January 6 -- Feast of the Epihany

To be pure, we can focus on three saints: Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. They were the Three Kings of Orient, or at least Magi (wise men, seers) who followed a star in the west guiding them to a new king. When they reached their destination, the infant was shining as a manifestation of his divinity -- the Greek word epiphanos refers to "shining around" in the sense of revealed.

This is the Twelfth Night of Christmas (drummers drumming) and will be followed by St. Distaff's Day on January 7. That is, of course, not a saint at all, but rather an unkind joke about the end of the Christmas holiday and time for women to get back to their spinning and other domestic chores. I'm sure a twelve-day feast had created no work for them, so St. Distaff's Day must surely have seemed like a rude awakening.

January 5 -- St. Simeon Stylites

As I read of the excruciating penances and devotions performed by St. Simeon, I wonder when he ever had time to commit sins enough to balance them. Unless his actions can compensate for the sins of others (an idea I can't accept), the best that might be said of his efforts is that he was a very visible demonstration of piety, serving to inspire others.

He began service at a monastery near Antioch, but became so zealous with his mortifications that he nearly died. While he was unconscious, a rope of leaves binding him was found under his clothes. It took three days to cut this away because it was hardened and embedded in his flesh. He was dismissed by the abbot upon his recovery.

His next stint was at a monastery where he chose to fast for the whole length of Lent. A priest named Bassus left him ten loaves of bread and some water in case he couldn't make it. When they checked on him (probably Easter Monday, because who would bother on Easter itself?), they found all ten loaves (quite stale) and Simeon (unconscious). He was revived with the sacrament of communion.

He did okay in that monastery (three years) but desired more solitary and difficult lifestyle. He went to a mountaintop and chained himself to a rock. He probably would have tried to talk a vulture into pecking his liver every day if that were not a pagan thing. But the response by the Patriarch of Antioch is the part I really love; he didn't forbid this devotion, nor did he condone it. Rather, he noted that real devotion would not require chains. Duly impressed with the logic, Simeon sent for a blacksmith to remove his shackles.

Eventually, Simeon became so distracted by gawkers and seekers that he had a column built on which he could pray. The people below him could observe his devotions without disturbing his prayers. He spent fours year on a nine foot column, then another three on an eighteen foot column. The crowd noise was still a distraction, so the next ten years were spent on a thirty-three foot column. Then the people, so proud of their wacky, column-dwelling saint, built him a sixty-foot high, six-foot wide platform on which he spent the remaining twenty years of his life. He used to rise and then prostrate himself, then rise again, and prostrate himself again, praying all the while. Someone counted 1244 prostrations in a single day. He died on that column in 459, but by then other Stylites (column-dwellers) had copied his shtick.

January 4 -- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Last year, I posted said of Mother Seton:

January 4: The Feast of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was not a mystic, a stigmatic, nor a martyr. She was however a penniless, widowed mother of five in eighteenth century New York. She founded the first American religious community for women (the Sisters of Charity), the first American parish school and the first American Catholic orphanage.

To which my friend Jerry Hughes added the observation that she "was the first native American (no, not Native American) canonized. Interestingly, she didn't start out penniless. She came from an aristocratic New York family and had to spend time in Italy (I think her husband was 'taking the cure' there). Came back smitten by Roman Catholicism. Didn't make her family too happy. Penury came only later, after the faith-induced family rifts.

[And her husband's death -- obviously 'the cure' didn't work.]

It might seem like cutting corners to repost this thread, but I think the founder of the American parochial school tradition for whom Seton Hall is named ought to get a spot in the blog.

January 3 -- St. Genevieve

Remember how that trollope Guinevere whined to St. Genevieve through about five minutes of Camelot? Well, it turns out that Genevieve, the Patron of Paris, is more Joan of Arc than Guinevere, though luckily she lived to a ripe old age of 83 and died peacefully. Oh, and she inadvertently got Orleans sacked rather than saving it. But other than that she was kind of like Jeanne d'Arc.

At a very young age, Genevieve was perceived by Germanus of Auxerre to be selected for an especially holy life. He talked to her briefly, and then spoke to her parents. At fifteen, she elected to take the veil (i.e. become a nun). She had moved to Paris by the time the Franks under Childeric laid siege to the city. She led an armed sortie (Joan-like, I'd say) to get supplies for the starving Parisians; they returned on grain-laden barges down the Seine. Very heroic.

Later, as Attila the Hun was rampaging through France, Parisians panicked and prepared to abandon the city. Genevieve told them that if they prayed fervently, the city would be safe. They stayed, they prayed, and the Huns turned away. Of course they sacked Orleans instead, but that wasn't her fault.

Clovis, the King of the Franks, was persuaded to become Christian (Genevieve may deserve some credit for this) and at her request, began the construction of the church of Saints Peter and Paul, which was later rededicated the Church of St. Genevieve. Those atheist bastards(and I say bastards with literal intent, for they were denying their ancestry by trying to make all anew) in the French Revolution destroyed the shrine of St. Genevieve and renamed her church Le Pantheon, intended as a memorial for the heroes of their cannibalistic revolution. Sometime after they stopped murdering her in the street, frescoes depicting her life were painted on the walls of the Pantheon.

January 2 -- Basil & Gregory

I might have gone with Abel the Patriarch, but for two things. First, I don't think he quite qualifies as a Patriarch if his line died with him; second, he's not truly a martyr. Nothing against him, but really, martyrdom ought to be a choice, and Abel was in fact just a victim. He didn't refuse to accede to some demand by Cain; he just forgot to duck, as Tripp said of Thomas in Glory.

Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus (Gregory the Theologian) were best friends who, with John Chrysostom, are credited with shaping the Orthodox Church. Basil and Gregory share a feast on January 2 in the Western Calendar, which is nice because they had a falling out for a while but then reunited. Oddly, early in their lives, they studied with Flavius Claudius Julianus, who would later become Julian the Apostate, the Roman emperor who would try to bring back paganism. But they weathered him, just as they weathered the Arian emperor Valens, who tried to take it to the Orthodox. [At the time, of course, they weren't known as Orthodox; they were probably called Consubstantiationists or something, but having won the heresy wars, they got to be Orthodox.] Greg and Basil were side by side against the Arians until Basil, then serving as Bishop of Caesarea, got Greg appointed bishop of Sasima. They had both been brilliant theologians and eloquent debaters, but while Basil was also a skilled administrator, Greg was a more monastic, contemplative kind of guy. Moreover, Caesarea was a nice posting, but Sasima was just a jerkwater town without much water. Greg didn't put a lot into it, and promptly ditched it when his dad fell ill and needed help running the episcopacy back home in Nazianzus. Basil showed up to remind Greg of his obligations, but Greg replied that those obligations did not include being his friend's pawn in a political struggle. Greg stayed behind to run things in Nazianzus, even though he declined the bishop's title when his father died.

One can look at their defense of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed as their most significant contribution. One might say that their development of the Rule as the governing principle of monasticism, later brought west by Benedict, was their magnum opus. I prefer the lesson in friendship, competing obligations, and forgiveness that they provide.