23 / 28
23
The Catholic Leader, November 10, 2019
www.catholicleader.com.auYour Daily Bread
AS we approach the end of the Liturgical
Year, the Sunday Readings focus on our
human destiny.
What awaits us in the future? Is death
the end, our annihilation, as some believe?
Or is death, as Christians are gifted to
believe but can never prove, a transforma-
tion to a new kind of living.
Christians believe it is a wonderful fuller
kind of future living, a shared living pos-
sible only for people who have already
begun to love in our present lives.
We live very short lives.
God has spent billions of years, 13.7
billion years according to modern science,
creating us through a relentless evolution
of the universe forwards.
During this time many forms of life have
appeared and ceased to exist.
Our Christian faith believes that this
will not be the fate of humans who have
learned to love.
Christians believe that Jesus passed
through a terrible death to be raised by
God into a new kind of human life.
For Christians, Jesus in his life is our
leader in faith, showing us how to believe
in God, and now as the risen or rising
Christ completes our faith.
We believe Jesus has become not just
the risen but the rising Christ. His rising
continues to expand into our lives by ena-
bling love for one another in our hearts.
The
First Reading
from the Old Testa-
ment the Prophecy of Malachi, written in
the 5th century B.C, foreshadows Christian
faith in God. In spite of the evil and corrup-
tion around him, Malachi has hope for the
future of those who fear God, true believ-
ers who trust in God.
The
Second Reading
from the New
Testament usually stands alone, without
a clear connection to the Old Testament
and the Gospel readings.
The reading next Sunday from the Sec-
ond Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians is
not directly about the future.
However, it does emphasise the impor-
tance of living now our daily lives and work
faithfully in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, liv-
ing open to the action of the risen, or rising,
Christ in our lives.
The
Gospel Reading
is from Luke’s
Gospel seems hardly good news about
the future.
Jesus speaks of the coming destruc-
tion of the beautiful Temple in Jerusalem
recently completed by King Herod. This
destruction has already happened by the
time Luke wrote his Gospel in the mid to
late 80s.
Before it happens there will be wars and
uprisings, and natural disasters, even awe-
some sights and signs from the sky.
For the disciples of Jesus there will be
false prophets and messiahs misleading
them, and arrests, prisons and persecu-
tions for them, again already historical
happenings by the time Luke wrote his
Gospel.
Jesus encourages his disciples in these
dangers and troubles never to lose faith
in him, not just in his memory but more
importantly in the continuing presence
and power of his Holy Spirit of love among
them.
Their faith in Jesus as their Lord sharing
his rising with them and incorporating them
in their present lives into the mystery of his
life after death.
Their faith in him, empowering their
love for others, even their persecutors, will
become in them a persevering witness of
their sure hope for the life awaiting them
in death.
This is Good News.
The late
Fr John Reilly SJ
wrote this
commentary in 2013.
ST Martin of Tours was born to pagan par-
ents in Hungary about 316 and was raised
in Italy.
From the age of 15 he was forced to serve
as a soldier. While in the army he was drawn
to Christianity and was baptised at 18.
At 23, he refused a war bonus, stood up as
a conscientious objector and said he wanted
to serve Christ.
After being discharged he joined Hilary
of Poitiers as a disciple and became a monk,
firstly in Milan and then on a small island.
When Hilary was restored to his see after
exile, Martin returned to France and estab-
lished what may have been the first French
monastery near Poitiers.
Martin served there for 10 years, teaching
his disciples and preaching to country folk.
The clergy of Tours sought to have Martin
ordained a bishop and they eventually had
their way, despite Martin’s reluctance.
Even as a bishop, Martin was known for
his life of simplicity and he formed another
monastery near Tours.
Martin died in Rome about 397, aged 81.
His feast day is on November 11.
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 17
First Reading: Malachi 3:19-20a
Second Reading: 2 Thess. 3:7-12
Gospel: Luke 21:5-19
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 10
First Reading: 2 Mac. 7:1-2, 9-14
Second Reading: 2 Thess. 2:16-3:5
Gospel: Luke 20:27-38
Next Sunday’s readings
BY FR JOHN REILLY SJ
St Martin of Tours
SAINTLY LIFE
FEAST DAYS THIS WEEK
Monday -
St Martin of Tours
Patron of the poor and soldiers
Friday -
St Albert the Great
Patron of scientists and philosophers
Tuesday -
St Josaphat
Saint of the Eastern Church
Saturday -
St Margaret of Scotland
Patron of Scotland
Gener-
ous
saint:
As
a young
soldier,
St Martin
of Tours
came
across a
beggar
who
had no
clothes.
It was
cold,
and
Martin
gave the
beggar
half his
cloak to
wear.
‘Great’ an apt title for Albert
Brilliant man:
St Albert the
Great, born at
the beginning
of the 13th
century, was
described as
the “wonder
and miracle
of our ep-
och”.
Pope Benedict XVI gave this
address on St Albert at the
Great at a general audience
in St Peter’s Square on March
24, 2010
ONE of the great masters of mediae-
val theology is St Albert the Great.
The title “Great”, with which he has passed
into history indicates the vastness and depth of his
teaching, which he combined with holiness of life.
However, his contemporaries did not hesitate
to attribute to him titles of excellence even then.
One of his disciples, Ulric of Strasbourg, called
him the “wonder and miracle of our epoch”.
He was born in Germany at the beginning of
the 13th century. When he was still young he
went to Italy, to Padua, the seat of one of the
most famous mediaeval universities.
He devoted himself to the study of the so-
called “liberal arts”: grammar, rhetoric, dialec-
tics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music,
that is, to culture in general, demonstrating that
characteristic interest in the natural sciences
which was soon to become the favourite field for
his specialisation.
During his stay in Padua he attended the
Church of the Dominicans, whom he then joined
with the profession of the religious vows.
Hagiographic sources suggest that Albert
came to this decision gradually.
His intense relationship with God, the Do-
minican Friars’ example of holiness, hearing
the sermons of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, St
Dominic’s successor at the Master General of the
Order of Preachers, were the decisive factors that
helped him to overcome every doubt and even to
surmount his family’s resistance.
God often speaks to us in the years of our
youth and points out to us the project of our life.
As it was for Albert, so also for all of us,
personal prayer, nourished by the Lord’s word,
frequent reception of the sacraments and the
spiritual guidance of enlightened people are the
means to discover and follow God’s voice.
After his ordination to the priesthood, his
superiors sent him to teach at various theologi-
cal study centres annexed to the convents of the
Dominican Fathers.
His brilliant intellectual qualities enabled him
to perfect his theological studies at the most
famous university in that period, the University
of Paris. From that time on St Albert began his
extraordinary activity as a writer that he was to
pursue throughout his life.
Prestigious tasks were assigned to him. In
1248 he was charged with opening a theological
studium at Cologne, where he lived at different
times and which became his adopted city.
He brought with him from Paris an excep-
tional student, Thomas Aquinas. The sole merit
of having been St Thomas’ teacher would suffice
to elicit profound admiration for St Albert.
A relationship of mutual esteem and friendship
developed between these two great theologians,
human attitudes that were very helpful in the
development of this branch of knowledge.
In 1254, Albert was elected provincial of the
Dominican Fathers, which included communi-
ties scattered over a vast territory in Central and
Northern Europe.
He distinguished himself for the zeal with
which he exercised this ministry, visiting the
communities and constantly recalling his con-
freres to fidelity, to the teaching and example of
St Dominic.
His gifts did not escape the attention of the
pope of that time, Alexander IV, who wanted Al-
bert with him for a certain time at Anagni where
the popes went frequently in Rome itself and
at Viterbo, in order to avail himself of Albert’s
theological advice.
The same supreme pontiff appointed Albert
Bishop of Regensburg, a large and celebrated
diocese that was going through a difficult period.
From 1260 to 1262, Albert exercised this
ministry with unflagging dedication, succeeding
in restoring peace and harmony to the city, in
reorganising parishes and convents and in giving
a new impetus to charitable activities.
In the year 1263-1264, Albert preached in
Germany and in Bohemia, at the request of Pope
Urban IV. He later returned to Cologne and took
up his role as lecturer, scholar and writer.
As a man of prayer, science and charity, his
authoritative intervention in various events of the
Church and of the society of the time were ac-
claimed – above all, he was a man of reconcilia-
tion and peace in Cologne, where the archbishop
had run seriously foul of the city’s institutions;
he did his utmost during the Second Council of
Lyons, in 1274, summoned by Pope Gregory X,
to encourage union between the Latin and Greek
churches after the separation of the great schism
with the East in 1054.
He also explained the thought of Thomas
Aquinas which had been the subject of objec-
tions and even quite unjustified condemnations.
He died in his cell at the convent of the Holy
Cross, Cologne, in 1280, and was soon venerated
by his confreres.
The Church proposed him for the worship of
the faithful with his beatification in 1622 and
with his canonisation in 1931, when Pope Pius
XI proclaimed him Doctor of the Church.
This was certainly an appropriate recogni-
tion of this great man of God and outstanding
scholar, not only of the truths of the faith but
of a great many other branches of knowledge;
indeed, with a glance at the titles of his very
numerous works, we realise that there was
something miraculous about his culture and that
his encyclopaedic interests led him not only to
concern himself with philosophy and theology,
like other contemporaries of his, but also with
every other discipline then known, from physics
to chemistry, from astronomy to minerology,
from botany to zoology.
For this reason Pope Pius XI named him patron
of enthusiasts of the natural sciences and called
him “Doctor universalis” precisely because of the
vastness of his interests and knowledge.
St Albert the Great reminds us that there is
friendship between science and faith and that
through their vocation to the study of nature,
scientists can take an authentic and fascinating
path of holiness.
His extraordinary open-mindedness is also
revealed in a cultural feat which he carried out
successfully, that is, the acceptance and appre-
ciation of Aristotle’s thought.
St Albert the Great was capable of communi-
cating concepts in a simple and understandable
way. An authentic son of St Dominic, he willingly
preached to the People of God, who were won
over by his words and by the example of his life.