MEMORIAL OF SAINT JOHN CLIMACUS, ABBOT AND BLESSED MARIA RESTITUTA KAFKA, MARTYR AND SAINT FERGUS OF SCOTLAND, BISHOP
Today we celebrate the Memorial of Saint John Climacus; Abbot, honored by Holy Church as a great ascetic and author of the renowned spiritual book called THE LADDER; and Blessed Maria Restituta Kafka, Martyr, known as a protector of the poor and oppressed and Saint Fergus of Scotland, Bishop, a missionary to Scotland. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for the poor, the needy and those who are marginalized and suffering in situations of conflict in our world, we pray for persecuted Christians and all Christians during this season of Lent, as we reflect on the final journey of Jesus during this Holy Week🙏
SAINT JOHN CLIMACUS, ABBOT: St. John (579-649), called Climacus from his book THE LADDER (Climax) OF PARADISE, also known as John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites, was a 6th–7th-century Christian monk at the monastery on Mount Sinai. St. John Climacus was a learned abbot and great spiritual director. He was born about the year 579 at Syria. At the age of sixteen he renounced all worldly goods to dedicate himself to God in the religious state. For forty years he lived as a solitary in his hermitage at the foot of Mount Sinai. At the age of sixty-five St. John was persecuted by the monks of Sinai to become their hegumen, he was chosen Abbot of Mount Sinai and superior-general of all the monks and hermits in the region. He was chosen as Abbot of Mount Sinai by a unanimous vote of the Sinai religious, who said they had placed the light upon its lampstand. On the day of his installation, six hundred pilgrims came to Saint Catherine’s Monastery, and he performed all the offices of an excellent hotel-master; but at the hour of dinner, he could not be found to share the meal with them. This holy Abbot never sought either glory or fame. He endeavored to hide the natural and supernatural gifts with which he was endowed, in order to better practice humility. He acquitted himself of his functions as abbot with the greatest wisdom, and his reputation spread so far that, according to history, Pope St. Gregory the Great, who was then Pope, wrote to recommend himself to his prayers, and sent him monetary gifts for his hospital near Mount Sinai, in which the pilgrims lodged.
St. John’s famous work, the Climax (The Ladder of Paradise or The Ladder of Divine Ascent), was written in 600 AD only in deference to the will of another, at the request of John, Abbot of Raithu, a monastery located on the shores of the Red Sea. It is a spiritual treatise consisting of concise sentences, and affording several examples that illustrate the monastic life of that period. The Ladder describes how to raise one’s soul and body to God through the acquisition of ascetic virtues, it describes the thirty degrees to religious perfection. St. John Climacus uses the analogy of Jacob’s Ladder as the framework for his spiritual teaching. Originally written simply for the monks of a neighboring monastery, the Ladder swiftly became one of the most widely read and much-beloved books of Byzantine spirituality. The Saint governed the monastery of Mount Sinai for four years, sighing constantly under the weight of his dignity, which he resigned shortly before his death. Heavenly contemplation and the continual exercise of divine love and praise were his delight and comfort in his earthly pilgrimage. On March 30, 649, at about the age of 70 at Mount Sinai, the blessed life of this great Saint, St. John of Climacus came to an end in the hermitage that had witnessed his uninterrupted communing with God. From the time he entered the monastic state, St. John had earnestly applied himself to root out of his heart self-complacency in his actions; he practiced silence as a means of acquiring humility, and he made it a rule never to contradict, never to dispute with anyone. He appeared to have no will of his own, so great was his submission.
“God rests within gentle hearts. The gentle and merciful shall sit fearless in His regions, and will inherit Heavenly glory.” ~ St John Climacus.
PRAYER: Lord, amid the things of this world, let us be wholeheartedly committed to heavenly things in imitation of the example of evangelical perfection You have given us in St. John the Abbot. Amen. St. John of Climacus ~ Pray for us🙏
BLESSED MARIA RESTITUTA KAFKA, MARTYR: Blessed Maria (1894-1943) was an Austrian nurse of Czech descent and religious sister of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity (Sorores Franciscanae a Caritate Christiana). She was condemned to death under the Nazis for her opposition to the regime. Blessed Maria was born on May 1, 1894, Husovice, Austria-Hungarian Empire (now part of Brno, Czech Republic). She was born and baptized Helena Kafka to a shoemaker father and when she was very young, in 1896 Helena’s family moved permanently to Vienna, the capital of Austria, and she grew up in the bustling city. As a young woman, at the exciting turn of the twentieth century, Helena found work in Vienna first as a salesclerk, and in 1913 she started to work at the hospital in Lainz as unskilled nursing assistant and nurses could thus observe up close and then worked as a nurse. While working as a nurse in the hospital, she came into contact with the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity. Despite being surrounded by the glamor and comforts of city life as a young woman, Helena was attracted to these religious sisters’ simple and self-giving way of life. Helena joined their community at the age of 20, taking the name Maria Restituta after an early Christian martyr.
As the brightness of the new century faded into the horror of war, Bl. Maria continued to serve as a nurse in the hospital during World War I. Eventually, in 1919 through her skill and dedication, Bl. Maria became the head surgical nurse at her hospital. When the nationalist-socialist regime came to power and the Germans took over the country, in the inter-war years of the 1930’s, Bl. Maria Restituta was not afraid to speak out against it. She became a local opponent of the Nazi regime. When the hospital built a new wing, Bl. Maria placed a crucifix inside every room. Her conflict with the Nazi government escalated after they ordered her to remove all the crucifixes she had hung up in each room of a new hospital wing, but Bl. Maria refused. Clearly, a principled, stubborn woman was going to be an obstacle, so the Nazis made up their minds to remove her. The Nazis wanted to arrest her but were prevented from doing so immediately because Bl. Maria was so indispensable to the hospital. A doctor who supported the Nazis eventually betrayed Bl. Maria and handed her over to them on a trumped-up false charge. In 1942, as Bl. Maria was coming out of an operation, she was arrested by the Nazi Secret police (Gestapo). She was sentenced to death for “aiding and abetting the enemy in the betrayal of the fatherland and for plotting high treason.” Bl. Maria was given the choice to renounce her religious community, the Franciscan Sisters and thus to spare her life. She declined. She spent the rest of her days in prison caring for other prisoners, who loved her. The Nazis beheaded Blessed Maria Restituta Kafka on March 30, 1943 in Vienna, Nazi Germany at the age of only 48. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 21, 1998.
In one of St. Maria’s letters from that time, she wrote: “It does not matter how far we are separated from everything, no matter what is taken from us: the faith that we carry in our hearts is something no one can take from us. In this way, we build an altar in our own hearts.” “I have lived for Christ: I want to die for Christ.” ~ Blessed Maria Restituta Kafka
Blessed Maria Restituta Kafka, staunch in the face of Nazi occupation and a culture of death ~ Pray for us!🙏
SAINT FERGUS OF SCOTLAND, BISHOP: St. Fergus of Scotland (d. 730 A.D.), also known as St. Fergustian, Fergus the Pict, or Fergus Cruithneach, Bishop of the Gaels, was a bishop serving in the north of Scotland. Little is known of his life. He is believed to have been trained as a bishop in Ireland, ministering there for many years before traveling as a missionary to Scotland. He went throughout the Scottish countryside preaching the Gospel, setting up churches dedicated to St. Patrick of Ireland, and working to convert the pagan people to Christianity. According to the Breviary of Aberdeen, he had been a bishop for many years in Ireland when he came on a mission to Alba with some chosen priests and other clerics. He settled first near Strageath, in the present parish of Upper Strathearn, in Upper Perth, erected three churches in that district. The churchs of Strageath, Blackford, and Dolpatrick are found there today dedicated to St. Patrick. He next evangelized Caithness and established there the churches of Wick and Halkirk. Thence he crossed to Buchan in Aberdeenshire and founded a church at Lungley, a village now called St. Fergus. Lastly, he established a church at Glammis in Forfarshire.
He went to Rome to St. Peter’s Basilica to participate in the Council of Rome in 721 A.D. and was present with Sedulius and twenty other bishops at a synod in the basilica of St. Peter, convened by Gregory II. He died around the year 730 A.D. and is buried in Glammis, Angus, in Scotland. Nearby is St. Fergus’ Well. The site is believed to be where St. Fergus presided over religious services before the first church of Glammis was built. His remains deposited in the church of Glammis were the object of much veneration in the Middle Ages. The Abbot of Scone transferred his head to Scone church, and encased it in a costly shrine there is an entry in the accounts of the treasurer of James IV, October, 1503, ” An offerand of 13 shillings to Sanct Fergus’ heide in Scone”. St. Fergus is the Patron Saint of the churches of Wick, Glammis, and Lungley. His festival is recorded in the Martyrology of Tallaght for the 8th of September but seems to have been observed in Scotland on the 18th of November. His feast day is March 30th.
St. Fergus of Scotland, Bishop ~ Pray for us🙏