Thought for the Day – 23 March – The Memorial of St Turibius of Mogrovejo (1538-1606)
Nothing gave our saint so much pleasure as the greatest labours and dangers, to procure the least spiritual advantage to one soul. Burning with the most vehement desire of laying down his life for his flock and of suffering all things for Him who died for us, he feared no dangers. When he heard that poor Indians wandered in the mountains and deserts, he sought them out; and to comfort, instruct, or gain one of them he often suffered incredible fatigues and dangers in the wildernesses and boldly travelled through the haunts of wild animals.
The ardour of his faith, his hope, his love of his Creator and Redeemer, his resignation and perfect sacrifice of himself, gathered strength in the fervent exercises and aspirations which he repeated almost without ceasing in his illness. By his last will he ordered what he had about him to be distributed among his servants and whatever else he otherwise possessed to be given to the poor.
His body when translated the year after his death to Lima, was found incorrupt, the joints flexible, and the skin soft.
The Lord indeed writes straight with crooked lines. Against his will and from the unlikely springboard of an Inquisition tribunal, this man became the Christlike shepherd of a poor and oppressed people. God gave him the gift of loving others as they needed it. St Turibius, pray for us!
“Remember that you will derive strength
by reflecting that the saints
yearn for you
to join their ranks;
desire to see you fight bravely,
and behave like a true knight
in your encounters
with the same adversities
which they had to conquer,
and that breathtaking joy
is their eternal reward
for having endured a few years
of temporal pain.
Every drop of earthly bitterness
will be changed into
an ocean of heavenly sweetness.”
AnaStpaul 