After St. Mary and St. Joseph, my three favorite Saints are St. Benedict, St. Anthony, and St. Bede. By the grace of God, I was able to spend my senior year of high school, during which time I was a nominal Presbyterian, at St. Bede’s, a boarding school and two year college. In that time, I was able to take Senior Gym, which was a state requirement for high school graduation, in the boarding school and take the classes for my freshman year of college.
St. Bede’s saved me a year of my life. During that year, I read Aquinas and the Church Fathers. And, Chesterton’s great poem, Lepanto. Fifteen years later, I was received into The Church. So, St. Bede’s saved me not one year, but an eternity.
The history of England that St. Bede wrote encouraged a love of history, a great help to anyone so inclined. Once we get into the habit of putting our own problems in perspective, we can usually find that the same problems have existed in history, and can find and analyze the solutions.
Since St. Bede’s was a Benedictine Monastery, one of many that have been around for a millennium and a half, I came to understood that St. Benedict was one of the great organizational geniuses in history. We profit by seeing how he organized “with work and prayer” the lives of the monks and brothers of his time and all the times to follow.
A third Saint of great importance in my life is St. Anthony, “The Patron Saint of Lost Things”. Since any answer or solution we need needs to be found, it is, in a way, “lost”. So, we should ask him to intercede to ask God to help us find the truth and guidance that we need in every situation.
St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St. Bede
I humbly ask that you will intercede
With the Holy Lord above,
And ask that His help and love
Be given to the person who is me.
I don’t want to go astray
So I ask that you will pray
For every single thing you know I need.
Such prayers cause God, The Loving Programmer, to look with favor on those who turn to Him, not directly, but through those precious souls to whom He has given access to Him and His programming power. By asking for the Saints to intercede for us, we demonstrate that we believe in Him and His power.
Today’s reading, Matthew, 22; 1-14, includes His question to the person who comes to God’s feast without the outward signs of obedience, “He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’” He spoke to the guest as a “friend”, until he was met by a silence that meant He was speaking to a person so vain as to believe himself to be above He Who made the ultimate Rules of Etiquette.
If we want to be in His endless feast, we must respond properly to His invitation, clothing ourselves in humility. If we think we’re above doing so, we have been told what will happen to us: “Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen.”
Communicating with God through His Saints is one way to show that our souls are so obediently dressed in humility that He can see we are showing the proper respect for those whom He has promoted to positions of authority in His Chain of Command. One of the most important things we can know is our place.
St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St. Bede
I humbly ask that you will intercede
With the Holy Lord above,
And ask that His help and love
Be given to the person who is me.
I don’t want to go astray
So I ask that you will pray
For every single thing you know I need.
