OCTOBER 16 – ST. GALL, ABBOT.

ST. GALL was born in Ireland soon after the middle of the sixth century, of pious, noble, and rich parents. When St. Columban left Ireland, St. Gall accompanied him into England, and afterward into France, where they arrived in 585. St. Columban founded the monastery of Anegray, in a wild forest in the diocese of Besançon, and two years afterward another in Luxey. Being driven thence by King Theodoric, the Saints both withdrew into the territories of Theodebert. St. Columban, however, retired into Italy, but St. Gall was prevented from bearing him company by a grievous fit of illness. St. Gall was a priest before he left Ireland, and having learned the language of the country where he settled, near the Lake of Constance, he converted to the faith a great number of idolaters. The cells which this Saint built there for those who desired to serve God with him, he gave to the monastery which bears his name. A synod of bishops, with the clergy and people, earnestly desired to place the Saint in the episcopal see of Constance; but his modesty refused the dignity. He died in the year 646.

REFLECTION: “If any one would be My disciple,” says our Saviour, “let him deny himself.” The denial of self is, then, the royal road to perfection.

WORD OF THE DAY

LIBERALISM. Until the eighteenth century the term generally meant whatever was worthy of a free man, e.g., as applied to the liberal arts or a liberal education. This meaning is still current, but at least since the French Revolution liberalism has become more or less identified with a philosophy that stresses human freedom to the neglect and even denial of the rights of God in religion, the rights of society in civil law, and the rights of the

Church in her relations to the State. It was in this sense that liberalism was condemned by Pope Pius IX in 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors (Denzinger, 2977-80).

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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