From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   ON the "wise of the world"    
      
   "Deviating from faith, they are implicated in the darkness of   
   perpetual blindness, although they have the day of Christ and the   
   light of the Church before them; while seeing nothing, they open their   
   mouth as if they knew everything, keen for vain things and dull for   
   things eternal."   
      
   ~ Ambrose, Bishop, Father and Doctor of the Church, Saint; commenting   
   in the 4th century on the "wise of the world" who look askance at   
   Christianity, a conflict that has existed from the very birth of the   
   Faith (see "Science and the Church").   
      
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   August 4th – Bl. Father Frederick Janssoone   
   Franciscan Missionary to Four Continents and miracle worker   
      
   Born in 1838 in Ghyvelde, France, of a Flemish family, Father   
   Frederick Janssoone was the thirteenth and last child. From early   
   youth he aspired to consecrate his life to God, but his mother’s   
   widowhood and subsequent long illness delayed his plans. He took   
   employment in nearby Hazebrouck, selling fabrics. When he was 25 years   
   old, his pious mother died, and in the same year her three youngest   
   sons all decided, independently of one another, to enter religion.   
   Frederick decided upon the Seraphic Order, whose ideals corresponded   
   exactly with his own. Strict poverty, sustaining an apostolate founded   
   on penance and prayer, would always characterize his religious life.   
   He entered the Franciscan novitiate of Amiens in 1864, and was   
   ordained a priest in 1870. He served as military chaplain during the   
   brief Franco-Prussian war, facing undaunted the contagion of a triple   
   epidemic.   
      
   In October 1871, with another priest and four Franciscan Brothers,   
   Father Frederick was named to found a convent of the Order in   
   Bordeaux. He collaborated with the founder of a magazine, writing   
   articles for the Revue Franciscaine. He became local Guardian in   
   Bordeaux in 1873, when he was 35 years old. In 1874 he was relieved of   
   the responsibility of Superior to preach retreats; he also began to   
   found fraternities of the Third Order. In 1876, having a strong desire   
   to labor for his Lord in the Holy Land, and when his request was   
   granted, he left for Palestine in 1877 with a brother Franciscan.   
   During his first year in the Orient, he preached retreats for   
   religious communities in both Syria and Egypt, returning to Jerusalem   
   in 1878, when he was elected to serve as Custodial Vicar. There he   
   could remain close to the very place where our Saviour’s Redemption   
   was effected--the Basilica which conserves within it the site of   
   Calvary and the Holy Sepulcher itself. He accompanied pilgrimages to   
   preside over the prayer and act as guide, and he preached on many   
   formal occasions. He reinstated the Way of the Cross along the path   
   Our Lord took to Calvary. He took charge of building activities for   
   the restoration of churches and preparation of much-needed lodgings   
   for pilgrims. Father Frederick’s humility and Franciscan charity   
   brought about harmony among the various factions of the Holy City.   
      
   Father Frederick came to Quebec City, Canada in 1881 to beg for   
   financial aid to the Custody, which had begun renovation of the   
   antique Basilica of Bethlehem. He brought with him relics of the Holy   
   Land, and these, when venerated or applied to afflicted members of   
   infirm persons, miracles occurred. The people called the ardent priest   
   a miracle-worker, whereas he ascribed the miracles to God’s love, the   
   efficacy of Our Saviour’s redemptive death on Calvary, and the faith   
   of the people. When he was recalled to the Holy Land after only eight   
   months in the Province, all the Canadians who knew him desired his   
   return.   
      
   In the summer of that year he came to Trios Rivers, Quebec, as   
   Monsignor Louis Lafleche, its fervent bishop, had invited him there to   
   establish the proposed Canadian Holy Land Commissariat. The bishop   
   welcomed him and gave him land for the proposed edifice.   
      
   It was Father Frederick who preached at the dedication of the Shrine   
   of Our Lady of the Rosary at Cap-de-la-Madeleine on June 22, 1888,   
   foretelling the future fame of the site. That evening, Our Lady’s   
   statue, which had been moved to the main altar, opened its eyes, in   
   the presence of the parish Vicar, Father Duguay, Father Frederick, and   
   a parishioner who had come to pray. Father Frederick never forgot the   
   gaze of the Mother of God, engraved in his soul. It would inspire all   
   his preaching, when he was placed in charge of the numerous   
   pilgrimages which would come by boat and train, from the cities and   
   towns of Quebec and beyond, to the Cape.   
      
   During his 28 years in Canada Father Frederick founded a great many   
   fraternities of the Third Order of Saint Francis. He was the   
   activating force behind several life-size Ways of the Cross erected in   
   the Province, one of which is still extant at the Sanctuary of   
   Reparation in Montreal.   
      
   The Franciscan crossed the river one winter day on the ice, by horse   
   and sleigh belonging by a young man who had come to fetch him for a   
   sick call. The young driver, who intended to drive him back home   
   across the ice, found by evening that it had melted. Father Frederick   
   told him not to worry, and to go on home. No one ever knew how he made   
   the return trip. Pictures often depict him on an ice floe, praying on   
   his knees; over his head the Mother of Heaven, listening to him. For   
   he said on his return to the rectory, when Father Duguay did not   
   understand why there was no driver or horse accompanying him, that   
   “the Mother of God had provided” for his transport.   
      
   Father Frederick, after many years of suffering from an illness, went   
   to his reward on August 4, 1916. Everywhere he labored, his memory   
   remains in veneration today. His ministry extended to five nations,   
   France, Egypt, Syria, the Holy Land and Canada. The mortal remains of   
   this son of Saint Francis have twice been found intact at   
   Trois-Rivieres, in 1948 and 1988. Favors continue to be recorded by   
   the intercession of this ever-popular Friar.   
      
   Sources: Le Père Frédéric de Ghyvelde, series of booklets on the   
   different phases of his life, by Rev. Mathieu-M. Daunais, O.F.M.   
   (Montreal: 1920's); An Apostle of Two Worlds, by Romain Legare, O.F.M.   
   (Trois Rivières, Quebec, 1958).   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The first requirement of salvation is to keep the standard of the True Faith.   
   --Pope St. Adrian II (867-872)   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he was   
   hungry. And the tempter coming said to him: If thou be the Son of God,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)