Sacred Calendar

Fourth Lesson - The Wound of Love and the Discipline of Religion

Josaphat Kuncewicz was born at Vladimir in Volhynia of noble and Catholic parents. As a child, while hearing his mother speak of the Passion of Christ, he received in his heart a wound as though a dart had come forth from the side of an image of Jesus crucified. Inflamed with the love of God, he began to devote himself to prayer and pious works so earnestly that he became an example and an object of admiration to older youths. As a young man he professed the monastic rule among the cloistered followers of St. Basil at Vilna and made wonderful progress in evangelical perfection. He went barefoot even during the severe cold of that region, never ate meat, took wine only from obedience, and afflicted his body with a rough hairshirt until death. He preserved unstained the flower of chastity which he had vowed to the Virgin Mother of God in youth. The fame of his virtue and teaching soon became so widespread that he was appointed superior of the monastery at Byten while still young, then archimandrite of Vilna, and finally, though unwilling, Archbishop of Polotsk.

Fifth Lesson - Catholic Unity, Papal Authority, and Mercy

Raised to that dignity, he relaxed nothing of his former manner of life and had nothing at heart except divine worship and the salvation of the sheep entrusted to him. A most zealous promoter of Catholic unity and truth, he labored with all his strength to bring schismatics and heretics back to communion with the See of St. Peter. By sermons and writings full of piety and doctrine he never ceased to defend the Supreme Pontiff and the plenitude of his power against the shameless calumnies and errors of the impious. He vindicated ecclesiastical goods seized by laymen. It is incredible how many heretics he recalled to the bosom of Mother Church. Pontifical declarations clearly attest that Josaphat was a most excellent promoter of the union of the Greek Church with the Latin. He restored the beauty of divine worship, built churches and houses for consecrated virgins, assisted other pious works, and voluntarily devoted the revenues of his see to them. He was so generous toward the poor that, when nothing else was at hand to relieve the need of a widow, he ordered his episcopal pallium to be pledged.

Sixth Lesson - The Martyr of Unity

The great progress of the Catholic Faith stirred such hatred in wicked men that by conspiracy they determined to seek Christ's athlete for death. He himself foretold in a sermon to the people what threatened him. During a pastoral visitation at Vitebsk, the murderers invaded the archiepiscopal residence and attacked those they met. The most gentle man went freely to meet them and addressed them kindly: 'Children, why do you strike my household? If you have anything against me, behold, I am here.' They rushed upon him, wounded him with weapons and arrows, struck him savagely with an axe, and cast him into the river on November 12, 1623, in the forty-third year of his age. His body, surrounded by a wonderful light, was taken from the water. The martyr's blood first benefited his very murderers, for all who had been condemned to death rejected schism and repented of their crime. Pope Urban VIII numbered him among the Blessed. On June 29, 1867, during the solemn centenary celebration of the Princes of the Apostles, Pope Pius IX canonized him in the Vatican Basilica before the College of Cardinals and nearly five hundred patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops of every rite gathered from the whole world, solemnly enrolling this defender of ecclesiastical unity, the first from among the Eastern Christians, in the order of the Saints.