foreign [Music] [Music] so today we continue our um Novena for the holy souls in purgatory please do try to make it to a cemetery if you can today to pray for the dead again for them that plenary Indulgence under the usual conditions also keep in mind I was talking yesterday about indulgences and they can come in partial or plenary and you can gain an Indulgence from doing very many things um like I said I'm praying the rosary um you know listening devoutly to a a homily and so on and you can also gain regular indulgences
just for any good work some suffering you endure well or a difficulty or a Penance you Undertake and don't forget that those indulgences that you gain you can give them to the holy souls and purgatories you can always give away the indulgences that you gain you can't give away the Merit or the grace that you gain from doing good works or prayers but you can give away the temporal Punishment Due to sin and and I always tell people that you only need one plenary Indulgence in your life and that's like the last one before you
die like that's the only planar Indulgence you need so give the rest of them away in fact you can give everything away so I would say just give all your your indulgences away to the holy souls and and if you want you can make that super heroic act and give away the last one before you die as well but really that's the only one you need so you know we're not just charitable we're all so practical about things so um now today there's no there's no Feast assigned in the traditional calendar but in the new
calendar this is the feast of Saint Martin de pores and he's quite uh um quite an amazing Saint born in the year 1579 died in 1639 and he was from Peru and he was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a slave mother who had had her freedom and she was half African and half native Peruvian Indian and his his father abandoned his mother and his sister and himself at a young age and so they lived in poverty his mother did laundry to support them but it wasn't enough so he was sent away to
primary school for two years and then he studied with a barber to learn how to cut hair and also how to be a surgeon I guess Barbers were good at cutting not just hair but anything else you know they needed so he displayed a remarkable piety for someone of his young age he was only 11 years old he would spend several hours of the night and day in prayer and he wanted to be a Dominican but there were two Problems by this time he was uh he was 14 years old and there was also a
Peruvian law that descendants of Africans or native peruvians were unable to join religious communities as fully professed members so he was he was accepted by the Dominicans as a volunteer and he did whatever tasks they asked him to do and in return they gave him a Dominican habit and he was allowed to live in community so you know a young a young boy of like 14 or 15 that he thought this was great this was fantastic and he proved himself to be exceptionally responsible he did whatever tasks he was asked with patience humility and simplicity
no matter how menial kitchen work cleaning laundry he also cut hair and performed some basic medicine now after eight years of absolutely phenomenal uh work uh completely reliable uh totally devoted very Pious and exemplary uh example to the community um he according to Peruvian law he couldn't be fully professed right because of his his background because of his ethnicity well the prior the monastery I couldn't take it anymore and so against the law he made Saint Martin a fully professed member of the Dominican Community right against Peruvian law and this is right and just and
you know you may have all kinds of those sjws saying I was in this commendable that he did the right thing even though it was against the law uh well how many things today are the right thing even though it's against the law right is God's law is above all that's what it is not whatever's in Vogue or whatever is popular it's a God's law so um so St Martin was made a fully professed member of the Dominican community and the uh the 300 monks who were there uh all received it well with the exception
of a few members who displayed uh who were unhappy with this decision because he was mixed race and Oswell he was illegitimate illegitimate and one of the persons opposed to Saint Martin being made a fully professed member was Saint Martin right he thought he was too lowly this was an honor he didn't deserve and so he objected to being made a fully professed Dominican but of course he was ignored and they they went through like well if you're So Unworthy then you know stop being so proud and let us you know make him a member
uh so his community his humility was extreme I mean really it puts the rest of us to shame at one point um the community was reduced to penury they were in a great amount of debt and Saint Martin said to his prior I am only a poor mulatto sell me and pay off the debt and the indignant prior was was absolutely refused and you know while this is remarkable humility I mean even the Saints can be a little bit imprudent at times um he says you know I you know you you would want us you
would want a superior to tell someone like this of just extreme humility but perhaps not quite much Prudence okay if we where are you going to end up right if you're a slave are you going to be placed in a compromising position are you going to be resold to somebody else and we have no control over where you go like what's you know a great trust in God but you know prudence and and humility they don't oppose each other so um let's see he was 24 at the time of making his vows and he continued
in the most menial work for the rest of his life there at the monastery he was friends with Saint Rose of Lima and she also wanted to be a Dominican but she was prevented by her parents she was only ever third order so so St Martin actually was a greater Dominican further along than she was and she also loved the poor and cared for the sick just like Saint Martin did she just she did all that out of her home and he did it out of the monastery but two contemporaneous Saints working together there um
Saint Martin de pores he became ulmanner of his Monastery in charge of raising money and doing good Goods for the poor and the sick and he was excellent at it it said that he um collected the equivalent of two thousand dollars per week for the poor and each day fed 160 persons he was um so devoted to the sick and the dying that often there was no room for them in the infirmary and so he placed them in his own bed he was chastised once for this for putting a filthy person in his own cell
but he said compassion is preferable to cleanliness um at one point uh his his Superior ordered him under obedience not to do this uh so he he stopped bringing people to the monastery um instead his he had a um his sister allowed him to use the house she was living in so he could bring them to that house until uh he found a man suffering from an injury that would have been fatal unless he received more immediate care so St Martin brought him to the monastery and put him in his bed against the express command
of his Superior which is really that that's kind of a big deal for religious they take vows of obedience and he'd been placed under obedience not to bring any more persons into the monastery so he was reprimanded for this by his um Superior but he said in Return forgive my error I did not know that obedience took precedence over charity and in this case of course charity for somebody whose life was was at stake uh so the prior uh realized the error and completely relented at this point and then bound him under obedience but with
the condition he was free to follow The Inspirations of charity uh let's see now he was able now nobody nobody is able to have this kind of a uh you would say the heart of Christ within them because that's where all this is coming from right this is not Saint Martin de Poor's uh just of his own nature doing all these things this is Saint Martin de Poor's giving himself to Christ and then Christ giving to Saint Martin de pores his own heart by which he loves other people that's that's what the Sacred Heart devotion
is about and that's the Fulfillment of John I think it's John chapter 15 where our Lord says you have heard it said love one another or love love each other um love your neighbor as yourself but I say unto you uh love one another as I have loved you that's the new command and you can't do that if you're going to love somebody else as Christ loves them you have to have his heart with which to love them that's that's the only way possible and that's how Saint Martin was able to do all these things
for the poor now how did they get that how did he get the heart of Christ because he was a d a man of deep prayer remember as an 11 year old boy he was spending hours in prayer he was spending time with God which is what I always say prayer is spending time with God if you don't spend time with somebody you're never going to get to know who they are they're never going to get to tell you who they are you have to be spending time in prayer so he did that he did
that his whole life and he continued that at the monastery hours and hours in prayer deep prayer in fact one time he was kneeling at the at night um on the wooden steps of the Altar and there was like adoration going on and the the wooden steps caught fire from one of the candles and so there's a huge commotion you know there's this fire and the whole thing's threatening to go up the monks are running around they're putting out the fire and Saint Martin de Poor's stayed kneeling at the steps throughout everything and they asked
him later why didn't you do something how come you just just kept kneeling there and he says in return I didn't notice I didn't notice he was so caught up in prayer that the steps are the place is burning down around him and he didn't even notice he was so wrapped in prayer that is deep deep contemplation uh so he also had the other miracles um he was reported to heal the sick oftentimes by simply giving them a glass of water he would levitate and people would see light shining out of his room and he
would have miraculous knowledge of certain things another time uh he there was a plague that hit the city of Lima and a third of the brothers in the community were placed in quarantine they were put into a sick Ward behind locked doors and separated from the community right these days we have a better idea of how awful quarantine can be and their care of the care they were receiving was not very good but they were they were behind a set of three different locked doors and very few people had the keys and Saint Martin wasn't
one of them however uh brothers who were sick would report Saint Martin appearing at their beds out of nowhere and ministering him and getting what they needed you know back and forth just at all times so people knew he didn't have the key so he was he was going through these locked doors you know very much like like Christ um you know now the Saints aren't I say there's a downside to sanctity if you could say that for living with a saint isn't easy and one of them being is that they have like this rampant
out of control charity so once Saint Martin was asked to do something about the rodents who were infesting the kitchen but he defended them and said that the poor rodents are underfed we're not treating them very well so it's like no that's also he opened up an orphanage for children and also for stray cats and dogs so it just had this overflowing charity now now in in his defense right but lest you think he wasn't some hippie um the Saints they they absolutely they see God everywhere and they love God in everything and that's what
they when when the saints see nature and they see creatures and animals they see God in them they love God in in his creature they love God in the nature that he created and that's where their love Springs from and it is not the same thing as as like the nature and animal rights people of today they they love they love animals instead of God and instead of their fellow man um and really when you have that kind of a perversion they're not even loving the animals they're loving themselves they're projecting themselves onto whatever it
is and it's the same thing for for money or power pleasure they project themselves onto something else and then has a selfish love of whatever it is so anyways uh but the Saints they see God everywhere and they love God everywhere and in everything and that explains that that kind of um uh Behavior um uh so after now after now of course this is this is this is uh very much how God likes to work after serving the poor for so many years and ministering to others for his whole life he himself became sick and
for the very last year of his life he spent it in terrible suffering and now he had to have other people serve him which is anybody who's done that anybody who is so used to serving others when they themselves have to be served it's hard it's kind of a Penance that they have to endure because they're not used to it and they want to get out and serve others and it's like no now it's your turn right a taste of your own medicine we could say uh so after a year of of of of great
uh resignation and I'm certainly great love and and great um offering of his suffering to God he died on this day through November in the year 1639 at 60 years old uh at his funeral he was immediately venerated as a saint and 25 years after his death so many people had reported Miracles and and healings at his intercessions that they exhumed his body and indeed found it to be incorrupt with the odor of sweetness uh he was not canonized however until John the 23rd in 1962 and hence is not on the traditional calendar uh so
um you know as I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon right this is the week for for uh the holy souls in purgatory and you know we don't live in the 16th century we don't live in a third world country where there are poor persons and people starving and dying and in need of attention on the streets oh they are but they're all drug addicts and protected by the state they should be they should be being taken care of in mental institutions that's a whole separate thing there but the people on the streets nowadays
cannot be helped they refuse to be helped they don't want to be helped they want to be on the street and those kinds of that's what our Lord meant when he said you the poor you're always going to have with you uh but the one thing we can do is that we there are certain people out there we cannot help um but we can help the poor souls in purgatory we can always pray for the poor souls and they are suffering greatly I mean any torment if we saw somebody lying on the street and and
they had ulcers and they needed just basic care they needed food they needed medicine and and they didn't want to be that they were just there we would help them we moved with compassion to help them but those people aren't we don't see those people these days but the the the poor souls in purgatory their suffering is worse than that they cannot lift a finger to help themselves they are suffering the greatest torments uh you know I mean they don't have their bodies but they feel right in their soul the separation from God you know
the shame of their sins their suffering is far greater than anything we could imagine and we very often we forget about them we don't do anything for them but we can be like Saint Martin and every single day we can go out and we can help those poor souls in purgatory make the morning offering prayer and resolve to gain all the indulgences you can from this day offer up all your sufferings off your up your Rosary try to get a plenary Indulgence every day it's possible every single one of us if you receive Holy Communion
uh you can receive a plan of indulgence pray the Rosary in a church pray the rosary with your family spend 30 minutes reading the Bible uh spend 30 minutes in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament uh those are all all those things will give you a plenary Indulgence try to gain that for the souls and there's so many other things as well that you can gain indulgences for just resolve every day I don't I don't know what they are but I want to get them and and you'll be producing all that Grace for the poor souls
so so please do that uh St Martin Deportes would be very happy with you uh you know and that's the way we can show compassion towards others so often we are bitter we're angry we're upset we're impatient because we're thinking about ourselves we're not thinking about other people and we're not loving people with the heart of Christ so the those are the ways that we can um that we can become Saints we're going to become a saint by being more like Christ we're going to be the more we love like Christ more than we're going
to be like him and vice versa so let's try to make that resolution uh imitate the Saints in their compassion in their charity uh begun for the virtues and especially the love we need to do it so St Martin Deportes pray for us and may God bless you all in the name of the father Son and the Holy Ghost amen
