SAINT JOSEPH CAFASSO
The Priest of the Gallows
Feast Day - June 23
Lived (January 15, 1811 – June 23, 1860)
Patron Saint of Prisoners and Prussia
Joseph loved to attend Mass, even when he was young and was known for his humility and fervour in prayer. After his ordination, he was assigned to a seminary in Turin. There he worked especially against the spirit of Jansenism—an excessive preoccupation with sin and damnation. He used the works of Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Alphonsus Liguori to moderate the rigorism popular at the seminary.
Joseph recommended membership in the Secular Franciscan Order to priests. He urged devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and encouraged daily Communion. In addition to his teaching duties, Joseph was an excellent preacher, confessor, and retreat master. Noted for his work with condemned prisoners, he helped many of them die at peace with God.
Joseph urged one of his former pupils—Saint John Bosco—to establish the Salesians congregation to work with the youth of Turin. He died in 1860, and was canonized in 1947.
Cf. - Franciscan Media
Image Credit - UCA News
From the Holy Bishop and Martyr Cyprian's tract "On the Lord's Prayer" Let us who are God's children remain in God's peace! But the Lord has also given an express command, in which he binds us with a specific condition and obligation. When we ask for our sins to be forgiven, we must also forgive our debtors. For we know that we cannot receive what we ask for our sins, if we ourselves do not do the same to those who sin against us. Therefore he also says in another place: "For with the same measure with which you measure yourselves, it shall also be measured to you."1 And the servant who had been forgiven everything he owed by his master, but would not do it the same for his fellow servant, he is thrown into prison. Because he would not bear with his fellow servant, he lost the forgiveness he had received from his master. 2
ReplyDeleteIn his commandments, Christ emphasizes this even more strongly. He says: “But when you stand praying and have something to accuse another of, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your iniquity."3 You will have no excuse on the day of judgment when you will be judged as you yourself have judged, and what you have done to others, you yourself will also suffer.
But God has decreed that those who make peace and are well reconciled shall live in tolerability in his house; and as he has shaped us at the second birth, so he wants us to continue after we have been born again. We who are God's children shall then remain in God's peace, and those who have one spirit shall also be one in soul and mind. For God does not accept a sacrifice from someone who is at odds with someone, and he offers that he must first turn away from the altar and reconcile with his brother, so that God can also be appeased with prayers of peace. The greatest sacrifice to God is peace between us and unity between brothers and a people who have been united through the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Abel and Cain were the first to offer sacrifices, and then it was not their gifts that God looked at, but their hearts, so that he who pleased God in his heart was also pleased with his gift. Abel was a seal of peace and righteous, and when he sacrificed without guilt, he also taught others to come like this when they put their sacrifice on the altar: with fear of God, with a sincere heart, with justice, with peace and unity. Since he sacrificed to God with such an attitude, he himself later had the honor of becoming a sacrifice to God. He who had possessed both the Lord's justice and peace became the first martyr, and with his glorious blood he was allowed to be a forerunner of the Lord's suffering. Such people are thus crowned by the Lord, such are the ones who will judge together with the Lord on the day of judgment.
But one who is a divisive troublemaker and is not at peace with his brothers, he will not be able to escape the accusation of having caused discord between brothers, not even if he is killed for the name of the Lord. The Holy Apostle and the Holy Scripture testify to this, for it is written: "He who hates his brother is a murderer,"4 and the murderer does not enter the kingdom of heaven, and he does not live with God. Whoever would rather imitate Judas than Christ, he cannot be with Christ.