St. Angela Merici, Religious
JANUARY 27A.D. 1540
Foundress of the Ursuline Nuns, Angela Merici was born on March 21, 1470 or 1474, at Desenzano del Garda, Lombardy, in northern Italy. She died on January 27, 1540, in Brescia, near Desenzano. The Ursuline order is the oldest teaching community of women in the Church. Orphaned at the age of ten, Angela Merici and her sister were reared and educated by their wealthy uncle in nearby Salo. Both sisters were extremely devout and when they were very young they wanted to live in a hermitage. However, their uncle wisely restrained them. After the death of her sister, Angela became a Franciscan tertiary.
In about 1495 she returned to Desenzano upon the death of her uncle. There, she received a vision, wherein she saw herself giving religious instruction to young girls. She gathered together other qualified tertiaries and in her home began a school for girls. In 1516 she moved to Brescia, where she opened a similar school. In 1524, while on the island of Crete on her way to a pilgrimage of the Holy Land, Angela was struck blind. However, on her return to Italy, her sight was miraculously restored when she again stopped at Crete. During a visit to Rome in 1525, Pope Clement VII asked her to stay and carry on her charitable works there, but she declined and returned to Brescia.
In about 1533 a band of 12 women joined Angela in her endeavor to help the poor and instruct the ignorant. They moved into a house near the Church of St. Afra in Brescia, where they formed the nucleus of the Ursuline order. It was named after St. Ursula, then regarded as the patroness of medieval universities. By November 25, 1535, the formal date of the establishment of the teaching order, the group had increased to 28. However, it was not until a later date that the order took vows or developed a secluded community life.
In 1535, Angela was unanimously elected mother superior of the little group of women, a position that she held until her death. Pope Clement XIII beatified her on April 30,1768, and she was canonized by Pope Pius VII on May 24, 1807. St. Angela Mericis feast day is Jan 27. [MICHAEL R. HOAG, S.J.]
(C)
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
From Butler's Lives of Saints on St. Titus and Timothy
St. Titus, Disciple of Paul Bishop
JANUARY 26
ST. TITUS was born a Gentile and seems to have been converted by St. Paul, who calls him his son in Christ. His extraordinary virtue and merit gained him the particular esteem and affection of this apostle, for we find him employed as his secretary and interpreter; and he styles him his brother, and copartner in his labors, commends exceedingly his solicitude and zeal for the salvation of his brethren, * and in the most tender manner expresses the comfort and support he found in him, * inasmuch that, on a certain occasion, he declared that he found no rest in his spirit, because at Troas he had not met Titus. * In the year 51, he accompanied him to the council that was held at Jerusalem, on the subject of the Mosaic rites. Though the apostle had consented to the circumcision of Timothy, in order to render his ministry acceptable among the Jews, he would not allow the same in Titus, apprehensive of giving thereby a sanction to the error of certain false brethren, who contended that the ceremonial institutes of the Mosaic law were not abolished by the law of grace. Towards the close of the year 56, St. Paul sent Titus from Ephesus to Corinth, with full commission to remedy the several subjects of scandal, as also to allay the dissensions in that church. He was there received with great testimonies of respect and was perfectly satisfied with regard to the penance and submission of the offenders but could not be prevailed upon to accept from them any present, not even so much as his own maintenance. His love for that church was very considerable, and at their request he interceded with St. Paul for the pardon of the incestuous man. He was sent the same year by the apostle a second time to Corinth, to prepare the alms that church designed for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. All these particulars we learn from St. Paul's two epistles to the Corinthians.
St. Paul, after his first imprisonment, returning from Rome into the east, made some stay in the island of Crete, to preach there the faith of Jesus Christ; but the necessities of other churches requiring his presence elsewhere, he ordained his beloved disciple Titus bishop of that island, and left him to finish the work he had successfully begun. "We may form a judgment," says St. Chrysostom, * "from the importance of the charge, how great the esteem of St. Paul was for his disciple." But finding the loss of such a companion too material, at his return into Europe the year after, the apostle ordered him to meet him at Nicopolis in Epirus, where he intended to pass the winter, and to set out for that place as soon as either Tychichus or Arthemas, whom he had sent to supply his place during his absence, should arrive in Crete. St. Paul sent these instructions to Titus, in the canonical epistle addressed to him, when on his journey to Nicopolis, in autumn, in the year 64. He ordered him to establish Priests, * that is, bishops, as St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret expound it, in all the cities of the island. He sums up the principal qualities necessary for a bishop, and gives him particular advice touching his own conduct to his flock, exhorting him to hold to strictness of discipline, but seasoned with lenity. This epistle contains the rule of episcopal life, and as such, we may regard it as faithfully copied in the life of this disciple. In the year 65, we find him sent by St. Paul to preach in Dalmatia. * He again returned to Crete, and settled the faith in that and the adjacent little island. All that can be affirmed further of him is that he finished a laborious and holy life by a happy death in Crete, in a very advanced old age, some affirm in the ninety-fourth year of his age. The body of St. Titus was kept with great veneration in the cathedral of Gortyna, the ruins of which city, the ancient metropolis of the island, situated six miles from mount Ida, are still very remarkable. This city being destroyed by the Saracens in 823, these relics could never since be discovered; only the head of our saint was conveyed safely to Venice and is venerated in the Ducal basilica of St. Mark (See Creta Sacra, Auctore Flaminio Cornelio, Senatore Veneto. Venetiis, anno 1755, de S. Tito, T. 1, p. 189, 195.) St. Titus has been looked upon in Crete as the first archbishop of Gortyna, which metropolitical see is fixed at Candia, since this new metropolis was built by the Saracens. The cathedral of the city of Candia, which now gives its name to the whole island, bears his name. The Turks leave this church in the hands of the Christians. The city of Candia was built in the ninth century, seventeen miles from the ancient Gortyn or Gortyna. Under the metropolitan of Candia, there are at present in this island eleven suffragan bishops of the Greek communion.
When St. Paul assumed Titus to the ministry, this disciple was already a saint, and the apostle found in him all the conditions which he charged him so severely to require in those whom he should honor with the pastoral charge. It is an illusion of false zeal, and a temptation of the enemy, for young novices to begin to teach before they have learned themselves how to practice. Young birds which leave their nests before they are able to fly are sure to perish. Trees which push forth their buds before the season yield no fruit, the flowers being either nipped by the frost or destroyed by the sun. So those who give themselves up to the exterior employments of the ministry, before they are thoroughly grounded in the spirit of the gospel, drain their tender interior virtue, and produce only unclean or tainted fruit. All who undertake the pastoral charge, besides a thorough acquaintance with the divine law, and the maxims and spirit of the gospel, and experience, discretion, and a knowledge of the heart of man, or his passions, must have seriously endeavored to die to themselves by the habitual practice of self-denial, and a rooted humility; and must have been so well exercised in holy contemplation, as to retain that habitual disposition of soul amidst exterior employments, and in them to be able still to say, I sleep, and my heart watches; * that is, I sleep to all earthly things, and am awake only to my heavenly friend and spouse, being absorbed in the thoughts and desires of the most ardent love.
St. Paul, ep. ad Tit. and 1 and 2 ad Cor.; also, Tillemont, T. 2, Calmet, T. 8, Le Quien Oriens Christianus, T. 2, p. 256. F. Farlat Illyrici sacri. T. 1, p. 354 ad 392.
(C)
St. Timothy Bishop and Martyr
JANUARY 26
ST. TIMOTHY, the beloved disciple of St. Paul, was of Lycaonia and probably of the city Lystra. His father was a Gentile, but his mother Eunice a Jewess. She, with Lois his grandmother, embraced the Christian religion, and St. Paul commends their faith. Timothy had made the holy scriptures his study from his infancy. When St. Paul preached in Lycaonia, in the year 51, the brethren of Iconium and Lystra gave him so advantageous a character of the young man that the apostle, being deprived of St. Barnaby, took him for the companion of his labors but first circumcised him at Lystra; for though the Jewish ceremonies ceased to be obligatory from the death of Christ, it was still lawful to use them (but not as of precept and obligation) till about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem with the temple, that the synagogue might be buried with honor. Therefore St. Paul refused to circumcise Titus, born of Gentile parents, to assert the liberty of the gospel and to condemn those who erroneously affirmed circumcision to be still of precept in the New Law. On the other side, he circumcised Timothy, born of a Jewess, by that condescension to render him the more acceptable to the Jews and to make it appear that himself was no enemy to their law. St. Chrysostom here admires the prudence, steadiness and charity of St. Paul and, we may add, the voluntary obedience of the disciple. St. Austin extols his zeal and disinterestedness in immediately forsaking his country, his house, and his parents to follow this apostle, to share in his poverty and sufferings. After he was circumcised, St. Paul, by the imposition of hands, committed to him the ministry of preaching, his rare virtue making ample amends for his want of age. From that time the apostle regarded him not only as his disciple and most dear son but as his brother and the companion of his labors. He calls him a man of God and tells the Philippians that he found no one so truly united to him in heart and sentiments as Timothy. This esteem of the apostle is a sufficient testimony of the extraordinary merit of the disciple, whose vocation and entrance into the ministry was accompanied with prophecies in his behalf.
St. Paul traveled from Lystra over the rest of Asia, sailed into Macedon, and preached at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea in the year 52. Being compelled to quit this last city by the fury of the Jews, he left Timothy behind him to confirm the new converts there. On St. Paul's arrival at Athens he sent for him, but, being informed that the Christians of Thessalonica lay under a very heavy persecution for the faith, he soon after debuted him to go thither to comfort and encourage them under it; and he returned to St. Paul, then at Corinth, to give him an account of his success in that commission. Upon this the apostle wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians. From Corinth St. Paul went to Jerusalem, and thence to Ephesus, where he spent two years. Here he formed a resolution of returning into Greece, and sent Timothy and Erastus before him through Macedon, to apprise the faithful in those parts of his intention, and to prepare the alms intended to be sent the Christians of Jerusalem.
Timothy had a particular order to go afterwards to Corinth to correct certain abuses and to revive in the minds of the faithful there the doctrine which the apostle had taught them -- who, writing soon after to the Corinthians, earnestly recommended this disciple to them. St. Paul waited in Asia for his return and then went with him into Macedon and Achaia. St. Timothy left him at Philippi but rejoined him at Troas. The apostle on his return to Palestine was imprisoned and, after two years custody at Caesarea, was sent to Rome. Timothy seems to have been with him all or most of this time and is named by him in the titles of his epistles to Philemon and to the Philippians and Thessalonians, in the years 61 and 62. St. Timothy himself suffered imprisonment for Christ and gloriously confessed his name in the presence of many witnesses, but was set at liberty. He was ordained bishop by a prophecy and a particular order of the Holy Ghost. He received by this imposition of hands, not only the grace of the sacrament and the authority to govern the church, but also the power of miracles, and the other exterior gifts of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul having returned from Rome to the East, in the year 64, left St. Timothy at Ephesus to govern that church, to oppose false teachers, and to ordain priests, deacons, and even bishops; for St. Chrysostom and other fathers observe that he committed to him the care of all the churches of Asia, and St. Timothy is always named the first bishop of Ephesus.
St. Paul wrote his first epistle to Timothy from Macedon in 64 and his second in 65, from Rome, while there in chains, to press him to come to Rome, that he might see him again before he died. It is an effusion of his heart, full of tenderness towards this his dearest son. In it he encourages him, endeavors to renew and stir up in his soul that spirit of intrepidity and that fire of the Holy Ghost, with which he was filled at his ordination, gives him instructions concerning the heretics of that time, and adds a lively description of such as would afterwards arise.
We learn that St. Timothy drank only water, but, his austerities having prejudiced his health on account of his weak stomach and frequent infirmities, St. Paul ordered him to use a little wine. The fathers observe that he only says a little, even in that necessity, because the flesh is to be kept weak that the spirit may be vigorous and strong. St. Timothy was then young: perhaps about forty. It is not improbable that he went to Rome to confer with his master. In the year 64 he was made by St. Paul bishop of Ephesus before St. John arrived there, who resided also in that city as an apostle and exercising a general inspection over all the churches of Asia. St. Timothy is styled a martyr in the ancient martyrologies.
His acts, in some copies ascribed to the famous Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, but which seem to have been written at Ephesus, in the fifth or sixth age, and abridged by Photius, relate that under the emperor Nerva, in the year 97, St. John being still in the isle of Patmos, St. Timothy was slain with stones and clubs by the heathens, while he was endeavoring to oppose their idolatrous ceremonies on one of their festivals called Catagogia, kept on the 22nd of January, on which the idolaters walked in troops, everyone carrying in one hand an idol and in the other a club. St. Paulinus, Theodorus Lector, and Philostorgius inform us that his relics were with great pomp translated to Constantinople in the year 356, in the reign of Constantius. St. Paulinus witnesses that the least portion of them wrought many miracles wherever they were distributed. These precious remains, with those of St. Andrew and St. Luke, were deposited under the altar in the church of the apostles in that city, where the devils, by their howlings, testified how much they felt their presence, says St. Jerome, which St. Chrysostom also confirms.
Pious reading was the means by which St. Timothy, encouraged by the example and exhortations of his virtuous grandmother and mother, imbibed in his tender years, and nourished during the whole course of his life, the most fervent spirit of religion and all virtues; and his ardor for holy reading and meditation is commended by St. Paul as the proof of his devotion and earnest desire of advancing in divine charity. When this saint was wholly taken up in the most laborious and holy functions of the apostolic ministry, that great apostle strongly recommends to him always to be assiduous in the same practice and in all exercises of devotion. A minister of the gospel who neglects regular exercises of retirement, especially self-examination, reading, meditation, and private devotion, forgets his first and most essential duty: the care he owes to his own soul. Neither can he hope to kindle the fire of charity in others if he suffer it to be extinguished in his own breast. These exercises are also indispensably necessary in a certain degree in all states and circumstances of life; nor is it possible for a Christian otherwise to maintain a spirit of true piety, which ought to animate the whole body of all his actions, and without which even spiritual functions want as it were their soul. (C)
Taken from Butler's Lives of Saints On CD by Harmony Media.
JANUARY 26
ST. TITUS was born a Gentile and seems to have been converted by St. Paul, who calls him his son in Christ. His extraordinary virtue and merit gained him the particular esteem and affection of this apostle, for we find him employed as his secretary and interpreter; and he styles him his brother, and copartner in his labors, commends exceedingly his solicitude and zeal for the salvation of his brethren, * and in the most tender manner expresses the comfort and support he found in him, * inasmuch that, on a certain occasion, he declared that he found no rest in his spirit, because at Troas he had not met Titus. * In the year 51, he accompanied him to the council that was held at Jerusalem, on the subject of the Mosaic rites. Though the apostle had consented to the circumcision of Timothy, in order to render his ministry acceptable among the Jews, he would not allow the same in Titus, apprehensive of giving thereby a sanction to the error of certain false brethren, who contended that the ceremonial institutes of the Mosaic law were not abolished by the law of grace. Towards the close of the year 56, St. Paul sent Titus from Ephesus to Corinth, with full commission to remedy the several subjects of scandal, as also to allay the dissensions in that church. He was there received with great testimonies of respect and was perfectly satisfied with regard to the penance and submission of the offenders but could not be prevailed upon to accept from them any present, not even so much as his own maintenance. His love for that church was very considerable, and at their request he interceded with St. Paul for the pardon of the incestuous man. He was sent the same year by the apostle a second time to Corinth, to prepare the alms that church designed for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. All these particulars we learn from St. Paul's two epistles to the Corinthians.
St. Paul, after his first imprisonment, returning from Rome into the east, made some stay in the island of Crete, to preach there the faith of Jesus Christ; but the necessities of other churches requiring his presence elsewhere, he ordained his beloved disciple Titus bishop of that island, and left him to finish the work he had successfully begun. "We may form a judgment," says St. Chrysostom, * "from the importance of the charge, how great the esteem of St. Paul was for his disciple." But finding the loss of such a companion too material, at his return into Europe the year after, the apostle ordered him to meet him at Nicopolis in Epirus, where he intended to pass the winter, and to set out for that place as soon as either Tychichus or Arthemas, whom he had sent to supply his place during his absence, should arrive in Crete. St. Paul sent these instructions to Titus, in the canonical epistle addressed to him, when on his journey to Nicopolis, in autumn, in the year 64. He ordered him to establish Priests, * that is, bishops, as St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret expound it, in all the cities of the island. He sums up the principal qualities necessary for a bishop, and gives him particular advice touching his own conduct to his flock, exhorting him to hold to strictness of discipline, but seasoned with lenity. This epistle contains the rule of episcopal life, and as such, we may regard it as faithfully copied in the life of this disciple. In the year 65, we find him sent by St. Paul to preach in Dalmatia. * He again returned to Crete, and settled the faith in that and the adjacent little island. All that can be affirmed further of him is that he finished a laborious and holy life by a happy death in Crete, in a very advanced old age, some affirm in the ninety-fourth year of his age. The body of St. Titus was kept with great veneration in the cathedral of Gortyna, the ruins of which city, the ancient metropolis of the island, situated six miles from mount Ida, are still very remarkable. This city being destroyed by the Saracens in 823, these relics could never since be discovered; only the head of our saint was conveyed safely to Venice and is venerated in the Ducal basilica of St. Mark (See Creta Sacra, Auctore Flaminio Cornelio, Senatore Veneto. Venetiis, anno 1755, de S. Tito, T. 1, p. 189, 195.) St. Titus has been looked upon in Crete as the first archbishop of Gortyna, which metropolitical see is fixed at Candia, since this new metropolis was built by the Saracens. The cathedral of the city of Candia, which now gives its name to the whole island, bears his name. The Turks leave this church in the hands of the Christians. The city of Candia was built in the ninth century, seventeen miles from the ancient Gortyn or Gortyna. Under the metropolitan of Candia, there are at present in this island eleven suffragan bishops of the Greek communion.
When St. Paul assumed Titus to the ministry, this disciple was already a saint, and the apostle found in him all the conditions which he charged him so severely to require in those whom he should honor with the pastoral charge. It is an illusion of false zeal, and a temptation of the enemy, for young novices to begin to teach before they have learned themselves how to practice. Young birds which leave their nests before they are able to fly are sure to perish. Trees which push forth their buds before the season yield no fruit, the flowers being either nipped by the frost or destroyed by the sun. So those who give themselves up to the exterior employments of the ministry, before they are thoroughly grounded in the spirit of the gospel, drain their tender interior virtue, and produce only unclean or tainted fruit. All who undertake the pastoral charge, besides a thorough acquaintance with the divine law, and the maxims and spirit of the gospel, and experience, discretion, and a knowledge of the heart of man, or his passions, must have seriously endeavored to die to themselves by the habitual practice of self-denial, and a rooted humility; and must have been so well exercised in holy contemplation, as to retain that habitual disposition of soul amidst exterior employments, and in them to be able still to say, I sleep, and my heart watches; * that is, I sleep to all earthly things, and am awake only to my heavenly friend and spouse, being absorbed in the thoughts and desires of the most ardent love.
St. Paul, ep. ad Tit. and 1 and 2 ad Cor.; also, Tillemont, T. 2, Calmet, T. 8, Le Quien Oriens Christianus, T. 2, p. 256. F. Farlat Illyrici sacri. T. 1, p. 354 ad 392.
(C)
St. Timothy Bishop and Martyr
JANUARY 26
ST. TIMOTHY, the beloved disciple of St. Paul, was of Lycaonia and probably of the city Lystra. His father was a Gentile, but his mother Eunice a Jewess. She, with Lois his grandmother, embraced the Christian religion, and St. Paul commends their faith. Timothy had made the holy scriptures his study from his infancy. When St. Paul preached in Lycaonia, in the year 51, the brethren of Iconium and Lystra gave him so advantageous a character of the young man that the apostle, being deprived of St. Barnaby, took him for the companion of his labors but first circumcised him at Lystra; for though the Jewish ceremonies ceased to be obligatory from the death of Christ, it was still lawful to use them (but not as of precept and obligation) till about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem with the temple, that the synagogue might be buried with honor. Therefore St. Paul refused to circumcise Titus, born of Gentile parents, to assert the liberty of the gospel and to condemn those who erroneously affirmed circumcision to be still of precept in the New Law. On the other side, he circumcised Timothy, born of a Jewess, by that condescension to render him the more acceptable to the Jews and to make it appear that himself was no enemy to their law. St. Chrysostom here admires the prudence, steadiness and charity of St. Paul and, we may add, the voluntary obedience of the disciple. St. Austin extols his zeal and disinterestedness in immediately forsaking his country, his house, and his parents to follow this apostle, to share in his poverty and sufferings. After he was circumcised, St. Paul, by the imposition of hands, committed to him the ministry of preaching, his rare virtue making ample amends for his want of age. From that time the apostle regarded him not only as his disciple and most dear son but as his brother and the companion of his labors. He calls him a man of God and tells the Philippians that he found no one so truly united to him in heart and sentiments as Timothy. This esteem of the apostle is a sufficient testimony of the extraordinary merit of the disciple, whose vocation and entrance into the ministry was accompanied with prophecies in his behalf.
St. Paul traveled from Lystra over the rest of Asia, sailed into Macedon, and preached at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea in the year 52. Being compelled to quit this last city by the fury of the Jews, he left Timothy behind him to confirm the new converts there. On St. Paul's arrival at Athens he sent for him, but, being informed that the Christians of Thessalonica lay under a very heavy persecution for the faith, he soon after debuted him to go thither to comfort and encourage them under it; and he returned to St. Paul, then at Corinth, to give him an account of his success in that commission. Upon this the apostle wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians. From Corinth St. Paul went to Jerusalem, and thence to Ephesus, where he spent two years. Here he formed a resolution of returning into Greece, and sent Timothy and Erastus before him through Macedon, to apprise the faithful in those parts of his intention, and to prepare the alms intended to be sent the Christians of Jerusalem.
Timothy had a particular order to go afterwards to Corinth to correct certain abuses and to revive in the minds of the faithful there the doctrine which the apostle had taught them -- who, writing soon after to the Corinthians, earnestly recommended this disciple to them. St. Paul waited in Asia for his return and then went with him into Macedon and Achaia. St. Timothy left him at Philippi but rejoined him at Troas. The apostle on his return to Palestine was imprisoned and, after two years custody at Caesarea, was sent to Rome. Timothy seems to have been with him all or most of this time and is named by him in the titles of his epistles to Philemon and to the Philippians and Thessalonians, in the years 61 and 62. St. Timothy himself suffered imprisonment for Christ and gloriously confessed his name in the presence of many witnesses, but was set at liberty. He was ordained bishop by a prophecy and a particular order of the Holy Ghost. He received by this imposition of hands, not only the grace of the sacrament and the authority to govern the church, but also the power of miracles, and the other exterior gifts of the Holy Ghost. St. Paul having returned from Rome to the East, in the year 64, left St. Timothy at Ephesus to govern that church, to oppose false teachers, and to ordain priests, deacons, and even bishops; for St. Chrysostom and other fathers observe that he committed to him the care of all the churches of Asia, and St. Timothy is always named the first bishop of Ephesus.
St. Paul wrote his first epistle to Timothy from Macedon in 64 and his second in 65, from Rome, while there in chains, to press him to come to Rome, that he might see him again before he died. It is an effusion of his heart, full of tenderness towards this his dearest son. In it he encourages him, endeavors to renew and stir up in his soul that spirit of intrepidity and that fire of the Holy Ghost, with which he was filled at his ordination, gives him instructions concerning the heretics of that time, and adds a lively description of such as would afterwards arise.
We learn that St. Timothy drank only water, but, his austerities having prejudiced his health on account of his weak stomach and frequent infirmities, St. Paul ordered him to use a little wine. The fathers observe that he only says a little, even in that necessity, because the flesh is to be kept weak that the spirit may be vigorous and strong. St. Timothy was then young: perhaps about forty. It is not improbable that he went to Rome to confer with his master. In the year 64 he was made by St. Paul bishop of Ephesus before St. John arrived there, who resided also in that city as an apostle and exercising a general inspection over all the churches of Asia. St. Timothy is styled a martyr in the ancient martyrologies.
His acts, in some copies ascribed to the famous Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, but which seem to have been written at Ephesus, in the fifth or sixth age, and abridged by Photius, relate that under the emperor Nerva, in the year 97, St. John being still in the isle of Patmos, St. Timothy was slain with stones and clubs by the heathens, while he was endeavoring to oppose their idolatrous ceremonies on one of their festivals called Catagogia, kept on the 22nd of January, on which the idolaters walked in troops, everyone carrying in one hand an idol and in the other a club. St. Paulinus, Theodorus Lector, and Philostorgius inform us that his relics were with great pomp translated to Constantinople in the year 356, in the reign of Constantius. St. Paulinus witnesses that the least portion of them wrought many miracles wherever they were distributed. These precious remains, with those of St. Andrew and St. Luke, were deposited under the altar in the church of the apostles in that city, where the devils, by their howlings, testified how much they felt their presence, says St. Jerome, which St. Chrysostom also confirms.
Pious reading was the means by which St. Timothy, encouraged by the example and exhortations of his virtuous grandmother and mother, imbibed in his tender years, and nourished during the whole course of his life, the most fervent spirit of religion and all virtues; and his ardor for holy reading and meditation is commended by St. Paul as the proof of his devotion and earnest desire of advancing in divine charity. When this saint was wholly taken up in the most laborious and holy functions of the apostolic ministry, that great apostle strongly recommends to him always to be assiduous in the same practice and in all exercises of devotion. A minister of the gospel who neglects regular exercises of retirement, especially self-examination, reading, meditation, and private devotion, forgets his first and most essential duty: the care he owes to his own soul. Neither can he hope to kindle the fire of charity in others if he suffer it to be extinguished in his own breast. These exercises are also indispensably necessary in a certain degree in all states and circumstances of life; nor is it possible for a Christian otherwise to maintain a spirit of true piety, which ought to animate the whole body of all his actions, and without which even spiritual functions want as it were their soul. (C)
Taken from Butler's Lives of Saints On CD by Harmony Media.
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