St. Wolfgang, Bishop

Feast date: Oct 31

Oct. 31, though best known as the Vigil of the Solemnity of All Saints (All Hallows’ Eve) in the Western church, is also the liturgical feast day of St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, who was regarded as one of the greatest German saints of his time

The Benedictine monk and bishop, who served as a missionary to pagans and a reformer of the Church in southeastern Germany, was born around 934 in the historic southwestern German region of Swabia.

Wolfgang came from a family of nobility and was privately tutored as a child. Later on, the future monk was educated at the renowned Monastery of Reichenau, and at Wurtzburg. Wolfgang showed intellectual prowess and found companionship during his years of study, but was also dismayed by the petty jealousies and moral lapses he observed in Wurtzburg’s academic environment.

In 956, his school companion Henry was chosen to lead the Archdiocese of Trier. Though Wolfgang had become interested in monastic life, he chose to go with Henry to Trier, where his service to the Church included a teaching position in the cathedral school.

After Archbishop Henry’s death in 964, Wolfgang left Trier, became a monk of the Order of Saint Benedict, and settled at a monastery in the diocese of Augsburg. Its school prospered under his direction, and the local bishop – the future St. Ulrich – ordained him to the priesthood in 968. In his youth, Wolfgang had envisioned a secluded life of contemplation; but things turned out differently, as he was sent east to evangelize the Magyars in 972.

By Christmas of that year, Wolfgang had been chosen as the new Bishop of Ratisbon (present-day Regensburg in Bavaria). But he continued to live out his monastic vocation, retaining his distinctive Benedictine habit and dedicating himself to the same ascetic lifestyle. Amid the work of preaching and reform, Wolfgang remained a man of prayer, silence, and contemplative solitude.

Not surprisingly, the Bishop of Ratisbon made monasticism a focus of his church reforms, reviving religious life in places where it had fallen into disorder. Wolfgang also showed extraordinary care for the poor in his diocese, to such an extent that he was called “the Great Almoner.” On the other hand, he was also involved in affairs of state at a high level, and tutored the children of the Duke of Bavaria, including the future Holy Roman Emperor St. Henry II.

Wolfgang, despite being one of the great bishops and saints of his time, still encountered serious difficulties in his leadership of the Diocese of Ratisbon. On one occasion, a political conflict caused him to withdraw from his diocese to a hermitage for a period of time. Wolfgang is also said to have struggled with the great geographical extent of the diocese, parts of which were eventually entrusted to the Bishop of Prague.

In 994, while traveling in Austria, Wolfgang became sick and died in the village of Pupping. Miracles associated with his tomb, including many healings, led to his canonization of 1052. Several of St. Wolfgang’s devotees experienced relief from stomach ailments, and he remains a patron saint of such troubles today. His intercession is also sought by victims of strokes and paralysis, and by carpenters.

St. Alonso Rodriguez

Feast date: Oct 30

On October 30, the Catholic Church honors a man whose humble occupation gave the world only glimpses of his extraordinary holiness. During his lifetime, Brother Alonso Rodriguez never became a priest, published a book, or advanced professionally. But writings discovered after his death revealed a true mystic, who attended to a rich spiritual life while he worked as a doorkeeper and porter.

Born in Spain during 1532, Alonso married at 26 and worked as a cloth merchant, coming to religious life only through a string of crushing tragedies. His wife and two of their children died by the time he was 31, and his turn toward a life of prayer and penance could not prevent the subsequent death of his third and last remaining child — nor the discouraging failure of his business.

Without his wife and children, and having few prospects due to his lack of a higher education, the Spanish layman turned his thoughts to religious life. Even there, however, he faced difficulties. In his early years, Alonso had met one of the first Jesuits, Bl. Peter Faber, and with his old life in ruins, he developed an interest in joining the recently established Society of Jesus.

Alonso’s lack of education prevented him from pursuing their course of priestly ordination, and he failed to acquire a diploma from the College of Barcelona despite attending for two years. The Jesuit Fathers in Valencia said he was unfit to join. But Alonso’s years of prayer had not been in vain: they were answered when a provincial of the society, sensing his dedication, admitted him as a lay-brother.

In modern times, Jesuit Brothers work in a wide range of fields, with few limitations apart from their lack of priestly ordination. During the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the lay-brothers of the Society of Jesus were known as “temporal coadjutors,” and assisted the priests of the order by performing its more routine duties such as cooking, construction and farming.

The Jesuits sent Rodriguez to the college of Montesión on the island of Majorca, to work as a porter and door-keeper. He assumed the responsibilities of receiving visitors and guests and carrying their luggage, tracking down students or priests when they were needed, delivering messages, and distributing alms to the poor. While other Jesuits traveled the globe evangelizing whole nations, and undertook a vast reform of the Catholic Church throughout Europe, Alonso carried bags and ran errands for 46 years.

But students began to seek him out, realizing that their doorkeeper was a man of unusual wisdom and faith. His Jesuit superiors started to take notice as well, and asked him to begin a private record of his life and thoughts.  Rodriguez struck up a notable friendship with one young man, Peter Claver, and advised him to volunteer for the South American missions. Following his advice, St. Peter Claver eventually catechized, baptized and spoke out for the rights of 300,000 slaves in South America.

When Brother Alonso died in 1617, his superiors examined the written records he had left behind describing his spiritual life. What they found was the life of a saint and mystic. His approach was simple: Christ was appearing in every person who appeared at the door; the task was to encounter God in any task. From this awareness, he proceeded to a life of contemplation akin to the renowned saints of his era (such as St. Ignatius or St. Teresa of Avila), whose grand achievements are better known.

Brother Alonso Rodriguez was declared a saint in 1887. He is buried on the same island of Majorca where he answered the door and carried bags for five decades.

Feast date: Oct 29

Helen Kafka was born in 1894 to a shoemaker and grew up in Vienna, Austria. At the age of 20, she decided to join the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and took the name Restituta after an early Church martyr.

In 1919, she began working as a surgical nurse in Austria. When the Germans took over the country, she became a local opponent of the Nazi regime. Her conflict with them escalated after they ordered her to remove all the crucifixes she had hung up in each room of a new hospital wing.

Sister Maria Restitua refused, and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942. She was sentenced to death for “aiding and abetting the enemy in the betrayal of the fatherland and for plotting high treason.”

She spent the rest of her days in prison caring for other prisoners, who loved  her. The Nazis offered her freedom if she would abandon the Franciscan sisters, but she refused. She was beheaded March 30, 1943 in Vienna, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 21, 1998.