January

January 1

Mary, Mother of Jesus

(first century)

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord."

Mary, a young Galilean woman of Nazareth, was betrothed to a carpenter named Joseph. One day, according to the Gospel of Luke, she was visited by the angel Gabriel, who greeted her with the words, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" After calming her fears he announced that she would conceive and bear a son named Jesus, who would be called "the Son of the Most High."

Mary was troubled by this news, for she was as yet unmarried. If she were charged with adultery she could be stoned to death. But the angel told her that she would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit. "With God nothing will be impossible," he assured her. And so Mary responded in faith: "Let it be done to me according to your word."

It was in the space created by Mary's faith — and not simply in her womb — that the Word became flesh. For this reason she has been called not only the Mother of Jesus but Mother of the Church. In the past it was common to emphasize the ways in which Mary was set apart from and above all other women and the ordinary conditions of humanity. Today there is a new emphasis on her status as a woman of the people and her solidarity with the rest of humanity. A "Mariology from above" emphasized God's initiative in selecting Mary for her part in the divine mystery of redemption. In contrast, a "Mariology from below" begins with the poor woman, Mary of Nazareth, who was rooted in the faith and struggles of her people, subject to the cruelties of the world, and heir to the ancient hope for deliverance and salvation. In this light, Mary is not so much honored for her special nature as for her exceptional faith.

Two stories in the Gospels highlight this point. One time Jesus was told that his "mother and brothers" were looking for him. Gazing at those who were seated around him he answered, "Who are my mother and my brothers? These are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me" (Mark 3:33–35). Another time someone called out from a crowd, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!" To this Jesus responded, "Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it" (Luke 11:27–28).

Neither of these stories reflects a disregard on the part of Jesus toward his mother. But they do show that he rejected the claims of blood or natural kinship in favor of discipleship. In this perspective Mary's preeminence is due to her having exemplified the spirit of true discipleship: attention, reverence, and obedience to the word and will of God.

The Gospel of John places Mary at the foot of the cross beside "the beloved disciple." According to Luke, she was among the disciples who gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem after Jesus' ascension. She was in effect the first and paradigmatic disciple. She is thus the first to be honored among the saints. In the darkness of faith, she offered her consent to the mysterious plan of God. In the light of grace she responded with her extraordinary song of praise and thanksgiving:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name....

See: Elizabeth A. Johnson, "Saints and Mary," in Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin, eds., Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol. 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).

January 2

St. Seraphim of Sarov

Russian Monk (1759–1833)

"Prayer, fasting, watching may be good in themselves; yet it is not in these practices alone that the goal of our Christian life is found, though they are necessary means for its attainment. The true goal consists in our acquiring the Holy Spirit of God."

St. Seraphim entered the Russian monastery of Sarov when he was twenty. After making his vows and being ordained a priest, he received permission to retire to a hermitage in the forest. There he maintained a life of solitary prayer, tending a small garden, chopping wood, and otherwise observing an austerity reminiscent of the desert fathers. He exposed himself to the cold, deprived himself of food and sleep, and spent long periods perched on a rocky outcrop. For several years he had no contact whatsoever with the monastic community and declined to utter a word. As a reminder of his death to the world, he built a coffin which he kept beside him in his cell.

For fifteen years Seraphim maintained this solitary existence. In the meantime, however, his reputation had spread far and wide. One day he was visited by a rich landowner who was seriously ill and had persuaded his family to carry him to the cell of the holy hermit. When Seraphim had completed his prayers, he emerged and asked his visitors, "What, you have come to look upon poor Seraphim?" After the sick man had explained his condition, Seraphim agreed to pray over him. Instantly the man was healed. In his joy he asked Seraphim for a way to express his gratitude. Deflecting all the credit to God, Seraphim instructed the rich man to give away everything he possessed, free his serfs, and take on holy poverty. With all this the man complied.

Word of this "double miracle" enhanced the celebrity of Seraphim, and from that time on he was forced to entertain a continuous stream of pilgrims, penitents, the sick and poor, and lay people seeking spiritual counsel. Seraphim received them all, freely dispensing his wisdom, counsel, and healing powers. So he became the great model of the Russian starets, the holy monk who serves as a spiritual elder or advisor to inquiring lay people. Like his contemporary in France John Vianney, he was reputed to have the gift of reading souls. He addressed everyone in the same fashion: "My joys," he called them.

The recorded teachings of Father Seraphim are not especially remarkable; they are mostly quotations from Scripture and a few treasured church fathers. Evidently Father Seraphim's impact came from the simple power of his personality, for so long weathered by arduous self-denial. His purified humanity was apparently charged with a supernatural charity. Such is the impression given by one of his visitors, Nicolai Motivilov, whose account of his interview with the holy Seraphim gives the flavor of the monk's intense and charismatic energy.

After advising Nicolai for some time about the simplicity of the spiritual life and finding little comprehension, Seraphim reportedly took his visitor by the shoulders and said, "Look at me."

Nicolai demurred: "I am not able, Father, for there is lightning flashing from your eyes. Your face has grown more radiant than the sun, and my eyes cannot bear the pain." Father Seraphim replied, "Do not be afraid, my good Theophilus, you have also now become as radiant as I. You yourself are now in the fullness of the divine spirit; otherwise you would not be able to perceive me in the exact same state."

On January 2, 1833, St. Seraphim was found dead in his cell, kneeling with hands crossed before an icon of Our Lady of Tenderness. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox church in 1903.

See: "St. Seraphim: Mystic and Prophet," in G. P. Fedotov, ed., A Treasury of Russian Spirituality (London: Sheed & Ward, 1950).

January 3

Takashi Nagai

Mystic of Nagasaki (1908–1951)

"Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in, and go on living lovingly."

On the morning of August 9, 1945, Dr. Takashi Nagai was working in his office at the medical center in Nagasaki, Japan. At 11 A.M. he saw a flash of blinding light, followed by darkness, and then heard a crashing roar as his concrete building, and his world, collapsed around him. What at first he took to be a direct hit on the medical center was in fact the explosion of a plutonium-fueled atomic bomb five hundred yards over the Urakami Cathedral. After escaping from the rubble and receiving treatment for a severed carotid artery, Nagai joined the rest of the hospital staff in treating the dazed and dying survivors. Given the force and heat of the blast, he imagined that such a big bomb must have killed hundreds of people. Only gradually did the extent of the destruction become clear. The bomb had killed nearly eighty thousand persons, and wounded many more.

In the days ahead Nagai witnessed scenes of horrifying suffering. The intense heat near the epicenter of the blast had vaporized humans, leaving only the outlines of their shadows. Hordes of blackened survivors, the skin hanging from their arms, desperately wandered the streets crying for water. Nagai's own two children had survived. But he found the charred remains of his beloved wife in the ruins of their home, a rosary clasped "among the powdered bones of her right hand."

Such circumstances might naturally prompt a range of reactions — madness, despair, or the hunger for revenge. But in the days following the explosion Nagai, a devout Catholic, instead expressed a most unexpected attitude — namely, gratitude to God that his Catholic city had been chosen to atone for the sins of humanity.

In arriving at this perspective, Nagai undoubtedly tapped into a spirituality deeply rooted in the consciousness of Nagasaki's Christian population. Since the time of the early Jesuit missions the city had been the center of Japanese Catholicism, and consequently the scene of extensive martyrdom. Over time, Japanese Catholics had claimed a deep identification with the cross of Christ and a conviction that atonement must come only at the price of blood. Thus, it seemed natural for Nagai to pose the question: "Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?"

Nagai was himself a convert. Born on January 3, 1908, he became a Catholic in 1934. His conversion was prompted by several influences, including the example of his fiancée, who belonged to an ancient Catholic family, his reading of the mystic-scientist Blaise Pascal, and also a period of deep soul-searching after the death of his mother. Nagai pursued a career in medicine, ultimately entering the field of radiology. In 1941 he was found to be suffering from incurable leukemia, induced by his exposure to x-rays. Nevertheless he was able to continue his work, and in 1945 he had become the dean of radiology at the University of Nagasaki.

In the aftermath of the bombing on August 9 Nagai applied himself tirelessly to the medical needs of the survivors. "Each life was precious. For all of these people the body was a precious treasure." But in the face of the enormity of the disaster, he gradually began to see "that if I did not take a comprehensive view of this situation, we would all be engulfed in the flames with the very victims we were bandaging and trying to save." As he carried on his work he struggled to arrive at some understanding of the meaning of this event, a meaning, ultimately, that he could discern only in relation to the cross.

Nagai found it remarkable that as a result of heavy clouds obscuring the originally intended city, the bomb had been dropped that day on Nagasaki, an alternate target. As a further result of clouds, the pilot had not fixed his target on the Mitsubishi iron works, as intended, but instead on the Catholic Cathedral in the Urakami district of the city, home to the majority of Nagasaki's Catholics. He noted that the end of the war came on August 15, feast of the Assumption of Mary, to whom the cathedral was dedicated. All this was deeply meaningful. "We must ask if this convergence of events — the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast — was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God."

Nagai expressed these sentiments at an open-air requiem Mass just days after the bombing. While his views were controversial, he provided consolation to many of the city's Catholic survivors, desperate to find some redemptive meaning in their terrible suffering:

We have disobeyed the law of love. Joyfully we have hated one another; joyfully we have killed one another. And now at last we have brought this great and evil war to an end. But in order to restore peace to the world it was not sufficient to repent. We had to obtain God's pardon through the offering of a great sacrifice. ... Let us give thanks that Nagasaki was chosen for the sacrifice. ... May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

The effects of radiation, combined with his previous illness, left Nagai an invalid, barely able to leave his bed. He lived as a contemplative in a small hut near the cathedral ruins in Urakami, writing books and receiving visitors. Increasingly he came to believe that Nagasaki had been chosen not only to atone for the sins of the war, but to bear witness to the cause of international peace.

Men and women of the world, never again plan war! ... From this atomic waste the people of Nagasaki confront the world and cry out: No more war! Let us follow the commandment of love and work together. The people of Nagasaki prostrate themselves before God and pray: Grant that Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.

Dr. Nagai died on May 1, 1951, at the age of forty-three. His tombstone bears a simple epitaph from the Gospel of Luke: "We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty."

See: Takashi Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, trans. William Johnston (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984); Rachelle Linner, City of Silence (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995).

January 4

Bd. Angela of Foligno

Franciscan Mystic (1248–1309)

"'Lord,' I cried, 'tell me what thou dost want of me; I am all thine.' But there was no answer, and I prayed from Matins till Terce — and then I saw and heard."

One of the great legacies of St. Francis was the foundation of his Third Order, a movement of lay followers of the Franciscan rule who chose to remain in the world rather than adopt an enclosed religious life. Its members were attracted from all walks of life — even queens like Elizabeth of Hungary and Elizabeth of Portugal. With their spirit of poverty and their zeal for the apostolic life these Franciscan tertiaries had an enormous influence on the religious and social life of the Middle Ages. Angela of Foligno, mystic and theologian, was one of the remarkable members of this spiritual family.

Angela came from a wealthy background. Her early life was given over to worldly frivolity and pleasure-seeking. She married a rich man and had three sons. But it was an existence without higher purpose. By the time she was thirty-seven she found her life such a burden that she prayed to St. Francis for some relief. The next day she went to church and heard an unfamiliar preacher, a Franciscan friar named Brother Arnold, whose sermon made a tremendous impression. She felt impelled to make her confession to him, after which she decided to transform her life.

Before long, the opportunity for a radical change came about through tragic circumstances — the loss of her entire family during an outbreak of plague. Through her loss Angela discerned the hand of God leading her to a life of penance and prayer. While standing before a crucifix she was moved, in a gesture reminiscent of Francis, to strip off all her fine clothing and to offer her life to Christ's service. During a subsequent pilgrimage to Assisi she was overwhelmed by an experience of the love of God. She gave away all her property, joined the Third Order of St. Francis, and resolved to live on alms.

Brother Arnold, who remained her confessor, was initially suspicious of her dramatic conversion and of the extravagant mystical experiences that followed. At some point, however, he became convinced of the divine origin of her wisdom and revelations, and their roles were reversed. Ultimately he became her devoted scribe and disciple.