Today February 15

Today is the feast of Saint Claude de Colombiere, SJ (1641 - 1682). He was an interesting man. Of moderate means, his family sent him to a particularly fine Jesuit college, where he studied philosophy and excelled at it. He was, by the admission of his contemporaries, idealistic, which meant he'd have a difficult row to hoe -- and so he did, being plunged into two very different but very hostile situations. The first was in his native France, where the rigid and puritanical Jansenism held sway. (The other was later, in England, where he was preacher to the Duchess of York -- afterward queen when James II reigned -- during the time of Charles II, when Catholics were bitterly resented and discriminated against.) Claude believed that obedience was the antidote to Jansenism and he practiced it as completely as he could. He knew this heresy needed sweetness -- one of his famous homilies, that on the occasion of the canonization of St. Francis de Sales, was entitled "Out of strength has come sweetness" (Judges 14:14) -- and he both preached and practiced it.

One of the great and unusual aspects of his life was his platonic friendship with a woman, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. It was completely serendipitous -- he was made head of the (Jesuit) house at Paray-le-Monial despite his great youth and in charge of only 4 or 5 priests despite his great gifts. The fact that he was there was revealed in hindsight to be an answer to prayer; when St. Margaret Mary, who'd prayed so long for someone to understand her, first heard him preach, she heard a voice say, "He it is I send you." And so it was. During confession, he actually told her what she was thinking and encouraged her to open her heart to him. She did, of course (though she was at first quite shy and reluctant to do so), and the rest, as they say, is history. The two agreed completely and bonded together to make devotion to the Sacred Heart widespread. It was, in their opinion, the perfect antidote to Jansenism.

He was sent, as noted, to London during a very dangerous time. He preached fearlessly and converted many Protestants. For this he was arrested, convicted and thrown into prison. He was implicated in the totally bogus "Popish plot" as schemed up by the infamous Titus Oates and would have been killed but Louis XIV, the Sun King himself, got him merely deported back to France. He was broken by his imprisonment and remained sick and weak the entire rest of his life. He was being sent down to Lyons (by way of Paray) in the hopes that the better climate might ease his sufferings, but on a last directive from his plucky female friend, he remained in Paray, where he peacefully died. St. Claude de Colombiere, pray for us.