November 11th - St. Martin

Program

Hagiography and Meditations

St Martin of Tours, Bishop & Confessor

Martin was born at Sabaria in Pannonia. When he was ten years old he went to the Church, in the spite of his (heathen) father and mother, and by his own will was numbered among the Catechumens. At fifteen years of age he joined the army, and served as a soldier first under Constantius and then under Julian. Once at the gate of Amiens a poor man asked him for an alms for Christ's name's sake, and since he had nothing to his hand but his arms and his clothes, he gave him half of his cloak. In the night following Christ appeared to him clad in the half of his cloak, and saying (to the angels who bare Him company) While Martin is yet a Catechumen, he hath clad Me in this garment.

At eighteen years of age he was baptized. He gave up thereupon the life of a soldier, and betook himself to Hilary, Bishop of Poietiers, by whom he was placed in the order of Acolytes. Being afterwards made Bishop of Tours, he built a monastery wherein he lived in holiness for a while in company of four-score monks. At the last he fell sick of a grievous fever at Cande, a village in his diocese, and besought God in constant prayer to set him free from the prison of this dying body. His disciples heard him and said Father, why wilt thou go away from us? unto whom wilt thou bequeath us in our sorrow? Their words moved Martin, and he said Lord, if I be still needful to thy people, I refuse not to work.

When his disciples saw him, in the height of the fever, lying upon his back and praying, they entreated him to turn over and take a little rest upon his side while the violence of his sickness would allow him. But Martin answered them Suffer me to look heavenward rather than earthward, that my spirit may see the way whereby it is so soon going to the Lord. At the moment of death he saw the enemy of mankind, and cried out: What are you come here for, you bloody brute? You murderer, you'll find nothing in me. With these words on his lips, he gave up his soul to God, being aged eighty years. He was received by a company of Angels, who were heard praising God by many persons, especially by holy Severinus, Bishop of Cologne.

(Readings 4 to 6, Matins 1954)

Let us pray.

Grant, we beseech thee, O Almighty God, that the worshipful Feast of thy blessed Confessor and Bishop Martin, may avail us to the increase both of godliness toward thee, and healthfulness to our own souls.

Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.

℟. Amen.

(Collect)

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.

We will meditate tomorrow upon St. Martin, and we shall see : 1st, that this great saint carried evangelical renunciation to the very highest degree ; 2d, that raised thereby above all that passes away, he lived entirely for God alone. Our resolution shall be : 1st, to imitate St. Martin in his love of prayer, which was the soul of all his virtues ; 2d, to renounce all attachments which we may remark in ourselves. As our spiritual nosegay we will retain what Sulpicius Severus said of St. Martin : “He always kept himself in the presence of God."

Meditation for the Morning.

Let us render glory to God for all the graces which He heaped upon St. Martin, for all the miracles which He worked through him, for the conversion of so many sinners whom He converted by his ministry. Let us at the same time congratulate this great saint on his perfect correspondence with grace, on his virtues and his merits ; and let us conceive lofty sentiments of veneration and of confidence for this illustrious miracle-worker of the Gauls, the light of his age, the glory of France, the model of the perfect life.

St. Martin Carried to the Highest Degree Evangelical Renunciation.

In him there was no love of his own ease ; he seemed to have a body for no other purpose than to martyrize it ; he lived upon roots only, and even with that he fasted almost continually ; he took the smallest possible amount of repose, and even then it was upon a hair-cloth laid upon the ground. The heretics whom he strove to convert scourged him cruelly, to punish him for his zeal ; he rejoiced at it as for a special favor. Julian the Apostate put him in prison, in order to deliver him up the next day to the fury of the barbarians ; he blessed God. Twice the iron of the assassin threatened his life ; he escaped only as by a miracle. In him there was no attachment to the world. Whilst still a child of twelve years old he was about to leave everything, country and parents, friends and possessions, that he might retreat into a solitude, when the obligation of following his father to the wars made him give up the carrying out of his project. He resumes it as soon as he can, and goes and places himself under the direction of St. Hilary of Poitiers. In him there was no attachment to self-love. Whilst he was still only a catechumen he exposed him self to the ridicule of the whole army, by appearing before it with the half of a mantle, because he had given the other half to a poor man. The military career offered him a brilliant future ; he made the sacrifice of it that he might give himself wholly to God alone. Called to the diaconate, he esteemed himself to be so unworthy of it, that he meets all solicitations to his acceptance of it with nothing but cries and tears. Obliged later on to become a bishop, he only shows himself all the more humble. In the midst of honors he preserves a simple and common aspect. For raiment he has nothing but the poorest of garments, for a palace nothing but a little wooden cell near the church. Honored by the respect of emperors, who receive him as an angel from heaven ; by the veneration of the empress, who deems herself happy to be permitted to serve him at table ; by the confidence of the whole world, which canonizes him, he only looks upon himself as a sinner worthy of the greatest contempt, and he desires to die as such upon a hair-cloth and ashes. In him there were no fits of bad temper, 366 November Eleventh. nor any variations in his character. No one, says his historian, ever saw him angry or giving way to emotion, never either melancholy or jovial ; he always preserved an unchangeable sweetness, always a serene brow, an affable manner, a kind way of speaking. Brice, one of his disciples, mocks at and insults him ; he replies with the calmness of patience and amenity of manner: " If Jesus Christ" he said, "suffered Judas , why should I not endure Brice ?" Therefore, when he was at the point of death, our saint was able to say to the devil, who presented him self to him in order to tempt him : "What dost thou do here, cruel beast ? Thou wilt find nothing in me which belongs to thee." Such is the peace which evangelical renunciation gives at death.

St. Martin Lived Wholly for God Alone

At the epoch when St. Martin lived idolatry or heresy still reigned in portions of Gaul. St. Martin, burning with the desire to make God loved, attacked at one and the same time idolaters and heretics with a zeal which made him brave all fatigues, all the perils of death, and which enabled him to say : "Without having any other weapon or defensive armor than the name of Jesus and the sign of the cross, I would throw myself willingly into the midst of the squadrons of a whole army" and at the same time having so wonderful a gift of working miracles that he chases away devils, cures the sick, raises the dead, and performs nearly as many miracles as others perform actions. Therefore it would be impossible to say either the number of idolaters whom he converted, or the heretics he brought back to the fold, or the heathen temples which he cast down, or the churches which he raised on their ruins. Living thus for God exteriorly, he lived still more for God interiorly. There was in the bottom of his heart such love for Jesus Christ that his historian said of him that he loved Him with all his bowels, and that, "if he had lived in the time of Nero or of Decius, he would have joy fully ascended the scaffold, he would have thrown himself into the fire, and would have sung the praises of the Lord amidst the flames, even as the children of Babylon did in the furnace. “I attest," says his historian, "in the presence of the God of heaven and of earth that it is so." Heaven, indeed, proved it by causing to appear upon his head, whilst he was at the altar, a globe of fire in sign of the love with which his whole heart burned, and this great love had this special characteristic, that he saw Jesus Christ in all with whom he had to do. He saw Jesus Christ in the poor and the sick, and was thereby inspired with a more than maternal tenderness towards them ; he saw Him in servants, and on that account he delighted to serve them himself; he saw Him in sinners, and looking upon them as members of Jesus Christ covered with wounds, he shed over them torrents of tears ; he saw Him in his enemies, and in consequence he revenged him self on them only by fasting and praying for them. Seeing things in this light during his life, he saw them still better at his death. Those by whom he was surrounded wished, -in order to alleviate his sufferings, to turn him towards the wall. "Let me," he said, "look up to the sky, that my soul may see the road by which it is going to unite itself to Jesus Christ " When he was conjured to ask Jesus Christ to cure him : "Lord," he replied, "if I am still necessary to Thy people, I do not refuse labor ; I would willingly postpone my entrance into paradise as long as the interests of Thy glory may demand it." O heroism of charity ! O perfection of holiness ! exclaims St. Bernard.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

The Origins of Saint Martin's Lent

The oldest document in which we find the length and exercises of Advent mentioned with anything like clearness, is a passage in the second book of the History of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours, where he says that St. Perpetuus, one of his predecessors, who held that see about the year 480, had decreed a fast three times a week, from the feast of St. Martin until Christmas. It would be impossible to decide whether St. Perpetuus, by his regulations, established a new custom, or merely enforced an already existing law. Let us, however, note this interval of forty, or rather of forty-three days, so expressly mentioned, and consecrated to penance, as though it were a second Lent, though less strict and severe than that which precedes Easter.

Later on, we find the ninth canon of the first Council of Mâcon, held in 582, ordaining that during the same interval between St. Martin’s day and Christmas, the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, should be fasting days, and that the Sacrifice should be celebrated according to the lenten rite. Not many years before that, namely in 567, the second Council of Tours had enjoined the monks to fast from the beginning of December till Christmas. This practice of penance soon extended to the whole forty days, even for the laity: and it was commonly called St. Martin’s Lent. The capitularia of Charlemagne, in the sixth book, leave us no doubt on the matter; and Rabanus Maurus, in the second book of his Institution of clerics, bears testimony to this observance. There were even special rejoicings made on St. Martin’s feast, just as we see them practised now at the approach of Lent and Easter.

The obligation of observing this Lent, which, though introduced so imperceptibly, had by degrees acquired the force of a sacred law, began to be relaxed, and the forty days from St. Martin’s day to Christmas were reduced to four weeks.

(Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, The History of Advent)