Nov 14 – S Josaphat Kuntsevich

It’s the Feast of St. Josaphat, 3rd Class, with the color of Red. In this episode: today in Church History: “Henry VIII Executes Reading Abbey’s Last Abbot (1539)”, the meditation: “The Necessary Vigilance”, and today’s thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

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A bishop once took one of his own vestments to a pawnbroker. It was his omophorion, the broad band an Eastern bishop wears across his shoulders. He needed money for the poor, and apparently he knew exactly what he could spare.

That bishop was Saint Josaphat Kuntsevich. The Roman Martyrology remembers his death today, November twelfth, and the traditional Roman calendar keeps his feast on November fourteenth. The vestment he pawned tells us something about the man. The fact that it was an omophorion tells us something about the Church he served.

Baptized John, he took the name Josaphat when he entered the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Vilnius in 1604. Only a few years earlier, at the Union of Brest, several Ruthenian bishops had entered communion with Rome while retaining their Byzantine liturgy. Some clergy and laypeople accepted the union. Others resisted it. Josaphat would spend his life among people for whom those disagreements were painfully close to home.

One of the most interesting things he did was sit down with the old service books. He studied the prayers and texts familiar to Eastern Christians, looking for ways to explain communion with Rome from within the tradition his neighbors already knew. He also wrote a catechism, taking a cue from Saint Peter Canisius. There’s an unexpected pairing: a Byzantine monk drawing on the teaching methods of a Dutch Jesuit.

As archbishop of Polotsk, Josaphat urged his priests to teach their people and help them return to the sacraments. Think of what that meant for an ordinary parish. The same familiar liturgy could be the place where people learned what communion with the wider Church meant.

In 1623, while Josaphat was in Vitebsk, a crowd came looking for him. According to the account recalled by Pope Pius the Eleventh, Josaphat went out to meet them and asked them to spare the members of his household. He was killed, and the account says he prayed for his attackers as he died.

There’s one more detail you can see for yourself in Rome. Inside Saint Peter’s Basilica, near the Apostle’s tomb, Josaphat’s remains rest beneath an altar dedicated to Saint Basil the Great. A bishop who prayed in the Byzantine rite lies in the basilica of Saint Peter, under an altar named for one of the great fathers of the Christian East.

Saint Josaphat, pray for us.

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