Part 69 (2/2)

Where the idols were cast down, figures of the cross were set up in their places. These martyrs suffered in the year 392. See Theodoret, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Fleury, b. 19. Tillemont in the history of Theodosius, art. 52-55.

Footnotes: 1. Those mistake the truth, who confound Serapis with Osiris, or who imagine him to have been the patriarch Joseph. Serapis was a modern divinity, raised by the Ptolemies. See Celmet, Banier on Mythology, &c.

2. B. 5, c. 22.

3. Ib. 2, c. 25.

ST. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA.

HE was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, but a faithful disciple of Jesus. It was no small proof of his great piety, that, though he had riches and honors to lose, he feared not the malice of men, but at a time when the apostles trembled, boldly declared himself a follower of Jesus who was crucified; and with the greatest devotion embalmed and buried his sacred body. This saint was the patron of Glastenbury, where a church and hermitage, very famous in the times of the ancient Britons,[1] were built by the first apostles of this island: among whom some moderns have placed St. Joseph himself, and Aristobulus.

Footnotes: 1. See Matthew of Westminster, and John of Glastenbury in their histories of that famous abbey published by Hearne; also Tanner's Not.i.tia Monastica.

ST. GERTRUDE, VIRGIN,

ABBESS OF NIVELLE.

SHE was daughter of Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace to the French kings of Austrasia, and younger sister to St. Begga. She was born in 626. Her father's virtuous palace was the sanctuary of her innocence, and the school of her tender piety. Being pressed to marry, she declared in presence of king Dagobert: ”I have chosen for my spouse him from {606} whose eternal beauty all creatures derive their glory, whose riches are immense, and whom the angels adore.” The king admired her gravity and wisdom in so tender an age, and would not suffer her to be any more disturbed on that account. Her mother, the blessed Itta, employed St. Amand to direct the building of a great nunnery at Nivelle, in Brabant, for Gertrude. It is now a double chapter of canons and canonesses. The virgin was appointed abbess when only twenty years of age. Her mother, the blessed Itta, lived five years under her conduct, and died in the twelfth year of her widowhood, in 652. She is honored in the Belgic Martyrologies on the 8th of May. Gertrude governed her monastery with a prudence, zeal, and virtue, that astonished the most advanced in years and experience. She loved extreme holy poverty in her person and house; but enriched the poor. By a.s.siduous prayer and holy meditation she obtained wonderful lights from heaven. At thirty years of age, she resigned her abbey to her niece Wilfe{t}rude, and spent the three years which she survived, in preparing her soul for her pa.s.sage to eternity, which happened on the 17th of March, in 659. Her festival is a holyday at Louvain, and throughout the duchy of Brabant. It is mentioned in the true Martyrology of Bede, &c. See her life, written by one who was present at her funeral, and an eye-witness to the miracles, of which there is an account in Mabillon, and the Acts of the Saints. See also Rivet, Hist. Litter. t. 4, p. 39. An anonymous author much enlarged this life in the tenth century, but the additions are of small authority.

This work was printed by Ryckel, abbot of St. Gertrude's, at Louvain, in 1632. See Hist. Litter. t. 6, p. 292. Also La Vie de S. Gertrude, abbesse de Nivelle, par Gul. Descoeuvres, in 12mo. at Paris, Ann. 1612.

Consult likewise Dom Bouquet, Recueil des Hist. de France, t. 2, p. 603, &c.

MARCH XVIII.

SAINT ALEXANDER, B.M.

BISHOP OF JERUSALEM.

From St. Jerom, Catal. c. G. Euseb. Hist. b. 6, c. 8, 10, 14, 20. See Tillemont, t. 3, p. 415, and Le Quien Oriens Christ. t. 3, p. 150.

A.D. 251.

ST. ALEXANDER studied with Origen in the great Christian school of Alexandria, under St. Pantenus and his successor, St. Clement. He was chosen bishop of a certain city in Cappadocia. In the persecution of Severus, in 204, he made a glorious confession of his faith, and though he did not then seal it with his blood, he suffered several years'

imprisonment, till the beginning of the reign of Caracalla, in 211, when he wrote to congratulate the church of Antioch upon the election of St.

Asclepias, a glorious confessor of Christ, to that patriarchate; the news of which, he says, had softened and made light the irons with which he was loaded. He sent that letter by the priest St. Clement of Alexandria, a man of great virtue, whom G.o.d had sent into Cappadocia to instruct and govern his people during his confinement.

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St. Alexander being enlarged soon after, in 212, was commanded by a revelation from G.o.d to go to Jerusalem to visit the holy places.[1] The night before his arrival, St. Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem, and some other saints of that church, had a revelation, in which they heard a distinct voice commanding them to go out of the city and take for bishop him whom G.o.d sent them. St. Narcissus was then very old and decrepit: he and his flock seized Alexander, and by the consent of all the bishops of Palestine, a.s.sembled in a council, made him his coadjutor and joint bishop of Jerusalem. SS. Narcissus and Alexander still governed this church together, when the latter wrote thus to the Antinoits: ”I salute you in the name of Narcissus, who held here the place of bishop before me, and, being above one hundred and sixteen years old, is now united with me by prayer. He conjures you with me to live in inviolable peace and union.” St. Alexander collected at Jerusalem a great library, consisting of the writings and letters of eminent men, which subsisted when Eusebius wrote. He excelled all other holy prelates and apostolic men in mildness and in the sweetness of his discourses, as Origen testifies. St. Alexander was seized by the persecutors under Decius, confessed Christ a second time, and died in chains at Caesarea, about the end of the year 251, as Eusebius testifies. He is styled a martyr by St.

Epiphanius, St. Jerom, and the Martyrologies, and honored in the Roman Martyrology on the 18th of March; by the Greeks on the 16th of May and the 22d of December.

A pastor must first acquire a solid degree of interior virtue, before he can safely undertake to labor in procuring the salvation of others, or employ himself in exterior functions of the ministry. He must have mortified the deeds of the flesh by compunction, and the habitual practice of self-denial; and the fruits of the spirit must daily more and more perfectly subdue his pa.s.sions. These fruits of the spirit are charity and humility, which stifle all the motions of anger, envy, and pride: holy joy, which banishes carnal sadness, sloth, and all disrelish in spiritual exercises; peace, which crushes the seeds of discord, and the love and relish of heavenly things, which extinguish the love of earthly goods and sensual pleasures. One whose soul is slothful, sensual, and earthly, deserves not to bear the name of a Christian, much less of a minister of the gospel. There never was a saint who did not carry his cross, and walk in the steps of Christ crucified. St.

Alexander would have thought a day lost in which he did not add something to the sacrifice of his penance in order to continue and complete it. By this he prepared himself to die a victim of fidelity and charity. This is the continued martyrdom by which every true Christian earnestly labors to render himself every day more and more pleasing to G.o.d, making his body a pure holocaust to him by mortification, and his soul, by the fervor of his charity and compunction.

Footnotes: 1. Eus. b. 6, c. 14. S. Hieron. in Catal.

SAINT CYRIL, CONFESSOR,

ARCHBISHOP OF JERUSALEM.

From the church historians, and his works collected by Dom Touttee in his excellent edition of them at Paris, in 1720.

A.D. 386.

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