Today is also the feast day of St. Meinrad, who died on this day 1,151 years ago. He is the holy patron of the monastic community here in Southern Indiana, and the patron saint of hospitality.This patronage is attributed to Meinrad for good reason. Meinrad welcomed to his hermitage, where he had lived faithfully for 26 years, two men he knew would kill him.
The robbers-turned-murderers, thinking that Meinrad had many possessions in his hermitage, came not long after Meinrad had a vision that two visitors would soon kill him.
They demanded all Meinrad's goods when they arrived. Meinrad told them he had nothing but they didn't believe him, thinking that Meinrad had benefactors who showered him with gifts.
Meinrad was offering Mass at the time the men came into his hermitage. He finished Mass, offered some additional prayers, kissed his relics, and opened the door.
He warmly greeted and welcomed the men he knew were about to kill him.
We can love our enemies, too, but we usually can do so only in small ways.
As it did last year, this reality makes me think of a beautiful moment in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. The whiskey priest, nearing his death, comes to a powerful realization that night before he was shot:
He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would have only needed a little self-restraint and a little courage.Some might call it 20/20 hindsight, but I think that it points to the reality that sainthood isn't all that hard, so long as, like Saint Meinrad, we have a little self-restraint and a little courage.
We can love our enemies in little ways, and those little ways end up going a long ways, such that perhaps we will come to discover that our "enemies" are not really enemies at all. It's easier, says the whiskey priest, than we might think. Let's take this lesson from him now, before the eve of our own passing.
St. Meinrad: Pray for us!
mk
