From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The Way Comes to You   
      
   "Our Lord said: "I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Life." The   
   Truth, all the while remaining with the Father, became the Way also   
   when he assumed our flesh.   
      
   No one says to you: "Labor and find the Way" so that you may come to   
   the Truth and the Life. Get up, lazy one! The Way himself has come to   
   you and roused you from slumber."   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon 142, 1   
      
   Prayer: How great was your love for us, kind Father! You did not spare   
   your sole-begotten Son but surrendered him for the sake of us sinners!   
   --St. Augustine--Confessions 10, 43   
      
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   November 15th - St. Raphael Kalinowski, OCD   
   (Also known as Joseph Kalinowski, Raffael di San Giuseppe, Raphael   
   Joseph Kalinowski, Raphael of Saint Joseph)   
      
   Memorial 19 November on some calendars   
      
   (1835-1907)   
      
   +---The canonization of saints has often been deferred out of   
   political prudence. Popes would naturally hesitate to canonize a   
   martyr, for example, while the ruler who executed him was still in   
   power. A tyrant might well consider such an action an invitation to   
   intensify his persecution.   
      
   There were certainly some true saints and martyrs among those   
   Christians imprisoned or done to death in our own century by Soviet   
   Russia. No doubt a number of them will be canonized in due time.   
   Meanwhile, however, Pope John Paul II, on November 17, 1991,   
   proclaimed as a saint a man who, in an earlier generation, suffered in   
   the same way for his people enslaved by the Tsarist Russia, and then   
   dedicated his life to the spiritual revival of both Lithuanians and   
   Slavs. He was the Carmelite friar, St. Raphael Kalinowski.   
      
   Joseph Kalinowski was the son of a prominent professor of mathematics,   
   Andrew Kalinowski, and Josepha Poionska Kalinowski. He was born on   
   September 1, 1835, in Vilna, Russian Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania).   
   Having received his earliest education at home, at nine he entered the   
   local College of the Nobility, where his father taught, graduating at   
   17 with a gold medal to his credit. Raised in devout Catholicism,   
   Joseph even at that point felt called to the priesthood. On his   
   father’s advice, however, he chose to go to a university first.   
      
   Finding a university was no easy task for a young Pole in those days.   
   When Russia took over Poland and Lithuania in 1795, she had closed all   
   independent Polish universities, so the only universities available   
   were Russian. Young Joseph picked the Institute of Agronomy in Hory   
   Horki, Russia, where he studied zoology, chemistry, agriculture and   
   apiculture (raising bees). But gifted as he was like his father in   
   mathematics, he soon switched to the Academy of Military Engineering   
   in St. Petersburg.   
      
   When he graduated in 1857 as a lieutenant in the Russian Engineering   
   Corps, he was sent to supervise the designing and building of a   
   railway line between Kursk, Kiev and Odessa. This pioneering effort   
   took him into lonely country, but he profited spiritually by the very   
   solitude of his surroundings.   
      
   Work on the railroad project was postponed in 1860. Lieut. Joseph was   
   reassigned to the fortress at Brest-Litovsk. In 1862 he was promoted   
   to captain on the general staff. His 3 years at the fortress were   
   disturbing, however. He felt the heavy hand of Russia, especially   
   toward Poles and the Catholic Church in Poland. Nevertheless, he   
   started a Catholic Sunday School, teaching there himself, and he   
   limited his own expenditures so as to be able to assist the poor of   
   the area.   
      
   In 1863, the Poles rose against their Russian oppressors. Kalinowski   
   was in a difficult position. He knew the revolt was doomed to failure,   
   but he approved its purpose, and he believed that if he joined the   
   rising he might be able to limit somehow the damage that would   
   certainly occur. He therefore resigned from the Russian army, cast his   
   lot with the insurgents, and was named their minister of war for the   
   Vilna region, on the understanding that he would not have to pronounce   
   a death sentence on anybody. During the next ten months of the   
   rebellion, he spent his time doing what he could to save lives.   
      
   The Russians were watching him, however, and on March 25, 1864, they   
   arrested him. Three months later they condemned him to death, but   
   since he was well-known and popular, and might even be called a martyr   
   if executed, they commuted his sentence to ten years of hard labor. On   
   June 29, 1864, he set out on the nine-month trek on foot to Siberia,   
   one of a long line of exiles bound for what he described as “a vast   
   cemetery for tens of thousands of victims. ”   
      
   Joseph was in Siberia for nine years. These were days of profound   
   religious change for him. He became a spiritual leader, looked up to   
   by all the fellow prisoners for strength and consolation. Becoming   
   good friends with a priest whose parish was all Siberia, with him he   
   prepared the children of the prisoners for their first Communion.   
   Meanwhile he was himself preparing for what he now realized was his   
   vocation, to enter a monastery.   
      
   On his release in 1873, he first went home, and then sought to carry   
   out his resolution to become a religious. But since he was forbidden   
   to settle in Lithuania, and since most Polish monasteries had been   
   suppressed, he went to Paris. After serving as a tutor for three   
   years, he finally went to join the Carmelites at Graz in Austria.   
   Having made his novitiate there and received the religious name   
   Raphael of St. Joseph, he did his theological studies in Hungary. Then   
   he went to Czama, the only Carmelite house then in Poland, and was   
   ordained a priest on January 15,1882.   
      
   On a firm foundation of constant prayer and self-denial, he embraced   
   an apostolate designed to liberate his oppressed fellow-citizens   
   spiritually while they struggled for political and religious   
   liberation.   
      
   He thus became a strong influence in the revival of the Polish   
   Carmelites. Among his apostolic programs, he laid great stress on the   
   sacrament of penance. In fact, he spent so much time hearing   
   confessions that he came to be called a “martyr of the confessional.”   
   Eastern-rite Christians were numerous in his homeland. Father Raphael   
   was not only attentive to the Ukrainian Catholics but also, in an   
   ecumenical spirit, to the local Orthodox.   
      
   Father Raphael died on November 15, 1907, at Wadowice, Poland. The   
   news of his death spread rapidly, and thousands came to honor a man   
   they already considered a saint.   
      
   Pope John Paul II, himself a native of Wadowice, confirmed this   
   devotion. In 1983 he beatified, and in 1991 he canonized this   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)