Clothed in Virtue

  St. Paul, the First Hermit "The Father of the Eremitical Life"      St. Paul the Hermit was born c. 227 AD in Egypt.  While he was still a young man, he retired to a desert cave during a persecution.  Palm trees provided him with both food and clothing.  He lived a life of great holiness until the age of 113.      St. Jerome composed a biography of St. Paul titled, "The Life of Saint Paul the First Hermit."  According to St. Jerome, Paul fled to the Theban desert as a young man during a persecution, around AD 250.  He lived in the mountains of this desert in a cave near a spring and a palm tree, the leaves of which provided him with clothing and the fruit of which provided him with his only source of food until he was 43 years old, when a raven started bringing him half a loaf of bread daily.  He would remain in that cave for the rest of his life, almost a hundred more years.     In 342, Anthony the Great was t...

  The Lord guided the just in right paths. And showed him the kingdom of God. Lawrence was born on July 22, 1559, and died exactly 60 years later on his birthday in 1619.  His parents, William and Elizabeth Russo, were merchants and named him Julius Caesar. His parents died early and so he was educated by his uncle at the College of St. Mark in Venice. When he was 16, he entered the Capuchin Franciscan Order in Venice, receiving the name of Brother Lawrence. He completed his studies of philosophy and theology at the University of Padua and was ordained a priest at 23. Grace is poured into thy lips.  Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Lawrence was an accomplished linguist. In addition to his native Italian, Lawrence could fluently read and speak Latin, Hebrew, Greek, German, Bohemian, Spanish, and French.  With this facility for languages, Lawrence was able to study the Bible in its original texts.  Pope Clement VIII sent him preaching to the Jews in Italy...

“He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor:  his justice remaineth for ever and ever:  his horn shall be exalted in glory.” - Psalm 111:19 Jerome Emiliani was born in Venice in  1481 to a noble family.  At the age of 15 he became a soldier. He was appointed as the governor of a fortress in the mountains of Treviso. While defending his post, he was made prisoner by the enemy.  In the misery of the dungeon, he invoked the Mother of God for help. If she would come to his assistance, he promised to lead a new and better life. He credits his escape to the help of Our Lady, and so at Treviso, he hung up his chains at her altar, dedicated himself to her service, and on reaching home in Venice devoted himself to a life of active charity. Back in Venice he supervised the education of his nephews and devoted his spare time to studying theology and doing works of charity. “Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into thy house: when thou ...

“God admonishes all of us to use our earthly goods to make friends for ourselves among the poor. They, in turn, becoming the friends of their benefactors, will be the cause of their admission to heaven.”  - St. Augustine Vincent de Paul was born to peasant farmers in 1581, in a village in the Kingdom of France. He was the third of six children. Early on he showed talent for literacy and herding his family’s livestock. At 15, his father paid to send him to the seminary by selling the family’s oxen. He studied Theology at the University of Toulouse.  The atmosphere at the university not conducive to a life of piety or spiritual contemplation, but Vincent managed to continue his studies despite the turbulent and quarrelsome atmosphere. He helped pay for his education by tutoring others. In 1600, at the age of 19, he was ordained. At the time, there was a required minimum age of 24 for ordination (established by the Council of Trent), so when he was appointed to a parish, there wa...

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” - John 15 St. Camillus was born in Naples in 1550. His mother died when he was very young and his father barely acknowledged his existence. He grew up with an excessive love for gambling.   At age 17, he contracted a disease in his leg that left him with an incurable sore. He  suffered from it for the rest of his life. He went to Rome to be both a patient and servant at the “Hospital for Incurables.” After nine months, he was dismissed for being too quarrelsome. He joined the army and served as a Venetian soldier. He gambled and fought against the Turks until his regiment was disbanded in 1574. Now he was 24, unemployed, and penniless, having gambled away everything he had.  He accepted work at a Capuchin friary. There, a moving sermon began him on his path to conversion. From that point on, Camillus never strayed from his penitential path. He entered the Capuchins as a novitiate but was unable ...

  Mount Carmel is a biblical place where the prophet Elijah dwelt.  It rises 1,742 feet above sea level, towering above Israel's Mediterranean coastline. Here, Elijah prayed to God for the salvation of Israel which was suffering a terrible drought.  He prayed and sent his servant up the mountain several times to look for rain.  On the 7th try, Elijah's servant returned with good news.    And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. - 1 Kings 18:42-44   Elijah saw the cloud as a symbol of the Virgin mentioned in the prophecies of Isaiah: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive a...

"Henry the Exuberant" Henry was born in 972, the oldest of a family of four children. His father was Henry the Quarrelsome, Duke of Bavaria.  His mother was Gisella, daughter of Conrad, King of Burgundy. Henry's father had rebelled against two previous emperors and spent a lot of time in exile, so as a child Henry was educated in the Christian faith by St. Wolfgang, the Bishop of Regensburg.  Later he was educated at the Hildesheim Cathedral.  Henry was an intelligent and devout student and for a period of time, he was considered for the priesthood. He became well acquainted with ecclesiastical interests at an early age. St. Wolfgang's lessons in piety and charity left a lasting mark on Henry's soul, but it was ultimately in the political realm, not the Church, that he would exercise these virtues.  When his father died in 995, Henry succeeded him as Duke of Bavaria. Seven years later, his cousin Otto III, the Holy Roman Emperor, died in Rome.  Despite stro...