Better Know a Saint: St. Celestine V

Every mother wants her children to be little saints, but in this case little Peter really did his mother proud. Pietro di Murrone, a bookish young lad who liked keep busy lest the Devil tempt him, went on to become Pope Celestine.

Pietro became a hermit at age 20, but ran into a little problem: how can you be a hermit if other hermits keep wanting to hang around and be hermits together? Kind of defeats the purpose, y'know. So Peter formed the Benedictine Celestine Order.

Not being a particularly political person during a time when the Church was highly political (you have to read it to believe it), Pietro would have preferred to live a hermitic life. And he tried. Until the day three guys showed up and told him he'd been elected pope. Not exactly thrilled, he did consider running off, but after a chat with God, accepted his "promotion" and chose the name Celestine V.

That he was more spiritual than political didn't help, at least in terms of job security. Not to mention his inability to say "no" to anybody, his tenure as pope lasted all of five months. Why? He quit the job. To him it came down to one choice: his job or his soul, and he chose the latter. But nobody had ever quit the job before, so what to do?

Eventually a new election election was held, Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani became Boniface VIII. Not entirely certain Celestine's followers wouldn't try to reinstate him or something, Boniface tried to arrest him and keep him under watch. Celestine escaped and tried to make it to Greece, but was thwarted by the weather. After being captured by Boniface, this simple old man, who wished a simple life of prayer and study was confined to a small cell, attended by two of his adherents and eventually murdered by Boniface.

Not a happy ending at all.

Better Know a Saint: St. Pachomius

What's a hard working Egyptian fella going to do after leaving the Roman army? In Pachomius's case, it was to convert to Christianity in 314 BCE and build a new type of monastary.

Pachiomus watched Christians bring food and clothes to prison inmates at Thebes and was impressed by their behavior. After leaving the army he became a Christian, and spent several years following an elderly monk named Palemon, living the austere life of prayer and manual labor that St. Anthony of Egypt had created.

Eventually Pachiomus had an idea. Another monk, Macarius had created "larves" where monks who were unable to keep living a solitary life because of physical or mental problems could still be part of the religious community. Pachomius set about organizing these cells into a formal organization that moved individual hermits into formalized communities - the first monestaries and nunneries. To put that into religious geek-speak, monks went from living a hermitic (or eremitic lifestyle), to a communal (or cenobitic lifestyle). While St. Anthony usually gets the credit for the monastic communities as we think of them today, it was really Pachiomus who created them, on the banks of the lovely Egyptian Nile River.

He's also credited with inventing prayer rope, a descendant of the rosary.

However, St. Anthony is still the go-to guy when in comes to lost stuff. Now where did I put my Blackberry?

Every once in a while, things conspire to toss something into my life from several directions at once. This time it's a book, Wage Theft in America by Kim Bobo. Within the past twenty-four hours I've had two emails from two different people (who don't know each other) and come across a diary on Daily Kos about this book.

Kim Bobo is the the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization founded in 1996 to protect worker rights and encourage faith organizations to become involved in worker rights issues.

I haven't read this book yet, but it is definitely going on my "must read" list.

Crossposted at Blue Cat Lair.

Don't come around much anymore...

Since the last time I posted, I've had two shoulder surgeries, I'm getting ready to have a spinal fusion next month, and my HD blew up. I now have a new kickin' system that does the job and then some.

I took one of those little "Find out what religion you really are, and here is the result:

Liberal Quaker is my top match on the Selectsmart.com quiz: Spiritual Belief System Selector by SelectSmart.com staff
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Actually I am a very liberal Episcopalian, but "Liberal Quaker" is cool too. And Quakers usually worship silently quiet, which is very nice.