In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Today is the feast of Saint Charles Baromeo, noted as the archbishop of Milan. He's a man with whom I feel to with whom I feel very close, like Pius the tenth and a few others. Where does one begin to try to lay before people of Garrett Park in 1982?
What this man of the sixteenth century died in '80 no, 1584 after the Council of Trent. What this man was and what he accomplished and the picture he gives us of the times. Notice this is the sixteenth century. This is the century of what we call the reformation. This is the century when North Of The Alps you had Luther and Zwingli and Farrell and Calvin and all the other first reformers as they were called, where each man was on his own, where there was no unanimity.
Except in one thing, to separate themselves from Rome and from the mass. That's two things on which they were completely united. And by the mass, mean the idea of the priest, the idea of sacrifice, the mass, as opposed to a mere supper, a meal. Here's a man who was no Augustine. By that, I mean he wasn't a man who had a sort of wild youth or like with the best example of it be Saint Ignatius Loyola.
Now what I want you to remember is this, and this is hard to do, but if you're going to keep your equilibrium, this is what we must do. You see, you can focus so much on what was happening up in Germany and then what later on happened over in England and to a small extent in France and up in the northern countries. Countries. You can think that was the world in the sixteenth century. Well, remember the same century that gave us a Wingly and a Farrell and a Calvin and a Luther, that same century gave us a Saint Ignatius, it gave us Saint Teresa of Avila, it gave us Saint John Fisher, Saint Thomas More in England.
It gave us men like Saint Cajetan who debated with Luther. It gave us a man like Saint Charlesborough Mayo. The church was still holy in the sixteenth century. Holy. I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic church.
The church was holy in those days. It never ceased to be. And while we can see this disintegration, as we say, in the North, this revolution, as we call it, the reformation, as they say, was a reformation that didn't reform, it destroyed. You could forget what was happening in the rest of the world. And plenty of things were happening and they were mighty good things.
Here's a Charles Barraumao, a typical ecclesiastic of his day. He came his mother was a Medici, Margarita. His uncle became Pius the fourth, a Medician pope. At 12 years of age, Charles Barro Mayo was given the tonsure, meaning that clipped off his some of his hair. And that made him a cleric.
And that made him eligible for benefices. At the age of 12, he was head of an abbey. That means he was getting in the revenue from the abbey. Never put a foot in it. He was only 12 years old.
At 22, they made him a cardinal with a couple more benefices. He he was a cultured gentleman. He was an ecclesiastic diplomat. He was a power in Rome. Then his brother died.
You see, in all of these lives that I have read, and I don't pretend to be well read at all, but in every one of them, there's a turning point. There's a turning point. Take this Maximilian Kolbe who was just canonized, the the man who took the the Polish prisoner's place to be starved to death. Maximilian Kolbe. His life was changed when he was about 12 or 14 years old by something his mother said.
He wasn't a bad boy, but he was just just a boy who was getting into all kinds of trouble. His mother turned to him one day and says, what's going to become of you? For some reason, those words changed his life. They did. This is factual.
This is the testimony of his own mother. So coming back to Charles Barra Mayo, he was not a he did not have a profligate view. He wasn't like a Francis of Assisi. But his brother died, and then he got himself ordained a priest at the age of 25. He died at the age of 46.
Only 46 years old. And when he became a priest, became a changed man. It isn't changed, yes. In what sense? In the sense in which he had a very fine perspective of what it was to be a pastor.
That's the one word that's that characterizes Charles Bartimaeus. He was a pastor, a shepherd of his flock. He eliminated all of the ly furnishings, the princely way of living that he had had as a cardinal, and I mean princely. Hundreds of retainers all in magnificent attire. A man who cultivated the arts, was a friend of all the learned men of the time.
And remember, the Renaissance was in Italy. Keep that in mind. They were speaking Greek down there when they hardly knew what was going on North Of The Alps. And here's the man that between the ages of about 26 and 46, twenty years, the things that he accomplished is it's really they are incredible. Such things, for example, as establishing a refuge for deserted and battered wives.
Orphanages. He set up a bank to make loans to people in desperate need. Orphanages, hospitals, seminaries. He was interested in music, in the revision of the missile, and above all in catechism. He established a confraternity of Christian doctrine, doctrine, truth of Jesus Christ in his living contemporary church.
He is the one that among others who pushed the Roman catechism which came out of Trent. That catechism was intended for pastors who would then pass on the knowledge to the people. The Catechism of Trent was intended for priests, for pastors. You can get a copy of it, it's translated into English. Still is a good catechism.
It is still a good volume giving the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ according to the council of Trent 1545 to 1563. This man did all of that. He was a pastor. He visited these parishes. He had 10 or more councils of his his bishops and his priests.
And above all, he established seminaries. Now people criticize him for that today, that he that he established a house or seminary, a special school for young men who were to be priests. That's looked down upon today, you know, by the liberals. That was so parochial. Now you see we've eliminated the seminaries practically.
How you become a priest today is anybody's guess. But this man stands for something. This man stands for holiness, and I repeat, holiness is a personal thing. It's not collective. We can help one another and we're bound to help one another, but we have to do it.
It's a personal acquisition. With Jesus Christ, of course, it isn't something you do yourself. Without me, Christ said, you can do nothing. And so today as we celebrate this great man, Charles Baromeo and remember, he was a menacee. You hear all the talk.
His father his uncle was a menacee and Pope Pius the fourth. His mother was a menacee. He was a good man, always a good man. Then he became a good priest. Then he became a marvelous bishop, and finally died a saint.
And we honor him today as one whose company we keep. In the name of the father and of the son and holy spirit. Amen.