DECEMBER 15TH, FERIA OF ADVENT

Month in honor of the Nativity of OLJC.

Blessed Charles Steeb

Born on December 18th, AD 1773, in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg (modern Germany), to a wealthy Lutheran family. Studied briefly in Paris, France, as a teenager but fled during the butchery of the French Revolution. While studying in Verona, Italy, his contact with priests and lay Catholics led to his conversion to Catholicism, for which his parents disowned him. He studied for the priesthood and, once ordained a priest, he undertook a special ministry to the sick and to reformed sinners. He joined an Evangelical Brotherhood of priests and laity, an association meant to favor the building up of a strong spiritual life. He also studied civil and canon law in Pavia, Italy, and was a gifted teacher of languages. With Blessed Luigia Poloni, he co-founded the teaching order Institute of the Sisters of Mercy. He died December 15th, AD 1856 at Verona, Italy of natural causes, and was beatified by Pope Paul VI. on July 6th, 1975.

Reflection.-- The holy Fathers, who by their zeal and learning maintained the true faith, shunned the dangerous rocks of error, because in their studies they followed the rules laid down by divine revelation, and made sincere humility the foundation of all their literary pursuits. Conscious that they were liable to mistakes, they entertained a modest diffidence in themselves and their own judgment, and said with St. Austin, “I may err, but a heretic I will never be.” This humility and caution is a sure guard against any fatal errors in religion, or dangerous miscarriages in civil conduct, with regard to literary attempts, into which an overbearing pride chiefly betrays men. How many by it become pedants, falling into an ostentatious show of trifling or pretended learning! How many are perpetually wrangling and disputing, eager not for the point in debate, but for the victory, and desirous to display their imaginary abilities!