MEMORIAL OF SAINT JOHN FRANCIS REGIS, PRIEST AND SAINT BENNO OF MEISSEN, BISHOP ~ FEAST DAY: JUNE 16TH Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint John Francis Regis, Priest and Saint Benno of Meissen, Bishop. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for all fathers, fathers-to-be, and father-figures. Praying for their safety and well-being. We pray for the poor and the needy. We also pray for the sick, particularly those who are sick and dying, those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for peace, love and unity in our families and our world. And we continue to pray for the Church, the Clergy, with special intention for all Priests on this feast day, for persecuted Christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world.🙏🏽
SAINT JOHN FRANCIS REGIS, PRIEST: St. John Francis Regis (1597–1640) known as the great “father of the poor,” was a 17th-century French Jesuit evangelist and preacher known for his zealous missionary efforts and his care for the poor and marginalized. In less than 10 years of ministry, this saintly Frenchman succeeded, with God’s help, in leading back to Christ an immense crowd of men, women and children of all ages and walks of life. St. John Francis Regis was born in Font-Couverte, France in 1597, the son of a wealthy French merchant and his noble wife. As a boy he was sensitive, devout, and eager to please his parents and teachers. St. John studied at Beziers, educated by the Jesuits from the age of 14, and was accepted into the Society of Jesus in 1615 at the age of 18. As he followed the traditional Jesuit path of teaching and extensive studies, St. John also became known as a skilled catechist. He also studied at Cahors and Toulouse. He was eager to enter the priesthood, and was ordained a Priest and offered his first Mass in 1631. St. John spent much of the rest of that year caring for victims of a plague outbreak in the city of Toulouse. He grew into a skilled preacher and catechist, and received an assignment to evangelize the French provinces that had fallen to the Protestants know as the Huguenots – as well as country’s lapsed Catholics and others in need of evangelization. He devoted his life to this mission with remarkable success. He was very successful, winning countless souls to Christ.
The rest of St. John’s life was spent preaching and establishing charitable institutions, confraternities, and missions in southern France. St. John Francis Regis was not only a profound preacher, but the founder of orphanages and improver of prison conditions. His missionary work spanned both a large geographical distance and a broad social spectrum. In over 50 districts of France, he preached the Gospel to children, the poor, prisoners, and others forgotten or neglected by society. He was gifted with a marvelous talent for missions, he not only labored for the conversion of the Huguenots, but assisted the needy, and aided in the rescue of wayward women, established a lace factory as a form of skilled labor for repentant prostitutes. This was his best-known work which involved helping women escape prostitution. He raised controversy when he established hostels for converted prostitutes to remain chaste and work for their sustenance in the lace-making and embroidery trades. He is also remembered for stationing a granary to feed the poor, which at times was miraculously replenished.
St. John’s labors reaped a harvest of conversions. However, his boldness – perceived as arrogance in some cases – led to a conflict with certain other priests, a period of tension with the local bishop, and even threats of violence from those whose vices he condemned. Against these obstacles, the priest persevered, sustained by fervent prayer and severe asceticism. His missionary work involved difficult winter journeys, and a witness at his beatification testified to St John’s habit of preaching outdoors all day, then hearing confessions throughout the night. St. John Francis Regis died at age 43, in late December of 1640 suffering from exhaustion. Though suffering from a lung ailment, he insisted on preaching a parish mission and hearing confessions. A penitent found him unconscious in the confessional, though he revived long enough to receive the last rites before dying. He performed many miracles. Hailed as a confessor of the faith and a model for Jesuit missionaries, St. John Francis Regis was beatified in 1716 and canonized in 1737. Although June 16 was established as his feast day, there are differing local and particular customs, including the Jesuits’ celebration of his feast on July 2. St. John Francis Regis is the Patron Saint of embroiderers, social workers, lacemakers, medical social workers, and illegitimate children.
PRAYER: O God, whose priest, Saint John Francis Regis, a friend of the poor, the sick, and the wayward, eagerly desired to evangelize the peoples of North America; grant, we ask, that we who serve You in his place may be filled with his same spirit of zeal…Amen”🙏🏽
SAINT BENNO OF MEISSEN, BISHOP: St. Benno of Meissen (1010-1106) labored to convert the Slavs, established numerous religious edifices, and is said to have founded the cathedral of Meissen. Saint Benno lived during a difficult political time and managed—despite threat, imprisonment and punishment—to remain true to the teachings of the Church and his role as priest and bishop, servant of his people. At a time when the Church is criticised and attacked from both the inside and outside, we look to saints like St Benno as inspiration. His witness provides example to each of us, inspiring fidelity to our Holy Father and to the Magisterium, in all things and truth, even when these are the “hard decisions” to make. St. Benno was born in 1010 at Hildesheim, Germany, he was the son of Count Frederick of Bultenburg. He was educated under his relative, Bishop St. Bernward, and became a canon of the collegiate church of Goslar, Hanover. St. Benno served as chaplain to Emperor Henry IV and then was made Bishop of Meissen, in Saxony in 1066. He was a diligent pastor of his flock, watched over the clergy, carried out the visitations to be made, gave generously to the poor, lived an exemplary ascetic life, and restored public singing of the Divine Office. The Emperor of Germany at that time, Henry IV, was a boy of sixteen, and he was a very different kind of person from St. Henry II, who had always tried to rule the State for the good of religion and the Church. Henry IV, on the other hand, intended to try to make the Church obey the State, and one of his plans was to make the German bishops entirely dependent on him. He, and not the Pope, gave to each newly made bishop the crosier and the ring which showed his ‘marriage’ to the Church. But it happened that at that time there was one of the greatest of the Popes, St. Gregory VII, who was equally determined that the Emperor should do nothing of the kind; and this led to the long struggle stated in history books. It was called the Investiture Contest,' and went on for many years all over Europe to decide whether the Pope, as Head of the Church, or the ruler of the State should invest’ bishops with the symbols of their holy office.
The Saint backed the Saxon nobles in their revolt against Henry and was imprisoned for a year. He also backed Pope Gregory and was deposed from his Bishopric in 1085 by the German prelates who supported the emperor. But he was reinstated in 1085 by anti-Pope Guibert, whom he supported. In 1097, Benno cast his lot once more with the true Pope Urban II, and spent his years as a missionary. The reason St. Benno is important among the saints of Germany is that, unlike some of the German bishops, he stood out against the Emperor, and because not even imprisonment could make him say that Henry was right. We do not know very much about his life, apart from the warfare and struggles of the time. But there is one story which has become famous. When the Pope had said that the Emperor, because he would not obey the Church, was not to be allowed to receive Holy Communion Henry hoped that the German bishops would take no notice of this `excommunication.’ He rode with his followers to Meissen and demanded entry to the Cathedral. St. Benno realized that there was nothing he could do to keep him out unless he shut the Cathedral to everyone, so he ordered everything to be fastened up from the inside and then the great door locked on the outside. When this had been done, in front of all the people, he threw the key far out into the river Elbe. Henry knew that if he gave his soldiers orders to break down the door he would have everyone against him, so he rode away, vowing vengeance on the Bishop. When he had gone the question was how the Cathedral could be opened again. St. Benno, after much prayer, told a fisherman to throw his net into the river as near as he could to where the key had fallen, and, so the story says, among the fish that were caught that day was one which had the key hanging on to one of its fins. So, among the paintings of the saints which you can see today, you can always recognize St. Benno, because he is holding a fish and a key. He lived to be a very old man (some say that he was nearly a hundred when he died), and at the end of his life he followed the example of so many of the German saints and went to preach to the barbarians on the outskirts of the country who were still heathen. He died about 1106 and was canonized in 1523. This caused Martin Luther to issue a strongly critical polemic: Against the New Idol and the Old Devil about To Be Set Up at Meissen. St. Benno was buried in his Cathedral at Meissen, but when, at the time of the German Reformation, four hundred years later, in about 1575, the countryside left the Catholic Church, Meissen became wholly Protestant his body was removed, for safety and transfered to Munich, and from that time St. Benno has been considered the Principal Patron Saint of that city Munich.
PRAYER: God, Light and Shepherd of souls, You established St. Benno as Bishop in Your Church to feed Your flock by his word and form it by his example. Help us through his intercession to keep the faith he taught by his word and follow the way he showed by his example. Amen🙏🏽