Saint  Matthias and St. Maria Caridad Brader

Prayer: “If I am not in God’s will or in God’s grace, may God put me there. And if I am, may God so keep me. Amen.” +

Quickly, I’d like to run through tonight’s readings with you, as I’d found an interesting theme running through each one of them and it is encapsulated in the word “HOME”.

In our 1st reading, speaking of the betrayer Judas Iscariot, St. Peter declares; `Let his home become desolate and let there be no one to live in it'… That’s a very strange thing to say about a man who had renounced everything and had just spent years wandering around with Jesus homeless. What home? “Let his home become desolate!”

The Psalmist asks; “Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle, who may abide upon your holy hill?” Lord, who may make their home with you? In the Psalm we receive this answer; he who is pure of heart AND does no evil is the one who may dwell with the Lord.

In our 2^nd reading, St. Paul says; “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ… Their end is their destruction; their god is the belly… their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship (our home) is with the Lord.”

Jesus says; “I am the vine. If you abide in me (make me your home) and my words abide in you, you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Tonight, we celebrate the lives of two Saints; St. Matthias and St. Maria Caridad Brader. Both Saints were homeless, but while they wandered the earth actively building the Kingdom of the Christ, they lived each day quite at home in the tabernacle of Christ’s love.

A Zen proverb says; “Your treasure house is within you, it contains everything you need.” A wandering Zen monk has written; “Everywhere I roam, whether over mountains or down through the valleys, every step is home.”... These Zen monks and Saints of Christ would have recognized and understood one another, I think. They understood that “home is where the heart is.”

We don’t know much about St. Matthias. After this account in Acts, where Matthias is named “Apostle” to replace Judas, everything becomes confused. I’ve come across no less than 4 differing accounts of what may have happened to Matthias;

1)      He left Judea to preach in Ethiopia and was eventually crucified.

2)      He 1eft Judea to preach in Ethiopia and he eventua11y died at Sebastopo1is and was buried there, near the Temp1e of the Sun.

3)      He was stoned to death by Jews in Jerusalem           and then beheaded.

4)      He died of old age in Jerusalem.

We really just don’t know what happened with this Apostle, his history is lost in the mists of time. But we do know two things; he had been with Jesus from the beginning, he was a disciple. It’s easy for us to forget Jesus had 12 Apostles and 72 Disciples. Matthias was one of the 72 disciples and was considered by the other Apostles to be faithful, to be worthy of leadership. Otherwise, he would not have been nominated. Secondly, he was a wandering Evangelist, from the time that Jesus sent out the 72 disciples to preach the Gospel to the day he died. All of the Apostles were, evangelism  characterized their office. They all felt the Good News was so important that each and every single one of them was willing to speak it – shout it in the streets even! No matter what the consequences. They were jailed, they were whipped, they were tortured, stoned, crucified. None of this stopped them. It didn’t matter. The Good News was THAT compelling, it was burning fire in their bones, they had to grab people in the streets and shout “have you heard this?!”

The Apostles prayed in our reading; “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen…” Clearly, St. Matthias’s heart had made its home in the Lord.

2,000 years later, things weren’t much different for Maria Caridad Brader. She was born in Switzerland in 1860, so she is a modern day Saint and there are photos of her on the internet.

She is reported to have been an unusually intelligent child. Fortunately her mother was wise enough to see this, wise enough to provide the very best education available, and Maria excelled.

I don’t know the details but at some point Maria’s mother was widowed and Maria was the only child. As an only child, I’m sure she was treasured by her mother and the two became very close. Maria must have been a great comfort to her mother. She must have been a source of great pride and joy, being a good child and a child who excelled in school. This bond must have made Maria’s decision to enter a Franciscan Cloister, where she would never see her mother again (and would leave her mother with no family, no hope of grandchildren)… this situation must have made Maria’s decision a difficult and heartbreaking one. But Maria loved Jesus, she loved the Gospel, she loved the vision of God’s kingdom so much that like the Apostles, she left everything and found no sacrifice too great to pay.

The Franciscans were greatly impressed with Maria’s intelligence and put her to work as a teacher at the convent school. Then a call came from a Bishop in Ecuador; please come, we need missionaries! The Mother Superior of the convent volunteered 6 of her nuns including Maria, saying; “Sr. Caridad will go to the missionary foundation; she is supremely generous, shows no reluctance to any sacrifice, and with her extraordinary practical sense and education will be able render great services to the mission”. Wow! I’d like to have that on my resume!

Mother Superior’s prophecy came true too. After teaching in Ecuador for several years, St. Maria went on mission to Columbia, and it is said; “she loved the locals and spared no efforts to reach them, braving the wild breakers of the ocean, the tangled undergrowth of the jungle, and the intense cold of the high plateaus. Her zeal knew no bounds. She was concerned above all with the poor, the outcast and those who did not yet know the Gospel.”

One of the things you might not know is, when the missionary nuns of these times went out into the wilderness they would end up building their own convents, churches and schools. Usually, they would first build temporary log cabins. Then, they would start baking bricks in their ovens and carrying them to the site of the permanent buildings.

St. Maria may have been unique in her day, I don’t know for sure, but once she was established – she educated and empowered the locals to become missionaries and church leaders. She did not cling to power, but handed it to the natives of Ecuador and Columbia. She came to give them a love for Jesus, to share the vision of building the Kingdom and then she stepped out of their way so they could do just that.

Thinking about St. Maria, you might ask yourself these questions; When was the last time I walked a mile in the cold? When was the last time I slept outside? When was the last time I was uncertain of where my next meal was coming from? When was the last time I was thirsty or hungry? When was the last time I gathered up the courage to invite someone to Church? Or gathered up the courage to speak about Jesus and the Good News in a setting where such speech would be unpopular or even condemned?... Now we don’t have to sleep outside, we don’t have to walk for miles in the cold, we don’t have to go out into the wilderness where our food sources are uncertain, we don’t have to make those kinds of sacrifices. But it’s important to think about those who did, to wonder just what compelled them to do those crazy things! It’s also important to think about what kinds of crazy sacrifices we CAN make in this day and age, and even more important to ask ourselves if we are really moved by the love and vision of Christ to make them – or not.

”Home is where the heart is”, where is your heart tonight? A great question for Lent, when we strive to be most honest with ourselves.

Sometimes, the greatest wisdom and most profound theology can be found in the most surprising places. Just want to post a jewel of an excerpt from one of my favorite books. I'd first read it in grade school (who thought that was a good idea?! It's full of extremely adult material!) and this particular scene has stayed with me all of my life.To set up the scene, a vampire has broken into a home, killed a boy's mother and now taken the boy (Mark) hostage.

Mark had uttered a high, keening scream and threw himself at Barlow without thought.

"And here you are!" Barlow had boomed good naturedly in his rich, powerful voice. Mark attacked without thought and was captured instantly. Father Callahan moved forward, holding his cross up.

Barlow's grin of triumph was instantly transformed into a rictus of agony. He fell back toward the sink, dragging the boy in front of him. Their feet crunched in the broken glass.

"In God's Name -" Callahan began. At the name of the Deity, Barlow screamed aloud as if he had been struck by a whip, his mouth open in a downward grimace, the needle fangs glimmering within. The cords of muscle on his neck stood out in stark, etched relief. "No closer!" he said. "No closer, shaman! Or I sever the boy's jugular and carotid before you can draw a breath!" As he spoke, his upper lip lifted from those long, needlelike teeth, and as he finished his head made a predatory downward pass with adder's speed, missing Mark's flesh by a quarter inch. Callahan stopped.

"Back up," Barlow commanded, now grinning again. "You on your side of the board and I on mine, eh?"

 Callahan backed up slowly, still holding the cross before him at eye level, so that he looked over its arms. The cross seemed to thrum with chained fire, and its power coursed up his forearm until the muscles bunched and trembled.  They faced each other...

 "What now?"  Callahan said, and his voice was not his own at all. He was looking at Barlow's fingers, those long, sensitive fingers, which lay against the boy's throat. There were small blue blotches on them. 

"That depends. What will you give me for this miserable wretch?" He suddenly jerked Mark's wrists high behind his back, obviously hoping to punctuate his question with a scream, but Mark would not oblige. Except for the sudden whistle of air between his teeth, he was silent. "You'll scream," Barlow whispered, and his lips had twisted into a grimace of animal hate. "You'll scream until your throat bursts!"  

"Stop that!" Callahan cried. 

"And should I? The hate was wiped from his face. A darkly charming smile shone forth in its place. "Should I reprieve the boy, save him for another night?"  

"Yes!"

 Softly, amost purring, Barlow said, "Then will you throw away your cross and face me on even terms - black against white? Your faith against my own?" 

"Yes," Callahan said, but a trifle less firmly. 

"Then do it!" Those full lips became pursed, anticipatory. The high forehead gleamed in the weird fairy light that filled the room. 

"And trust you to let him go? I would be wiser to put a rattlesnake in my shirt and trust it not to bite me." But he let Mark go and stood back, both hands in the air, empty. "Run, Mark," Callahan cried. "Run!"...

Mark slowly got to his feet. He turned around and looked at Barlow.  "Soon, little brother," Barlow said, almost benignly. "Very soon now, you and I will-" Mark spit in his face. "You spit on me," Barlow whispered. His body was trembling, nearly rocking with rage. He took a shuddering step forward like some awful blind man. 

"Get back!" Callahan screamed, and thrust the cross forward.Barlow cried out and threw his hands in front of his face. The cross flared with preternatural, dazzling brilliance, and it was at that moment that Callahan might have banished him if he had dared to press forward. 

"I'm going to kill you," Mark said.  He was gone, like a dark eddy of water. 

"...fulfill your part of the bargain, shaman."

"I'm a priest!" Callahan flung at him. 

Barlow made a small, mocking bow. "Priest," he said, and the word sounded like a dead haddock in his mouth. 

Callahan stood undecisive. Why throw it down? Drive him off, settle for a draw tonight, and tomorrow - 

But a deeper part of his mind warned. To deny the vampire's challenge was to risk possibilities far graver than any he had considered. If he dared not throw the cross aside, it would be as much as admitting... admitting... what? If only things weren't going so fast, if one only had time to think, to reason it out -  

The cross's glow was dying. He looked at it, eyes widening. Fear leaped into his belly like a confusion of hot wires. His head jerked up and he stared at Barlow. He was walking toward him across the kitchen and his smile was wide, almost voluptuous. 

"Stay back," Callahan said hoarsely, retreating a step. "I command it in the name of God."

Barlow laughed at him. The glow in the cross was only a thin and guttering light in a cruciform shape. The shadows had crept across the vampire's face again, masking his features in strangely barbaric lines and triangles under the sharp cheekbones.

Callahan took another step backward, and his buttocks bumped the kitchen table, which was set against the wall.

"Nowhere left to go," Barlow murmured sadly. His dark eyes bubbled with infernal mirth. "Sad to see a man's faith fail. Ah well..."

The cross trembled in Callahan's hand and suddenly the last of its light vanished. It was only a piece of plaster that is mother had bought in a Dublin souvenir shop, probably at a scalper's price. The power it had sent ramming up his arm, enough power to smash down walls and shatter stone, was gone. The muscles remembered the thrumming but could not duplicate it.

Barlow reached from the darkness and plucked the cross from his fingers. Callahan cried out miserably... and the next sound would haunt him for the rest of his life; two dry snaps as Barlow broke the arms of the cross, and a meaningless thump as he threw it on the floor. 

"Goddamn you!" Callahan cried out. 

" It's too late for such melodrama," Barlow said from the darkness. There is no need of it. You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross... the bread and the wine... the confessional... only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes. If you had cast the cross away, you should have beaten me another night. In a way, I hoped it might be so. It has been long since I have met an opponent of any real worth. The boy makes ten of you, false priest." 

Suddenly, out of the darkness, hands of amazing strength gripped Callahan's shoulders... He remembered Matt saying: Some things are worse than death.

- Salem's lot

Stephen King

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