September 22
Saint Thomas of Villanova
Today's Gospel: Luke
8:19-21
Today’s Gospel:
Luke 8:19-21
(Jesus And His Family)
Reflection:
Today the Church remembers Saint Thomas of Villanova, an Augustinian archbishop of Valencia so devoted to the poor that when a gift was given to furnish his residence, he sent the money straight to a hospital instead, telling his canons plainly, “What does a poor friar like myself want with furniture?” Every morning, hundreds of the poor came to his door and every one of them received something, some got food, others wine, and even coins, and when his own peers grew ashamed of how easily he let himself be taken advantage of, he said, “my duty is to assist and relieve those who come to my door.” He died the way he lived: on the floor of his own room, because he had already given his bed away to a poor man who needed it more. Proverbs today could have been written as his job description: whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be heard. Thomas never once closed that ear, not even at the very end of his life.
That refusal to close his ear runs directly into the Gospel today. Jesus is told that His mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see Him, and He answers with words that redraw the whole shape of family: my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. Thomas built exactly that kind of family at his own door every morning, not blood relatives, but hundreds of strangers he treated as though they belonged to him, because he had actually heard the word and actually done it, rather than merely admiring it from a comfortable distance. The archbishop's household, by the time he died, had effectively become the household Jesus describes anyone who came hungry and left fed.
That should press
on wherever you've let hearing the word substitute for doing it, nodding along
at what love and mercy require, while keeping your door closed to the actual
people asking. Thomas had every excuse the world would have accepted: he was
archbishop of an entire diocese, with more legitimate demands on his time than
any of us will ever have. No matter what his schedule and responsibilities were,
he still answered the door himself. Whose cry have you learned to tune out
because answering it felt inconvenient? Proverbs is blunt about where that
leads. Thomas is proof that there is always a way.
There's a shrine
near Ranton, in France, called Our Lady of Compassion, built where a pagan
altar to Jupiter once stood before it became Mary's altar instead, ground once
given to a distant, uncaring god, converted into a place where the suffering
could finally be heard. Thomas's whole ministry was that same conversion in
miniature: turning what could have been a comfortable archbishop's residence
into a place where compassion, not distance, defined every doorway. Our Lady of
Compassion asks the same thing of us that Thomas asked of himself every single
morning, not admiration from a distance, but an open door. An open door to all
who were seeking help.
Whose cry have
you learned to tune out because answering it felt inconvenient? Thomas gave
away his own bed on the day he died. What would it cost you to simply open the
door today, instead of closing your ear?
Rosary Man Jim
🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
