Be a wise and faithful servant

Be careful to be found a wise and faithful servant, and communicate
the heavenly to your fellow servants without envy or idleness. Do not
take up the vain excuse of your rawness of inexperience which you may
imagine or assume. For sterile modesty is never pleasing, not that
humility laudable which passes the bounds of reason. Attend to your
work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as a master.
But I am not sufficient for these things, you say. As if your offering
were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not.
Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge,
and take no thought for the test. For he that is unjust in the least
is unjust also in much. Give all, as assuredly you shall pay to the
uttermost farthing; but of a truth out of what you have, not what you
have not.
--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

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May 17th - St. Possidius, Bishop and Confessor

HE was a native of the proconsular Africa, and had his education under
the great St. Augustine. In 397 he was chosen bishop of Calama in
Numidia, which diocese he found distracted by the factions both of
heathens and Donatists. In 404 a party of the latter dragged him out
of his house, beat him, and threatened his life. All the revenge he
took of them was to obtain their pardon from the emperor. Four years
after this, the idolaters in a riotous festival on the 1st of June,
had the insolence to dance round the church, throw stones into it, and
set it on fire, wounding several of the clergy, and killing one upon
the spot. Nectarius, a principal person among the heathens, who had no
share in this tumult, wrote to St. Augustine to beg him to intercede
with the emperor for the pardon of the rioters, observing to him that
it is the duty of the Christian pastors to employ themselves in works
of mercy and peace. By the interposition of Possidius their punishment
was only an order which the emperor sent for the breaking down their
idols, with a prohibition of their abominable festivals and
sacrifices. When the relics of St. Stephen were brought into Africa
about the year 410, our holy bishop was careful to enrich Calama with
a portion of them, by which several miracles were there wrought, as
St. Augustine informs us. [1] St. Possidius was doubtless one of those
bishops who established among the clergy of their cathedrals a
monastic regularity in imitation of St. Augustine, and according to
the rule by him instituted, as our saint mentions in the life of that
great doctor; and St. Augustine speaks of the poor religious men of
Calama.

The Vandals passed over from Spain into Africa with an army of
fourscore thousand veteran soldiers, long accustomed to blood and
plunder; and made themselves in a short time masters of Mauritania,
Numidia, and the proconsular province, except the strong fortresses of Carthage, Cirta, and Hippo. They pillaged the whole country and the
towns which lay in their way; and among others Calama, which seems to
have never since lifted up its head. St. Possidius took refuge in
Hippo with his dear master, St. Augustine, who soon after died in his
arms in 430, during the siege of that city, which some time after fell
into the hands of the barbarians. These were severe trials to our
saint, who from that time lived in perpetual banishment from his
flock. He wrote the life of St. Augustine, with a catalogue of his
works. The Italians say, that from Africa he came into Italy, and died
at Mirandola. That city and Rhegio in Apulia honoured him as patron.
The regular canons keep his festival on the 17th of May, and regard
him as one of the most illustrious fathers of their Order.

See the life and works of St. Augustine and Papebroke, who show that
it is a mistake to confound St. Possidius with Possidonius, another
African bishop sometimes mentioned with him in the same councils, t.
4, Maij. p. 27. See also Ceillier, t. 12, p. 261.

Note 1. L. 22, de Civil, c. 8.


Saint Quote:
Labor without stopping; do all the good works you can while you still
have the time.
--Saint John of God

Bible Quote:
What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but
hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? And if a brother or
sister be naked and want daily food: And one of you say to them: Go
in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that
are necessary for the body, what shall it profit? So faith also, if it
have not works, is dead in itself. [James 2:14-17] DRB


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The easy roads are crowded

The easy roads are crowded,
And the level roads are jammed;
The pleasant little rivers
With the drifting folks are crammed,
But off yonder where it's rocky,
Where you get a better view,
You will find the ranks are thinning
And the travelers are few.
Where the going's smooth and pleasant
You will always find the throng,
For the many, more's the pity,
Seem to like to drift along.
But the steps that call for courage
And the task that's hard to do,
In the end results in glory
For the never-wavering few.

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