St Anthony’s Bread (Dec 2018)
Saint Leonard of Port Maurice (1676-1751)
St. Leonard , who was born in Port Maurice in Italy, joined the Franciscans when he was twenty-one, hoping to spend his life preaching the Gospel in China. In the end, his mission field did not extend beyond Italy. Nevertheless, Alphonsus Liguori called him “the great missionary of the eighteenth century.”
A gifted preacher, he conducted mission tours through Umbria, Genoa, and the Marches. Enormous crowds would turn out to hear him – so great that he would preach in the open air. Wherever he went, his preaching prompted a spiritual revival. One of his favourite “preaching aids” was the Stations of the Cross – a devotion he was largely responsible for popularizing. It is said that he established 571 Stations throughout Italy, even in the Colosseum in Rome. He also promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart and was an early advocate for defining the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception.
In 1744, Pope Benedict XIV sent him on a mission to Corsica – one of his less successful undertakings, as many people assumed he was an agent of the ruling doge of Genoa. Shaking the dust from his feet, he resumed his work in Italy, preaching and leading retreats. By that time, however, his energy was failing fast.
He died in Rome on November 26, 1751. He was canonized in 1867.
Venerable Margaret Sinclair (1900-1925)
Margaret Sinclair was born in Edinburgh to a poor family. She left school at fourteen to work in a series of factories, helping to support her family. An eventual marriage proposal served as the catalyst for deeper reflection on her vocation, resulting in her decision to enter the Poor Clares. As the community in Edinburgh had no room for her, she was accepted into a community in Notting Hill in London. She was given the name Sister Mary Frances of the Five Wounds.
Her working-class roots and her Scottish brogue set her apart from the educated and upper-class backgrounds of the other sisters. One time, noticing that Margaret was having too much fun whitewashing an outhouse, a nun upbraided her, “You’ll never be a saint.” Margaret replied, “Dinna fash yerself” (Don’t let that trouble you).
Despite her obscure life, her reputation soon spread, especially in Scotland, where she was celebrated as a saint of ordinary life. The archbishop of Edinburgh said,
“We can still admire the heroism of the early martyrs, but the unlikelihood of our being thrown to the lions makes these first Christian saints somewhat remote and shadowy figures. Margaret Sinclair may well be one of the first to achieve the little of Saint from the factory floor.”
She was declared venerable in 1978. Pope John Paul II described her as
“one of God’s little ones who, through her very simplicity, was touched by God with a real holiness of life.”
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231)
St. Elizabeth, the daughter of Hungarian royalty, was betrothed at the age of four to Ludwig, the nine-year-old prince of Thuringia in southern Germany. Despite the arrangement, in which they had no say, the two children established a close friend- ship that eventually blossomed into a loving marriage. Elizabeth bore three children. But Ludwig’s family disapproved of her piety and especially her “inordinate” charity toward the poor and sick. The young princess, it was said, dressed too simply; she was too profligate in her almsgiving. After Elizabeth established several hospitals she aroused scandal by nursing the sick, even lepers, with her own hands.
Nevertheless, her instinctive spirit of poverty was only magnified upon the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries in Germany. Elizabeth was captivated by the story of Clare and Francis (from whom she received the gift of his cloak), and she eventually embraced the rule of a Franciscan tertiary. During a time of famine, while Ludwig was away, she opened the royal granaries, thus winning the people’s devotion. Such generosity, however, only increased the scorn of elite members of the court.
She who had embraced the spirit of poverty now found herself happy to accept shelter in a pig shed.
In 1227, Ludwig died on his way home from a crusade. In a paroxysm of grief, Elizabeth cried out, “The world is dead to me, and all that was joyous in the world.” Without her husband’s protection, she was at the mercy of her in-laws. They banished her from the court, forcing her to leave the palace on a wintry night, carrying nothing but her newborn child. She who had embraced the spirit of poverty now found herself happy to accept shelter in a pig shed.
Eventually, to avoid scandal, she was provided with a simple cottage, where she supported herself by spinning and fishing. She continued to visit the sick in their homes or in the hospices she had endowed. Over time, her reputation for holiness spread, and she earned the grudging respect of those who had persecuted her. In 1231, she fell ill and announced calmly that she would not recover. She died on November 17 at the age of twenty-four. She was canonized less than four years later.
Source : The Franciscan Saints (Franciscan Media)
Saint Agnes of Assisi (1197-1253)
Born Caterina Offreducia, Agnes was the younger sister of Saint Clare, and her first follower. When Caterina left home two weeks after Clare’s departure, their family attempted to bring her back by force. They tried to drag her out of the monastery, but her body suddenly became so heavy that several knights could not budge it. Her uncle Monaldo tried to strike her but was temporarily paralyzed. The knights then left Caterina and Clare in peace. Saint Francis himself gave Clare’s sister the name Agnes, because she was gentle like a young lamb.
Agnes matched her sister in devotion to prayer and in willingness to endure the strict penances that characterized the Poor Ladies’ lives at San Damiano. In 1221, a group of Benedictine nuns in Monticelli near Florence asked to become Poor Ladies. Saint Clare sent Agnes to become abbess of that monastery. Agnes soon wrote a rather sad letter about how much she missed Clare and the other nuns at San Damiano. After establishing other monasteries of Poor Ladies in northern Italy, Agnes was recalled to San Damiano in 1253, as Clare lay dying.
Source : The Franciscan Saints (Franciscan Media)