SMU Catholic Weekly Blogs

Women Martyrs

Women played a crucial role in the spread of Christianity throughout the Greco-Roman world and the Near  East. The Gospels and Paul's letters name women who served as church deacons, community benefactors, and missionaries. Biographies of the saints abound with stories of Christian women martyred by Roman authorities. Some of the Eucharistic prayers in the Roman Canon date back to Latin liturgical texts penned in North Africa during the third and fourth centuries. The prayers include petitions to the earliest martyrs. Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, and Anastasia are women martyrs listed alongside prominent male martyrs such as Stephen--the first Christian martyr--and Ignatius of Antioch.

Sources: The Maryknoll Sunday Missal

Prosper of Aquitaine

"Lex orandi lex credendi" ("The rule of prayer is the rule of belief"). For Catholic Christians, "lex orandi lex credendi" celebrates living Tradition in the form of the liturgy, breathing life into God's self-communication that triumphs over time and space to reach us in our own era. Church historians credit Prosper of Aquitaine with coining this important axiom in the fifth century while he was a student of St. Augustine of Hippo. Prosper's adage captures the essential Catholic belief that the liturgy--the Church's collective prayers, our sacraments, and our public rituals--expresses our adoration, gratitude, and supplication to God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in unity with the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy the Church reaches into the beating heart of Jesus Christ and his Church to emerge clothed in the will of our creator communicated to us in prayer, sacraments, and symbols. 
Sources: Richard P. McBrien. Catholicism. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994

Saint Nicholas

According to popular tradition, Saint Nicholas of Myra participated in Church fasts even when he was an infant nursing at his mother's breast. He was born at the end of the third century CE in Roman-occupied Anatolia (Turkey). He became bishop of Myra when the emperor Diocletian's persecution of the Church left many Roman provinces without bishops. During his tenure as bishop, Nicholas relied on charity and gift giving to create alliances with local pagan aristocracy, eventually relying on their control of the region to replace paganism with Christianity. Nicholas attended the council of Nicea in 325 CE where he participated in theological debates against the Arians, clarifying the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today he is still venerated by Eastern Orthodox churches, while European and American Christians associate him with Christmas and the spirit of gift giving.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

December belongs to Our Lady of Guadalupe. In December of 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian on a hill outside of Mexico City. Spanish conquistadors had vanquished the Aztec empire, and soon all of Mesoamerica would become a Spanish colony. In the midst of this maelstrom of change, Catholic clergy struggled to convince the native population that God the Father and his Son were love, since the only face of Christianity and the Church up to that point had been male, aggressive, and militaristic. When Mary appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, God revealed a side of himself that rejected the violence of the conquest and colonization of Mexico by exposing the motherhood of Christ and his Church. According to popular tradition, the Guadalupe event became a key moment in the birth of a society with one foot in the old and new world.

Dionysius of Rome

Origen of Alexandria (185-254 CE) was probably one of the most gifted theologians in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean world that formed the backdrop of the early Christian church. When Origen's writings on the nature of the Trinity bordered on heterodoxy, the bishop of Rome called a synod. Origin insisted that God the Father is the God, while God the Son—the "Logos"—is simply God. Dionysius of Rome relied on his privileged position as twenty-sixth bishop of Rome to challenge Origen, since if God the Son was not truly equal to God the Father, then humanity's redemption was in doubt. Dionysius wrote a letter to the bishop of Alexandria affirming three points that outlined the principles of orthodoxy: 1) There is one Lord. 2) Jesus Christ is the Lord. 3) Christ the Lord is the Son, and as such is distinct from the Father who is also the Lord.
Sources: Richard P. McBrien. Catholicism. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994. Pp 286-287.

The Logos

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." According to Greco-Roman philosophers, the Logos ("word") was the governing principle of the universe and the rational force that shaped creation. In the Hebrew scriptures the Logos is personified wisdom descending from God. Early Christian theologians followed in the footsteps of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-50 AD), who described the Logos as the divine intention operating at the heart of creation. Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Athanasius appropriated this notion of the Logos to shed light on Jesus Christ, the "Word" written about by John the apostle in the fourth gospel. In John's gospel the Logos is more than a rational principle or a divine intermediary—it is God's preexisting Word who formed creation and became flesh in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-14).

Sources: McBrien, Richard P. ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. P 792.

Franz Jagerstatter

The 1938 Anschluss ("link-up") annexing Austria into Nazi Germany signaled doom for dissenters opposing the Third Reich. Hitler was Austrian, and the Nazi party had many supporters in Hitler's homeland eager to participate in the Nazi plan for world conquest and the extermination of all Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, and other assorted groups they labeled "undesirable." Franz Jagerstatter was a married layperson who knew that fascism and Catholicism are mutually opposed. When the army drafted Jagerstatter he refused to serve, and after three attempts the Nazi courts had the father of four children beheaded in prison. By executing Jagerstatter the Nazis hoped to make an example of the consequences of dissent, but instead he became a shining example of how a peacemaker's actions outlast even the most brutal regimes. In June of 2007 Jagerstatter was beatified with his 94-year old widow in attendance.

Sources: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2007/10/blessed-franz.html

Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary of Poitiers was born in the fourth century CE to wealthy pagan parents in Gaul. Latin was the language of Europe's ruling classes in the third century, yet Hilary's family paid for his education in Greek literature and philosophy. At an early age he converted to Christianity together with his wife and daughter. His training in Greek philosophy enabled Hilary to keep pace with the Eastern churches' debates about Christ and the Trinity, and when Arian bishops in Gaul challenged Nicean orthodoxy Hilary combined Greek and Latin rhetoric to argue against Europe's Arian Christians. For this he became known as "malleus arianorum," or "hammer of the Arians," as well as "Athanasius of the West." Popular acclaim made him bishop of Poitiers, and until his death in 398 CE Hilary ministered to his diocese while continuing to refine the connection between Greek and Latin theology on the Trinity.

Sources:"Saint Hilary of Poitiers" http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07349b.htm

St. Thomas More

The life of Thomas More demonstrates how faith empowers us to decide what is right, even in the face of deep uncertainty or confusion. More enjoyed meteoric success in English politics during an epoch when the Reformation and contact with the Americas radically altered European power structures and institutions. When Parliament reconfigured English law so that the king became head of the church—allowing Henry VIII to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon—More joined the small group of prominent laity and clergy who raised voices of protest against their monarch. More was stripped of his office, imprisoned in the tower of London, and executed in 1535.

Sources: MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking, 2003. Pp92-93.

 

St. Jerome

Eusebius Hieronymus, also known as Jerome, was born to a wealthy family in Roman Dalmatia. His family's affluence paid for an excellent education in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In 382 CE he became secretary to Pope Damasus, who urged Jerome to make a revised translation of the Bible. Jerome translated the Old and New Testaments directly from the Hebrew and Greek texts, producing the "Vulgate," named for the "vulgar" (everyday) Latin of Jerome's era. The Vulgate became the standard text for the Catholic Church. Before dying in 420 CE Jerome participated in major theological debates, relying on his intellectual gifts to argue against the Arian heresy as well as to defend the cult of the saints, clerical celibacy, and the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.

Sources: McBrien, Richard P. ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995. Pp 689-690.