Tuesday, February 14, 2023

 Memorial of Saint Cyril, monk, and Saint Methodius, bishop

(Genesis 6:5-8.7:1-5.10; Mark 8:14-21)

Oddly the Church does not celebrate St. Valentine today.  Instead, she remembers Saints Cyril and Methodius, ninth-century missionaries to the Slavic lands.  This is not to say that the Church has little regard for romantic love, much less love in general.  Saints Cyril and Methodious showed their love for God and for peoples by leaving their native land to give Christ to foreigners.  Christ is the supreme model of spousal love.  He gave his life to save his bride, the Church. 

Today’s gospel gives indication of his sacrifice.  Mark writes that the disciples forgot to bring bread.  Amazingly, they still had one loaf with them in the boat.  That loaf is none other than Jesus himself.  Then he reminds his companions of the double feeding of the multitudes.  These miracles were a prefiguration of the Eucharist in which Jesus gives his disciples his body to eat and his blood to drink!  He did not mean to be ghoulish by this action but to show his love completed the next day on the cross.

The world exaggerates the importance of sexual love.  Today every person is suspected of either playing out her or his sexual fantasies or dangerously suppressing them.  We Christians offer the world a critical corrective.  We proclaim Christ crucified as the measure of real love – romantic, fraternal, or extended to foreigners.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Memorial of Saint Cyril, monk, and Saint Methodius, bishop

(Genesis 2:18-25; Mark 7:24-30)

Today in this liturgy we celebrate four evangelizers.  We may be stretching both the term as well as the liturgy to render such a result.  However, it will be worth the effort if we reinforce our sense of being evangelizers as well.

The first to be mentioned is Jesus himself.  He is the evangelizer par excellence.  The Father sent him to the world to announce His great love.  In the gospel reading Jesus evidently needs some rest from the work.  Nevertheless, he heals the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter so that she too can give thanks and praise to the God of Israel.

Should we not see the Syrophoenician as an evangelizer?  She explains -- to Jesus in a sense and certainly to us – that God’s love was never intended solely for Jews.  She knows instinctively that it is meant for every human being.  She also shows us how God especially bestows His efficacious love on the humble of heart.

Today the Church remembers Saints Cyril and Methodius.  They were ninth century missionaries who overcame hardships and challenges to convert a part of Russia and Moravia to Christ.  Coming from Greece, their orthodoxy was suspect in the Western church.  German bishops were especially hostile to their efforts to work among the peoples of Moravia.  However, they demonstrated their faithfulness to established doctrine and used their scholarship to abet their work.  They translated the Bible into Slavic languages which assisted their evangelization efforts.

According to Fr. Stephen Rehrauer, a Redemptorist moral theologian, St. Valentine was a priest of Rome during one of the great persecutions of the Church.  He was arrested and spent time in jail before his execution.  There he converted the jailer’s blind daughter to Christ.  On his way to his martyrdom, he slipped the girl an envelope with a note reminding her to be faithful to her promise to love others like Christ.  He signed the note, “Your Valentine.”  When the girl opened the envelope and found the note, she received the gift of sight.  Fr. Rehrauer concludes that when people today exchange Valentine greetings, they might keep this story in mind.  He says that in asking one another to be their “Valentine,” they are not asking that they be their lovers, but their mentors.  They are asking that they teach them the love of Christ.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Memorial of Saints Cyril, monk, and Methodius, bishop

 (I Kings 11:29-32.12:19; Mark 7:31-37)

Although today, Valentine’s Day, is commonly associated with erotic love, the feast has saintly origins.  There are several versions of the story of the ancient martyr, St. Valentine, and probably for this reason the Church has dropped the feast from its calendar and has reassigned the day to the less primitive Saints Cyril and Methodius.  In Latin countries the day is frequently called Día de Amistad, or Day of Friendship, celebrating the love between friends as much as the love between sweethearts.  Here we may see a link between the legendary martyr(s) of old and the two official saints of the day.

 Cyril and Methodius were brothers who ventured from their native Greece to the Slavic nations of the Ukraine and Moravia in the ninth century.  They had positions in teaching and government before becoming missionaries.  Why did they leave their careers to preach the gospel in foreign lands?  Could it have been anything other than love of Christ?  Sure missionaries have a sense of adventure, but they make a new home in a new place among new people because they sense Jesus urging them on.  As any good friend, he inspires them, invigorates them, and cares for them.

 Jesus is our friend as well.  He might be whispering in our ear to become foreign missionaries, but more likely he wants us to preach to those who surround us today.  Of course, he does not want us to harangue anyone, quite the contrary.  He asks us to share his joy, his peace, and his love.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Memorial of Saint Cyril, monk, and Saint Methodius, bishop

(James 1:12-18; Mark 8:14-21)

Many wonder why St. Valentine’s Day has been displaced on the liturgical calendar by the Memorial of Saints Cyril and Methodius. They find it puzzling that the Church would replace a universally popular saint with two of much more limited appeal. The reasons deal with historical veracity and perhaps with a more precise understanding of the love with which St. Valentine is associated.

Although it can be established that St. Valentine died a martyr during the second half of the third century, most of what is said about him is legend. Actually there are fourteen saints with that name from the period, none of whose lives are historically detailed. By comparison the lives of Cyril and Methodius are well chronicled. They were Greek missionaries who facilitated the development of the Church in Ukraine and Moravia six centuries after Valentine.

In the gospel today Jesus’ disciples cannot understand that as long as they have him, they need nothing else. He is the Bread of Life which will sustain us not for just a day but for eternity. Something similar may be said about the love which St. Valentine inspires. Most people reduce the meaning of the term to erotic desire. That is like using a Bible for a doorstop. Love is primarily the giving of self for the good of the other. Here again we have Jesus as the primary example. He showed us how to love by dying on the cross so that we might have access to eternal life. In dying for Christ Valentine exhibited that love but his witness has been undermined. Cyril and Methodius, however, in venturing to faraway places to preach God's love in Christ give more reliable testimony.