Large numbers of saints have been added tot he liturgical calendar by Saint Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict. Francis has continued this trend. The calendar of saints before was full enough - although many fewer saints were mentioned specifically in the liturgical calendar. So why?

Most of the earlier saints were simply not well known - many we have only a birth date or date of martyrdom. And scraps of legend. They also did not particularly well represnet the people of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries, life was so different back in the 3rd Century! So a number of more modern saints is usefull and proper. It is certain that a LOT more saints are about us then we take notice of - the person in the post office queue next to you might well be one. Even one if us is called to be a saint, by virtue of our baptism. But some saints do become worthy of notice, as their lieves teach us something of how to live or lives in modern times.

Edith Stein certianly does. 

She was born into a practising Jewish family. She had a distinguished career as a philosopher and received a doctorate at the University of Freiburg, but her academic career was impeded because she was a woman.

Reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila brought about her conversion to Catholicism and she was baptized on 1 January 1922. She taught at a Dominican girls’ school and studied Catholic philosophy. She became a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster but was thrown out of her post in 1933 as a result of the Nazi régime’s anti-Semitic legislation.

She entered a Carmelite monastery in Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her order moved her to the Netherlands to keep her safe from the growing Nazi threat. While a Carmelite she wrote an important philosophical book, seeking to combine the phenomenology of her former teacher Edmund Husserl with the philosophy of Aquinas, and she also wrote on St John of the Cross.

On 20 July 1942 the Dutch Bishops’ Conference had a statement read in all churches condemning Nazi racism. In retaliation the authorities ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts to Christianity. Teresa Benedicta was taken to Auschwitz and killed on 9 August 1942.

He was born in Castile (part of modern Spain) and became a canon of the cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop (Diego de Azevedo) in a mission of preaching against the Albigensian heresy, which was then strong in southern France. While the official missions lived in formality and splendour, Dominic and Diego lived in extreme poverty, and prepared with great diligence for the debates that they held with their opponents. When the suppression of Albigensianism was undertaken by invasion and war of a particularly savage kind, Dominic continued to try to preach and persuade.

In 1216 he founded the Order of Preachers, dedicated to saving souls by preaching and persuasion. Like the Franciscans, founded a few years before, the Dominicans put great importance on poverty, both of the individual and of the community, and of the need to be involved directly in the world while still living some form of monastic life. At a time when the settled Benedictine monasteries had grown into great and rich institutions, this was a revolutionary and to some a subversive concept. The Friars made a lasting impact on the life of mediaeval Europe, and the Dominicans in particular altered the course of intellectual history by making a well-thought-out and rational response to the new learning that was appearing as long-forgotten thinkers such as Aristotle became known once more in the Christian West.

Dominic died at Bologna on 6th August 1221.

Albert is one of the earliest saints of the Carmelite Order remembered in the liturgical calendar, along with St Angelus and St Simon Stock. Like these other saints, his life is captured in the tradition that grew up around his memory, following his death, a tradition that is recorded in the legends written about him in the mid to late 14th century. Albert was born in Trapani, Sicily, in the mid-1200s the only child of a married couple who had struggled for many years to conceive. As is likely to have been a tradition, he was dedicated to God by his parents in thanksgiving for his birth and later joined the Carmelites in Trapani. He was ordained a priest and during his life is known to have moved between Trapani and Messina, also serving for a time as the Carmelite Provincial of Sicily. As such, Albert would have been an instrumental person in the establishment of the Carmelites in Europe as a mendicant Order following their move from Mount Carmel. His contribution to the foundation of the Order in Europe is recognised by his naming in tradition as one of the ‘fathers’ of the Order along with St Angelus, also from Sicily. Tradition attributed to Albert the gifts of a skilled preacher, healer and reconciler, the spirit of which continues to be recognised by pilgrims who visit his relics. Albert died in Messina, Sicily, in 1307.

The book of Daniel has the same character of apocalyptic writing as Revelation. It is a difficult language to translate into thought. Take nothing literally, but do look for meaning! In the earlier verses of Chapter 7, Daniel is relating to us a dream he has had. In this prophesy, various mythical creatures have their wings torn off or are dealt with in other ways. Each of these are symbolic of the enemies of the people of God - and all of whom were destroyed in historical battles. AS the dream continues, Daniel introduces two more characters: The Son of Man - and The Ancient of Days. Who are they? This was written before there was a clear idea of the trinity, so God was singular - the ancient of days. The ancient of days is taken to mean the prime mover - an idea from Aristotle, meaning that which started everything off. John the evangelist is talking about the same idea in the prologue to his good news - in the begining was the word...

The son of man is the one who brings salvation to the world: a prophesy of the messiah. Subsequently Jesus uses this title for himself. And in Daniel's dream, God makes the son of man into the glorious king that we know Jesus to be.

Christ, Fully human, with a human mother and ancestors traceable back to David, is in the transfiguration, revealed to be fully God.  And then the incident seemingly is forgotten - never mentioned again. In fact the apostles are told not to mention it. So why is it in the Gospel? Probably for the simple reason that it did happen!

The transfiguration seems to be almost impossible to describe - "His face was altered" and "his clothes became dazzling white" are hardly the apocalyptic, descriptive, poetic language of Daniels' dream. Language just can not keep up with the reality of what happened.

It is equally somewhat hard to understand - but then so much about God is. Clearly the details in the text relates the incident back to Daniel's transfiguration dream, thus linking Jesus to the Son of Man, and thus to be the Son of God. The glory of Jesus is revealed, but also, in his meeting with Elija and Moses, Jesus is being prepared for what is to come in Jerusalem. Notice that Jesus is from now on, in control of events. The phrase used here is 'what he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem' - not for example ' what he would suffer in Jerusalem'.

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Ps 97(96):1-2. 5-6. 9; Luke 9:28b-36

Jesus was a great teacher, and also a superb leader of people. In today's Gospel, we see this in action. To prepare to taach, He devotes time to prayer. And he shows his leadership by being reassuring (calming the waves), and that he will support us (lifting peter out of the waves and back into the boat).

So impressed are his followers that they immediately make a profound commitment to serve him.

Let us pray that we mighjt be worthy of his service, and humble enough to know that we shall need his reassurance and support.

The lesson today is one of generosity. God gave the people Manna - a generous gift, without which they would all have starved. But they grumbled! How they grumbled - so much that Moses prayed earnestly to God that he might be freed of the burden of leading them.

Generosity then is not always returned!

In the Gospel, the well known feeding of the 5000, then remember that the people and the apostles probably had sufficient between them to feed each other - they simply had to be taught to give all that they had away. There was enough food in that camp to feed another camp over! The twelve baskets symbolise the twelve tribes - so to feed all the people of God.

The only reason we have taxes is because people are not generous enough to support each other as we should.

St John Vianney

He was the son of a peasant farmer, and a slow and unpromising candidate for the priesthood: he was eventually ordained on account of his devoutness rather than any achievement or promise.

In 1818 he was sent to be the parish priest of Ars-en-Dombes, an isolated village some distance from Lyon, and remained there for the rest of his life because his parishioners would not let him leave. He was a noted preacher, and a celebrated confessor: such was his fame, and his reputation for insight into his penitents’ souls and their futures, that he had to spend up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional, so great was the demand. The tens of thousands of people who came to visit this obscure parish priest turned Ars into a place of pilgrimage.

“The Curé refused to sit for a portrait. When the sculptor Cabuchet surreptitiously tried to capture his features in a ball of wax during the catechism, Vianney sternly bounced him out of the church.” (The Curé d’Ars Today, by G.W.Rutler, 1988).

The French State recognised his eminence by awarding him the medal of the Légion d’Honneur in 1848, and he sold it and gave the money to the poor.