JUNE 9 – SS. PRIMUS AND FELICIANUS, MARTYRS. ST. COLUMBA, OR COLUMKILLE, ABBOT.
THESE two martyrs were brothers, and lived in Rome, toward the latter part of the third century, for many years, mutually encouraging each other in the practice of all good works. They seemed to possess nothing but for the poor, and often spent both nights and days with the confessors in their dungeons, or at the places of their torments and execution. Some they encouraged to perseverance, others, who had fallen, they raised again, and they made themselves the servants of all in Christ, that all might attain to salvation through Him. Though their zeal was most remarkable, they had escaped the dangers of many bloody persecutions, and were grown old in the heroic exercises of virtue, when it pleased God to crown their labors with a glorious martyrdom: The pagans raised so great an outcry against them that they were both apprehended and put in chains. They were inhumanly scourged, and then sent to a town twelve miles from Rome, to be farther chastised, as avowed enemies to the gods. There they were cruelly tortured, first both together, afterward separately. But the grace of God strengthened them, and they were at length both beheaded on the 9th of June.
REFLECTION: A soul which truly loves God regards all the things of this world as nothing. The loss of goods, the disgrace of the world, torments, sickness, and other afflictions are bitter to the senses, but appear light to him that loves. If we cannot bear our trials with patience and silence, it is because we love God only in words. “One who is slothful and lukewarm complains of every thing, and calls the lightest precepts hard,” says Thomas à Kempis.
ST. COLUMBA, OR COLUMKILLE, ABBOT.
ST. COLUMBA, the apostle of the Picts, was born of a noble family, at Gartan, in the county of Tyrconnel, A.D. 521. From early childhood he gave himself to God. In all his labors—and they were many-his chief thought was heaven and how he should secure the way thither. The result was that he lay on the bare floor, with a stone for his pillow, and fasted all the year round; yet the sweetness of his countenance told of the holy soul’s interior serenity. Though austere, he was not morose; and, often as he longed to die, he was untiring in good works throughout his life. After he had been made abbot, his zeal offended King Dermot; and in 565 the Saint departed for Scotland, where he founded a hundred religious houses and converted the Picts, who, in gratitude, gave him the island of Iona. There St. Columba founded his celebrated monastery, the school of apostolic missionaries and martyrs, and for centuries the last resting-place of Saints and kings. Four years before his death, our Saint had a vision of angels, who told him that the day of his death had been deferred four years, in answer to the prayers of his children; whereat the Saint wept bitterly, and cried out, “Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged!” for he desired above all things to reach his true home. How different is the conduct of most men, who dread death above every thing, instead of wishing “to be dissolved, and to be with Christ.”! On the day of his peaceful death, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, surrounded in choir by his spiritual children, the 9th June, A.D. 597, he said to his disciple Diermit, “This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me; for it will put an end to my labors.” Then, kneeling before the altar, he received the Viaticum, and sweetly slept in the Lord. His relics were carried to Down and laid in the same shrine with the bodies of St. Patrick and St. Brigid.
REFLECTION: The thought of the world to come will always make us happy, and yet strict with ourselves in all our duties The more perfect we become, the sooner shall we behold that for which St. Columba sighed.
WORD OF THE DAY
CASE OF CONSCIENCE. A famous problem arising in 1791 as to the giving of absolution to a cleric who declared himself unwilling to give up certain Jansenist sentiments. Specifically, did Jansenius’ book Augustinus contain the propositions solemnly condemned as heretical by Pope Innocent X in 1653. Forty doctors of the Sorbonne voted “yes” in favor of absolving the cleric, but this solution was condemned in the papal brief Cum Nuper as a denial of the Pope’s power to decide whether or not a certain book contained errors against the faith. The faculties of theology at Louvain, Douai, and Paris were in agreement with Pope Clement XI’s declaration.
Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)
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