From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   September 18th - Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Franciscan Priest   
   (1603-1663)   
      
   Joseph Desa was born in the little city of Cupertino, near the Gulf of   
   Tarento,   
   in 1600. It is said in the acts of the process of his canonization that at   
   the   
   age of five he already showed such signs of sanctity that if he had been an   
   adult, he would have been venerated as a perfect man. Already in his youth   
   he   
   was ravished in ecstasies which literally tore him away from the earth; it   
   has   
   been calculated that perhaps half of his life for some sixty years was spent   
   literally above the ground. But much remains to be said of Saint Joseph,   
   apart   
   from his visible divine favors.   
      
   He almost died at the age of seven from an interior abscess, which only his   
   prayer to Our Lady cured. He learned to be a shoemaker to earn his living,   
   but   
   was often absent in spirit from his work. He treated his flesh with singular   
   rigor. The Cardinal de Lauria, who knew him well for long years, said he   
   wore a   
   very rude hair shirt and never ate meat, contenting himself with fruits and   
   bread. He seasoned his soup, if he accepted any, with a dry and very bitter   
   powder of wormwood. At the age of seventeen he desired to become a   
   conventual   
   Franciscan, but was refused because he had not studied. He entered the   
   Capuchins   
   as a lay brother, but the divine favors he received seemed everywhere to   
   bring   
   down contempt upon him. He was in continuous contemplation and dropped   
   plates   
   and cauldrons. He would often stop and kneel down, and his long halts in   
   places   
   of discomfort brought on a tumor of the knee which was very painful. It was   
   decided that he lacked both aptitude and health, and he was sent home. He   
   was   
   then regarded everywhere as a vagabond and a fool, and his mother in   
   particular   
   was harsh, as had been her custom for long years. She did, however, obtain   
   permission for him to take charge of the stable for the conventual   
   Franciscans,   
   wearing the habit of the Third Order.   
      
   Saint Joseph proved himself many times to be perfectly obedient. His   
   humility   
   was heroic, and his mortification most exceptional. His words bore fruit and   
   wakened the indifferent, warned against vice and in general were seen to   
   come   
   from a man who was very kind and very virtuous. He was finally granted the   
   habit. He read with difficulty and wrote with still more difficulty, but the   
   Mother of God was watching over him. When by the intervention of the bishop   
   he   
   had been admitted to minor Orders, he desired to be a priest but knew well   
   only   
   one text of the Gospel. By a special Providence of God, that was the text he   
   was   
   asked to expound during the canonical examination for the diaconate. The   
   bishop   
   who was in charge of hearing candidates for the priesthood found that the   
   first   
   ones answered exceptionally well, and he decided to ordain them all without   
   any   
   further hearings, thus passing Joseph with the others. He was ordained in   
   1628.   
      
   He retired to a hermitage where he was apparently in nearly continuous   
   ecstasy,   
   or at least contemplation. He kept nothing for himself save the tunic he   
   wore.   
   Rejoicing to be totally poor, he felt entirely free also. He obeyed his   
   Superiors and went wherever he was sent, wearing sandals and an old tunic   
   which   
   often came back with pieces missing; the people had begun to venerate him as   
   a   
   Saint, and had cut them off. When he did not notice what was happening, he   
   was   
   reproached as failing in poverty. The humble Brother wanted to pass for a   
   sinner; he asked for the lowest employments, and transported the building   
   materials for a church on his shoulders. He begged for the community. At the   
   church he was a priest; elsewhere, a poor Brother.   
      
   Toward the end of his life all divine consolations were denied the Saint,   
   including his ecstasies. He fell victim to an aridity which was unceasing,   
   and   
   he could find no savor in any holy reading. Then the infernal spirits   
   inspired   
   terrible visions and dreams. He shed tears amid this darkness and prayed his   
   Saviour to help him, but received no answer. When the General of the Order   
   heard   
   of this, he called him to Rome, and there he recovered from the fearful   
   trial,   
   and all his joy returned.   
      
   He still had combats with the enemy of God to bear just the same, when the   
   demons took human form to attempt to injure him physically. Other   
   afflictions   
   were not spared him, but his soul overcame all barriers between himself and   
   God.   
   He died on September 18, 1663, at the age of 63, in the Franciscan convent   
   of   
   Osino. He had celebrated Holy Mass up to and including the day before his   
   death,   
   as he had foretold he would do.   
      
   Source: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin   
   (Bloud et   
   Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 11.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Humility, simplicity, charity, but above all charity.   
   --Blessed Emilie's dying words   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Let every one of you please his neighbor by doing good, for his edification.   
   (Rom. 15:2)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   Canticle Isaiah 2   
      
   The mountain of the house of the Lord   
      
   In the last days, at the end of time,   
    the mountain of the house of the Lord   
    will be prepared high above all mountains.   
   It will be raised above the hills   
    and all nations will come to it.   
      
   And many peoples will come there and say   
    "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,   
    to the house of the God of Jacob.   
   Let him teach us his ways,   
    so that we may walk in his paths".   
   For from Sion the law will go forth,   
    from Jerusalem the word of the Lord.   
      
   And he will judge the nations   
    and rebuke many peoples.   
   They will beat their swords into ploughshares   
    and their spears into sickles.   
   Nation will lift sword against nation no longer.   
    No longer will they go out into battle.   
      
   People of Jacob, come:   
    let us walk in the light of the Lord.   
      
   Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,   
    as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,   
    world without end.   
   Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)