Augustinian Saints: An Inspiration for the Youth

By: Francis Andrew R. Balmaceda, OSA

Have you been in Love? With all the feelings, emotions and efforts to whom you
been in-love with? This is an undying civil ideas of a person whom in the state of Love.
They talk about feelings and emotions, efforts and magnetic sensations that once body
feel when they are in the state of love. Youth and those young personalities are like this
and I am not an exemption. When love is being inserted to a classroom discussion
everybody is alive and interested to hear from their professors. That’s the wonder and
power of the term Love, we cannot negate this truth that human are called to love and to
be loved. But the next question is did they really understand what really love is? What
the matter and form of this powerful term “Love”? This historical questions somehow
interest many of the writers to wrote and develop the many understanding of Love.

For us Christians what are our understandings of Love? Could we have a unified
answer to this question? Of course we don’t have, we must admit honestly that this
single word has many interpretations, that we have many understanding of this term.
We even classified the term am I right? We have Eros, storage, Philia and Agape. A
romantic love, family love, friendship love and the unconditional love, so of course
unconditional love is the perfect love that we are all called to be. So this is a reality for
us Christians but behind different classifications of love we must put in our heart that
love is not only an emotion. Its not a rising up and lowering down of our blood. Its more
than bodily feelings, remember that we are embodied spirit created in the image and
likeness of God. Therefore we must not become dependent to our bodily compositions
we must go beyond the body but not also beyond our spirits. A call for balance is well
sounded.

In connection to the term love is being inspired with love. Every human person
have their own inspirations in life, do you have an inspiration? Are you inspired my
friend? If you ask me I will answer with a Yes! If you ask me who inspires me I will not
tell you whom, because being inspired is not delimited to the questions who inspired
you. I will tell you a story of two great young blessed and saint of the Order of St.
Augustine who really inspired and now they are saints of the Order. One is Blessed
John of Rieti, John was born in Castel Porchiano, near the city of Amelia, in the
region of Umbria, Italy, around the year 1318. He entered the Order in his teenage
years and was sent to Rieti where he remained until his death. The Augustinian
historian, Jordan of Saxony, described John as: "simple, humble and always
cheerful; he was always friendly and social, and acted no differently from others in
eating, drinking, and the other things that regard the common life of the friars; but
he was unique with regard to his interior life. He was filled with love for his fellow
religious and treated them with such charity that he was never heard to say or do
anything contrary to fraternal love. He was reverential toward everyone, and
especially toward the sick and visitors, showing them the goodness of his generous
heart." John died in 1336 at the age of 18, and immediately reports circulated of
graces received through his intercession. He was buried in the Church of Saint
Augustine in Rieti and his cult was confirmed by Gregory XVI in 1832. He is the
patron of young professed friars of the Order.

Another saint is Saint Magdalene of Nagasaki. Magdalene was born in 1611

near Nagasaki, Japan, the daughter of devout Christian parents. While she was still
young her mother, father, and siblings were martyred for the faith. In 1624 she
became acquainted with two Augustinians, members of the Recollect
Congregation, Francis of Jesus and Vincent of Saint Anthony, and was attracted by
their deep spirituality. She became an Augustinian tertiary, teaching catechism to
the young, seeking alms for the poor, encouraging her people in times of
persecution. When these two friars were martyred, she placed herself under the
spiritual guidance of two other Augustinians who eventually also received the
crown of martyrdom. In 1629 she sought refuge in the hills of Nagasaki, sharing the
sufferings of her fellow Christians, baptizing the young and visiting the s ick.
Because many Christians were renouncing their faith in the face of torture, she
decided to encourage them through her own acceptance of persecution. In
September 1634, dressed in the habit of a tertiary, she turned herself in to the anti -
Christian civil authorities. In October of that same year she was subjected to the
torture of the pit for 13 days. On the last day the pit was filled with water and she
was drowned. Her body was burned and her ashes were dispersed to prevent the
Christians from having any relics of her. Magdalene was beatified in 1981 and
canonized by John Paul II on October 18, 1987.

These are the two great blessed and saint of the Order of St. Augustine . With
the life of these two saints I am inspired not because of whom they are but because of
what they did. As you will notice their life correspond to the life of Christ, Blessed John
is an example of holiness achieved, not through exceptional accomplishments or
practices, but in the ordinary things of life. Thus he is an example to p eople of
every state of life in following the principles of Gospel spirituality, particularly
generosity, simplicity and Christian joy. What a very inspirational young person
whom behind his age he doesn’t look at it as a hindrance rather he used it for the
glory of God and love for his community. Likewise Saint Magdalene followed the
example of Jesus by accepting physical suffering in order to strengthen the spiritual
resolve of her fellow Christians. She is a convincing example of a young person
totally devoted to the Gospel and the service of others, whose love for God and
neighbor knew no limit.

So these are the two great example of an inspiration for us young people now a
day. I know that only few are interested to know about the lives of saints and somehow
many are not interested to talk about being holy and doing sacrifices but I believe that
the sense of religiosity of the young are only sleeping that they need a wakeup call in
order to ignite their zeal of mission and be inspired to face the challenges in this life of
confusions, marginalization’s, and social injustice.

So wake up, be inspired and do the mission to every periphery, we must not be
stuck to the culture of silence, we must not be afraid to the culture of death. Always
remember that before the original sin of Augustine there is an original blessing of God,
the blessing that could achieve, when we are in the state of grace, the love of God
whose fullness is revealed through his Son Jesus Christ.