Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Collect of the Day: St. Nicholas of Tolentino Posted by David Werling, from Ars Orandi

St. Nicholas of Tolentino
Confessor

It is good to give praise to the Lord: and to sing to Thy name, O Most High.
(From the introit of the day’s Mass, Ps. 91. 14)

Collect of the Day

Adésto, Dómine, supplicatiónibus nostris, quas in beáti Nicolái Confessóris tui solemnitáte deférimus: ut, qui nostræ justítiæ fidúciam non habémus, ejus qui tibi plácuit, précibus adjuvémur. Per Dóminum…

Assist us mercifully, O Lord, in these our supplications which we make before thee on the feast of blessed Nicholas, thy holy Confessor: that we, who put not our trust in our own righteousness, may be succoured by the prayers of him that found favour in thy sight. Through…

Epistle – 1 Corinthians, 4. 9-14 / Gospel – St. Luke, 12. 32-34

From The Liturgical Year
by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.

Today the infant Mary smiles upon the lily offered her in her cradle by the representative of a great Order. The hermits of St. Augustine were being grouped and organized by the Vicar of Christ, when Nicholas was admitted into their family, of which he was soon to become the thaumaturgus. When he died, in 1305, the Roman Pontiffs were beginning their exile at Avignon; and his canonization, deferred for nearly a century and a half through the troubles of the period, marked the close of the lamentable dissensions which followed that exile.

Peace so long lost; peace, of which even the wisest despaired—such was the ardent prayer, the solemn adjuration of Eugenius IV, when, towards the close of his laborious pontificate, he committed the cause of the Church to the humble servant of God placed by him upon her altars. According to the testimony of Sixtus V, the obtaining of this peace was the greatest of Nicholas’s miracles; a miracle which moved the latter Pontiff to order the celebration of the saint’s feast as a double, at a time when days that rank were much rarer on the calendar than now.

Let us read the legend, which is as simple as the saint’s life itself.

This Nicholas is called Nicholas of Tolentino, because he lived in that town for most part of his life. He was born at St Angelo, a place near Fermo, in the March of Ancona, about the year 1245. His parents were godly people, and in their desire to have children, vowed and made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Nicholas at Bari, where they were assured of their wish, and therefore gave the name of Nicholas to the son whom they received. From his childhood the lad gave many good signs, but especially as regarded abstinence. In his seventh year, in imitation of his blessed name-sake, he began to fast upon several days in the week, which custom he always kept, and was content with only bread and water.

After he reached man’s estate, he enlisted himself in the army of the clergy, and was preferred to a Canonry. One day he chanced to hear a sermon upon contempt of the world delivered by a preacher of the Order of Hermits of St Austin, and was so moved by it that he forthwith entered that Order. As a Friar he was most strictly observant of that way of life. He subdued his body with rough clothing, stripes, and an iron chain. He never ate meat, and seldom any relish to his meals. And he was a burning and shining light of love, lowliness, long-suffering, and all other graces.

He persisted in constant and earnest prayer, notwithstanding many troubles from the assaults of Satan, who sometimes even flogged him. Every night for six months before his death he heard Angels singing with such sweetness, that it was a foretaste of the happiness of heaven, and he would often repeat the words of the Apostle I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ (Phil. i. 23). Lastly, he foretold to his brethren the day of his death, which was the 10th day of September 1306. After his death also he was famous for miracles, and when due investigation had been made thereof, Pope Eugenius IV enrolled his name among those of the Saints.

Good and faithful servant, thou hast entered into the joy of thy Lord. He has broken thy bonds; and from heaven, where thou art now reigning, thou repeatest to us those words which determined the sanctity of thy life on earth: “Love neither the world nor the things that are in the world. For the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof.” How much a man thus forgetful of earth can do for his fellow-men, is evinced by the gift thou didst receive of solacing all the miseries around thee, and succoring the souls in purgatory. The successor of St. Peter was not deceived, when, in raking thee among the saints, he counted on thy power in heaven to bring back society from its long continued state of disturbance to the paths of peace. May that word of the beloved disciple which thou hast just echoed to us, sink into our souls as a seed of salvation, and there yield the fruits that it produced in thee; detachment from all temporal things and a longing for eternal realities; that humble simplicity of the soul’s eye which makes life a peaceful journey towards God; and lastly, that purity, which made thee the friend of angels and the favourite of Mary.