.—ST. GREGORY VII
GREGORY VII, by name Hildebrand, was born in Tuscany, about the year 1013. He was educated in Rome. From thence he went to France, and became a monk at Cluny. Afterwards he returned to Rome, and for many years filled high trusts of the Holy See.
Three great evils then afflicted the Church: simony, concubinage, and the custom of receiving investiture from lay hands. Against these three corruptions Gregory never ceased to contend. As legate of Victor II. he held a Council at Lyons, where simony was condemned.
He was elected Pope in 1073, and at once called upon the pastors of the Catholic world to lay down their lives rather than betray the laws of God to the will of princes. Rome was in rebellion through the ambition of the Cenci. Gregory excommunicated them.
They laid hands on him at Christmas during the midnight Mass, wounded him, and cast him into prison. The following day he was rescued by the people.
Next arose his conflict with Henry IV, Emperor of Germany. This monarch, after openly relapsing into simony, pretended to depose the Pope. Gregory excommunicated the emperor. His subjects turned against him, and at last he sought absolution of Gregory at Canossa. But he did not persevere. He set up an antipope, and besieged Gregory in the castle of St. Angelo. The aged pontiff was obliged to flee, and on May 25, 1085, about the seventy-second year of his life and the twelfth year of his pontificate, Gregory entered into his rest.
His last words were full of a divine wisdom and patience. As he was dying, he said, “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.” His faithful attendant answered, “Vicar of Christ, an exile thou canst never be, for to thee God has given the Gentiles for an inheritance, and the uttermost ends of the earth for thy possession.”
Reflection.—Eight hundred years are passed since St. Gregory died, and we see the same conflict renewed before our eyes. Let us learn from him to suffer any persecution from the world or the state, rather than betray the rights of the Holy See.
**Pope Gregory VII (Latin: Gregorius VII; c. 1015 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (Italian: Ildebrando di Soana), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 22 April 1073 to his death in 1085. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Emperor Henry IV that affirmed the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope. He was the first pope in several centuries to rigorously enforce the Western Church’s ancient policy of celibacy for the clergy and also attacked the practice of simony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_VII
Lives of the Saints
by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition
[1894]
—ST. MARY MAGDALEN OF PAZZI.
- MARY MAGDALEN OF PAZZI, of an illustrious house in Florence, was born in the year 1566, and baptized by the name of Catherine. She received her first Communion at ten years of age, and made a vow of virginity at twelve.
She took great pleasure in carefully teaching the Christian doctrine to the ignorant. Her father, not knowing her vow, wished to give her in marriage, but she persuaded him to allow her to become a religious. It was more difficult to obtain her mother’s consent; but at last she gained it, and she was professed, being then eighteen years of age, in the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, May 17, 1584.
She changed her name Catherine into that of Mary Magdalen on becoming a nun, and took as her motto, “To suffer or die; ” and her life henceforth was a life of penance for sins not her own, and of love of Our Lord, Who tried her in ways fearful and strange.
She was obedient, observant of the rule, humble and mortified, and had a great reverence for the religious life. She loved poverty and suffering, and hungered after Communion. The day of Communion she called the day of love. The charity that burned in her heart led her in her youth to choose the house of the Carmelites, because the religious therein communicated every day. She rejoiced to see others communicate, even when she was not allowed to do so herself; and her love for her sisters grew when she saw them receive Our Lord.
God raised her to high states of prayer, and gave her rare gifts, enabling her to read the thoughts of her novices, and filling her with wisdom to direct them aright. She was twice chosen mistress of novices, and then made superioress, when God took her to Himself, May 25, 1607. Her body is incorrupt.
Reflection.—St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi was so filled with the love of God that her sisters in the monastery observed it in her love of themselves, and called her “the Mother of Charity” and “the Charity of the Monastery.”
***Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi (Italian: Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi; April 2, 1566 – May 25, 1607), was an Italian Carmelite nun and mystic. She has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene_de%27_Pazzi
God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Cor 1:9