April VII

St. Aphraates, Anchoret

From Theodoret, Philoth. c. 8, and Hist. b. 4, c. 26. See Tillemont, t. 10, and Henschenius, t. 1, Apr. p 604.

fourth age

This saint was descended from an illustrious family in Persia, but infected with the superstitions of idolatry. He had the happiness of attaining to an early knowledge of the truth, which he embraced with his whole heart. Grieving to see it so little known and loved in his own country, regardless of honors and worldly advantages, he renounced all pretensions to them; and, leaving his friends and country, came to Edessa, in Mesopotamia where Christianity flourished. There he diligently informed himself what was the best manner of serving God perfectly, and securing his only affair, the eternal salvation of his soul. After some deliberation, he shut himself up in a little cell without the walls of that city, applying himself entirely to the exercises of penance and heavenly contemplation. After some time he removed into a cell near a monastery in the neighborhood of Antioch, in Syria, where, many resorting to him for spiritual advice, he became a great advocate for virtue and truth against vice and the reigning Arian heresy, by whomsoever professed. He ate nothing but a little bread after sunset, to which, when he was grown extremely old, he added a few herbs. He made use of no other bed than a mat laid on the bare ground. His clothing was one coarse garment. Anthemius, who was some time after appointed governor of the East, and consul, returning from an embassy in Persia, pressed Aphraates to accept of a robe he had brought with him, because the product of his own country. Aphraates made answer: “Do you think it reasonable to exchange an old faithful servant for a new one, merely because he is a countryman?” “By no means,” replied Anthemius. “Then,” said the hermit, “take back your garment; for I have one that I have worn these sixteen years; and I am not willing to have two at the same time.” Hitherto the saint had lived retired in his cell; but seeing the Arian persecution under Valens make great havoc in the flock of Christ, he left his retreat to come to the assistance of the distressed Catholics of Antioch: where he omitted nothing in his power to comfort the faithful, and to assuage the fury of their heretical persecutors. Valens had banished the holy bishop Meletius: but Aphraates joined Flavian and Diodorus; who governed St. Meletius’s flock during his absence. His reputation for sanctity and miracles gave the greatest weight to his actions and words. The emperor Valens being at Antioch, looking one day out of a window of his palace upon the high road which parted it from the river Orontes, and led into the country, saw the saint passing by, and asked who that old man was, so meanly clad, and making such haste; and being told it was Aphraates, for whom the whole city had the greatest veneration, asked him whither he was going in so great a hurry? The man of God replied, “To pray for the prosperity of your reign.” For the Catholics, not being allowed a church in the city, held their assemblies of devotion in a field where martial exercises were performed. The emperor said, “How comes it that you, who are by profession a monk, leave your cell thus to ramble abroad?” Aphraates answered, “I lived retired so long as the flock of the heavenly Shepherd enjoyed peace; but now I see it torn to pieces, how can I sit quiet in my cell? Were I a virgin confined in my father’s house, and should see it take fire, would you advise me to sit still and let the house be burned, in which I should also perish; or leave my room to run and procure help, carry water, and exert my utmost endeavors to put out the fire? Reprove me not, O emperor, if I do the like; rather blame yourself, who have kindled the fire, not me for laboring to quench it.” The emperor made not the least reply; but one of his eunuchs, then in waiting, reviled the aged saint, and threatened him with death. But God chastised his insolence: for soon after, going to see if the emperor’s warm bath was ready, being taken with giddiness, he fell into the caldron of boiling water, and nobody being there to give him assistance, was scalded to death. This example so terrified the emperor, that he durst not listen to the suggestions of the Arians, who endeavored to persuade him to banish the saint. He was also much moved by the miraculous cures which the holy man wrought by the application of oil or water, upon which he had made the sign of the cross. Aphraates would never speak to a woman but at a distance, and always in as few words as possible. After the miserable death of Valens, when peace was restored to the church, our saint returned to his solitude, and there happily departed this life to possess God, “with whom,” says Theodoret, “I believe he has greater power than while he was on earth: on which account I pray also to obtain his intercession.” The whole church has imitated his example. St. Aphraates is honored in the Synaxary of the Greeks, and in the calendars of other oriental churches, on the 29th of January; but in the Roman Martyrology his name is placed on the 7th of April.

Every saint is eminently a man of prayer; but this is the peculiar perfection of holy hermits and monks. This was the means by which so many in that state have been raised to such wonderful heights in heroic virtue, so as to seem seraphim rather than men on earth. As a vessel at sea is carried by a favorable wind with incredible ease and swiftness, so a soul which is borne upon the wings of a true spirit of prayer, makes sweetly, and without experiencing either difficulty or pain, quick and extraordinary progress in the paths of all interior virtues, particularly those of a close union of her affections and powers with God, and those of divine charity, the queen and form of all perfect Christian virtue. In this spirit of prayer a simple idiot has outstripped the most subtle philosopher, because its foundation is laid by profound humility, and perfect simplicity and purity of heart; and compunction and love require neither penetration nor depth of genius, nor elegance of words, to express or raise their most tender affections. St. Bruno was an eloquent and learned man; yet in his most sublime contemplation he expressed to God all the burning sentiments of his soul by a single word, which he wished never to cease repeating, but to continue actually to pronounce it for all eternity with fresh ardor and jubilation: “O goodness! O goodness! O infinite goodness!” But by this word his heart said more than discourses could express in many years or ages.

St. Hegesippus, a Primitive Father,

near the times of the apostles

He was by birth a Jew, and belonged to the church of Jerusalem, but travelling to Rome, he lived there near twenty years, from the pontificate of Anicetus to that of Eleutherius, in 177, when he returned into the East where he died very old, probably at Jerusalem, in the year of Christ 180 according to the chronicle of Alexandria. He wrote in the year 133 a History of the Church, in five books, from the passion of Christ down to his own time, the loss of which work is extremely regretted. In it he gave illustrious proofs of his faith, and showed the apostolical tradition, and that though certain men had disturbed the church by broaching heresies, yet down to his time no episcopal see or particular church had fallen into error, but had in all places preserved inviolably the truths delivered by Christ, as he assures us.¹ This testimony he gave after having personally visited all the principal churches both of the East and West. He was a man replenished with the spirit of the apostles, and a love of Christian humility, which, says Jerom, he expressed by the simplicity of his style. The five books on the destruction of Jerusalem, compiled chiefly from the history of Josephus, are not the work of this father, as some have imagined; but of a younger Hegesippus, who wrote before the destruction of the Western empire, but after Constantine the Great. See Mabillon, Musæum Italicum, t. 1, p. 14, and Cave, Hist. Liter. t. 1, p. 265.

St. Aibert, Recluse

He was born at Espain, a village in the diocese of Tournay, in 1060 From his infancy he so earnestly applied himself to prayer, that he spent in that holy exercise the greatest part of his time, being always careful in it to shun, as much as possible, the eyes of men. The earnestness with which he always attended all public devotions in his parish church, and listened to the sermons of his curate, is not to be expressed; much less the deep impressions which every instruction of piety made upon his tender heart. He was discovered to watch a great part of the night upon his knees, and when he was no longer able to support himself upright, to pray prostrate on the ground. When he could not pray in his chamber, without danger of being surprised by others, he retired into the stable or sheepcot for many hours together. His commerce with God in his heart was uninterrupted while he was abroad in the fields with the cattle. He was no less private in his fasts; and at the time of meals he usually took an apple, or a morsel of bread, that he might tell his parents or the servants that he had ate. Happening one day to hear a poor man at his father’s door sing a hymn on the virtues and death of St. Theobald, a hermit, lately dead, he found himself vehemently inflamed with a desire of imitating his solitary penitential life, and without delay addressed himself to a priest of the monastery of Crepin or Crespin, named John, who lived a recluse in a separate cell, with the leave of his abbot. Being admitted by him as a companion, he soon surpassed his master in the exercise and spirit of virtue. Bread they seldom tasted; wild herbs were their ordinary food; they never saw any fire, not ate any thing that had been dressed by it. The church of Crepin, ever since its foundation by St. Landelin, in the seventh century, had been served by secular canons: in the eleventh it had passed into the hands of monks of the order of St. Benedict: and under the first abbot, Rainer, St. Aibert took the monastic habit. He still practised his former austerities, slept on the ground, and in the night recited the whole psalter privately before matins He was chosen provost and cellerer: but the exterior occupations of these offices did not interrupt his tears, or hinder the perpetual attention of his soul to God. After twenty-five years spent in this community, with a fervor which was always uniform and constant, he obtained leave of Lambert, the second abbot, to return to an eremitical life, in 1115. He then built himself a cell in the midst of a barren wilderness, contenting himself for his food with bread and herbs, and after the first three years with herbs alone. Many flocking to him for spiritual advice, Burchard, bishop of Cambray, his diocesan, promoted him to the priesthood, and erected for him a chapel in his cell, giving him power to hear confessions and administer the holy eucharist: which was confirmed to him by two popes, Paschal II. and Innocent II. He said every day two masses,* one for the living, and a second for the dead. God crowned his long penance with a happy death about the year 1140, the eightieth of his age, on the 7th of April; on which he is honored in the Belgic and Gallican Martyrologies. See his life, by Robert the archdeacon, his intimate friend, in Surius, Bollandus, &c.

B. Herman Joseph, C.

He was born at Cologne, and at twelve years of age entered the monastery of Steinfeldt of regular canons of the Premonstratensian Order in the dutchy of Juliers, and diocese of Cologne. His incredible fasts and other austerities, and his extraordinary humility, joined with assiduous prayer and meditation, raised him to an eminent gift of contemplation, which replenished his soul with the most profound sentiments of all virtues, and was attended with many heavenly favors: but, as it is usual, this grace was often accompanied with severe interior trials. He was singularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin. At the very remembrance of the mystery of the incarnation, his soul seemed to melt in tender love; and he seemed in raptures whenever he recited the canticle Benedictus at Lauds. Such was his desire of contempt, that he one day desired a peasant to strike him on the face. The other in surprise asked the reason: “On account,” said he, “of my being a most filthy and abominable creature, and because I cannot meet with so much contempt as I deserve.” He died on the 7th of April in 1226. He wrote a commentary on the book of Canticles, or Song of Solomon, and some other treatises on sublime contemplation, which may be ranked with those of other great masters in the contemplative way, as Thomas à Kempis, St. Theresa, Thauler, Harphius, Blosius, Lanspergius, Hilton, &c. B. Herman is honored among the saints in his order, and in some churches in the Low Countries. In the abbey church of Steinfeldt he is titular saint of an altar, at which the priests who visit that church out of devotion to him, say a votive mass in his honor before his relics, with proper prayers of the saint used in that abbey from time immemorial. Small portions of his relics have been given to several other churches. Some are enshrined and exposed to public veneration in the abbey of Premontré at Antwerp; a portion is kept in the abbey of Parc, at Louvain; another in the parish church of St. Christopher, at Cologne, and another at the Chartreuse in the same city. The emperor Ferdinand II. solicited his canonization at Rome, and several proofs of miracles and other particulars have been given in for that purpose. His name is inserted on the 7th of April, in the martyrology of the regular canons of St. Austin, approved by Benedict XIV., p. 275. See his life by a fellow canon of great virtue, in the Bollandists on the 7th of April, t. 1, p. 682; also two other lives, and several acts, collected in order to pursue the process for his canonization.

St. Finan of Keann-Ethich

He was a native of Munster, and a disciple of St. Brendan, with whose blessing he founded the monastery of Cean-e-thich, on the confines of Munster and Meath, and afterwards some others. See Colgan, in MSS. ad 7 Apr.

¹ Apud. Eus. Hist. 1. 4, c. 22, ed. Vales.

* Except on Christmas-day, priests are not allowed to say mass twice the same day, since the prohibition of Honorius III Cap. Te referente. De celebratione.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) II, 45-49.