A reflection for the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, Bishop and Confessor — S. Martini Episcopi et Confessoris, III classis (11 November), with the commemoration of St. Mennas, Martyr
In the winter of a year somewhere near 334, a young cavalry officer rode up to the gate of Amiens in northern Gaul. It was bitterly cold. At the gate sat a beggar with almost nothing on, and the people passing in and out went by him. The soldier had already given away everything he had except his arms and his military cloak. So he drew his sword, cut the cloak in two, gave half to the beggar, and wrapped himself in what was left. Some of the bystanders laughed at how he looked. That night, his biographer tells us, he saw Christ in a dream, wearing the half-cloak he had given away, and heard Him say to the angels around Him: Martinus adhuc catechumenus hac me veste contexit. “Martin, who is still a catechumen, has clothed Me with this garment” (Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 3).
The soldier was Martin, later Bishop of Tours, and the Church keeps his feast today, on the day of his burial in 397. He was one of the first saints of the West to receive a public cult who had not died a martyr’s death. For centuries his feast was one of the great days of the year in Gaul and far beyond it. The day was called Martinmas. It marked the beginning of winter, the settling of rents and wages, and in many places the start of a forty-day fast before Christmas, “St. Martin’s Lent.” The half of his cloak that he kept, the cappa, became a relic of the Frankish kings, and the shrine where it was guarded gave its name to every capella, every chapel, and to every chaplain who has served one.
The Mass is the Common of a Confessor Bishop, the Mass Statuit: “The Lord made to him a covenant of peace, and made him a prince: that the dignity of priesthood should be to him for ever” (Ecclus. 45:30). But St. Martin is given a Gospel of his own. Instead of the parable of the talents, the Church reads the short saying of Our Lord about the lamp and the eye (Luke 11:33-36). It is chosen with care. Martin spent his life trying to hide, in a soldier’s obscurity, in a hermit’s cell, in a monastery of caves on the bank of the Loire, and God kept setting him on the lampstand.
It is also Wednesday, and the commemoration at Lauds and at Mass is of St. Mennas, an Egyptian soldier who served in the Roman army in Phrygia and was put to death under Diocletian for confessing Christ. The Church sets two soldiers side by side today. One shed his blood; the other laid down his sword and gave the rest of his life instead.
For readers in many countries, this date carries one more association. The armistice that ended the First World War took effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November 1918, on the feast of the soldier-saint of France. Whatever one makes of the coincidence, it is fitting that the nations remember their war dead on the day of a man who knew both the camp and the cloister.
I. Ecce sacerdos magnus: the Epistle
“Behold a great priest, who in his days pleased God, and was found just: and in the time of wrath he was made a reconciliation. There was not found the like to him, who kept the law of the most High. Therefore by an oath the Lord made him to increase among his people. He gave him the blessing of all nations, and confirmed his covenant upon his head. He acknowledged him in his blessings: he preserved for him his mercy: and he found grace before the eyes of the Lord. He glorified him in the sight of kings, and gave him a crown of glory. He made an everlasting covenant with him, and gave him a great priesthood: and made him blessed in glory. To execute the office of the priesthood, and to have praise in his name, and to offer him a worthy incense for an odour of sweetness.” (Ecclus. 44:16-27; 45:3-20)
A portrait laid on one head. The Church built this lesson from the hymn in praise of the fathers of Israel (Ecclus. 44-50). In their own place the verses belong to several men: Enoch, who “pleased God”; Noah, who “was found just” and became “a reconciliation” in the flood; Abraham, who received “the blessing of all nations”; Moses, glorified “in the sight of kings”; Aaron, given “a great priesthood” and the office of incense. She gathers them into one portrait and lays it on the head of the bishop she honours, because every one of those figures foreshadowed Christ, the “great high priest that hath passed into the heavens” (Heb. 4:14), and the bishop shares the fulness of His priesthood.
He glorified him in the sight of kings. Few bishops have fitted this line as literally as Martin. Sulpicius Severus, who knew him personally and wrote his life while he was still alive, tells how Martin dined at the table of the usurping Emperor Maximus at Trier. When the cup was passed to the emperor, Maximus handed it first to Martin, expecting to receive it back from the bishop’s hand as a mark of honour. Martin drank and passed it to his own priest, judging that a priest of God ranked above an emperor at table (Vita Martini 20). Maximus, Sulpicius says, admired him for it. The saint who had cut his cloak for a beggar would not bend his head to a throne.
In the time of wrath he was made a reconciliation. This is the line of the Epistle that Martin’s life fulfilled at the greatest cost to himself. In the 380s the Spanish bishop Priscillian was accused of heresy and sorcery. Certain Spanish bishops pressed the case before Maximus and sought his death. Martin went to Trier and opposed them. He held that heresy should be judged by bishops and punished by excommunication, and that it was a new and unheard-of wickedness for a secular judge to put a churchman to death in a matter of the Church (Sulpicius Severus, Chronica II.50). While Martin was in the city the emperor promised that no blood would be shed. After he left, Priscillian and several companions were beheaded, in 385.
That was not the end. The emperor was preparing to send military tribunes into Spain to hunt down Priscillian’s followers, and the sword would not have distinguished carefully between heretics and Catholics. Martin went back to Trier to plead for them. The price the court demanded was that he receive communion with the bishops who had pressed for the executions, which he had refused to do. To save lives, he consented. He took part in the consecration of a bishop alongside them, and the tribunes were recalled. Sulpicius records that on the road home Martin sat down in grief, reproached himself bitterly, and was comforted by an angel who told him that he had had reason to yield, but must now recover his courage. He never again attended a synod of bishops for the rest of his life (Dialogi III.11-13).
The Church does not need to hide this episode. It shows exactly what “a reconciliation in the time of wrath” costs. Aaron, running into the plague with his censer, stood “between the dead and the living” (Num. 16:48). Martin stood between the emperor’s sword and men he did not know, and he paid for their lives with the anguish of having to share communion, for a moment, with those he judged to be in the wrong. He was not the last pastor who has had to choose between his own peace and the safety of his flock. Few have chosen as humbly.
To offer him a worthy incense. The lesson ends with the work of the priest at the altar. Sulpicius notes that no one ever saw Martin angry, troubled, grieving or laughing; his face carried a kind of heavenly gladness, and Christ was never absent from his lips, nor anything from his heart but piety, peace and mercy (Vita Martini 27). Even when he seemed to be doing something else, his biographer says, he was praying. The incense of the old Law was a figure of prayer rising before God (Ps. 140:2; Apoc. 8:3-4). Martin’s whole life was that incense.
II. Nemo lucernam accendit: the Gospel
“At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that come in, may see the light. The light of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be lightsome: but if it be evil, thy body also will be darksome. Take heed therefore, that the light which is in thee, be not darkness. If then thy whole body be lightsome, having no part of darkness; the whole shall be lightsome; and as a bright lamp, shall enlighten thee.” (Luke 11:33-36)
The Gospel has two parts. The first speaks of a lamp and where it is put. The second speaks of an eye and what it lets in. The Fathers read them together: the lamp must shine outward, but it can shine only if the light within is true.
Upon a candlestick. St. Ambrose, commenting on this passage in his Exposition of the Gospel according to Luke (book VII), reads the lamp as faith, and the word of God that kindles it. Faith is not lit to be hidden. It is set on the lampstand, which is the Church, so that it gives light to all who enter the house. St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his homilies on Luke, reads it in the same direction: God has lit the lamp of the divine knowledge in the world, and He does not mean it to be covered by fear or concealed by indifference, but held high by those who have received it. The light belongs to the one who lit it, and he decides where it stands.
No life illustrates this better than Martin’s. He did not want the lampstand. As soon as he could leave the army he went to St. Hilary of Poitiers, who wanted to ordain him a deacon. Martin refused, protesting his unworthiness, and Hilary could persuade him only to accept the lowly order of exorcist (Vita Martini 5). Later Martin founded a community of hermits at Ligugé, near Poitiers, the first monastery known in Gaul. When the see of Tours fell vacant around 371, the people knew he would never come willingly. So a citizen of Tours went to him and threw himself at his feet, begging him to come and heal his sick wife. Martin came out of charity, and the crowd along the road brought him to the city and made him bishop (Vita Martini 9).
Some of the bishops who had come for the consecration objected. The man was contemptible, they said, ill-dressed, with unkempt hair, unworthy of the dignity. The people overruled them. They had been looking at the lamp, and the bishops had been looking at the bushel.
Even then Martin tried to find a hidden place. He lived for a time in a small cell beside the church at Tours, but the crowds gave him no peace, and he withdrew two miles outside the city to a place between the cliffs and the Loire. There he founded the monastery later called Marmoutier, where some eighty monks lived in wooden huts and in caves cut into the rock, in great poverty and silence (Vita Martini 10). He went out from there to preach in the countryside of Gaul, where the old gods were still worshipped, to throw down their shrines and build churches in their place. The lamp was set on the lampstand whether he liked it or not, and all Gaul saw the light.
If thy eye be single. The second half of the Gospel turns inward. “The light of thy body is thy eye.” St. Augustine, explaining the same words as they appear in the Sermon on the Mount, reads the eye as the intention with which we act (De sermone Domini in monte II.13.45-46). If the intention is pure and directed to God, the whole “body” of our works is full of light, even works that look small or ordinary. If the intention is crooked, then even good works are darkened, because they are done for praise or gain. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on the parallel passage in St. Matthew, gives the darkened eye a concrete name: it is the mind blinded by love of money, which can no longer see anything clearly because it sees everything in terms of what it can possess (Homiliæ in Matthæum 20). St. Bede, commenting on this verse of St. Luke, draws them together: the eye is the intention of the heart, and when it looks simply to God, the whole of one’s conduct is made bright (In Lucæ Evangelium expositio IV, on 11:34).
Simplex in the Vulgate means single, undivided, not folded over. A single eye looks at one thing. Martin’s eye was single. At the gate of Amiens he saw a naked man and he saw Christ, and he did not see the soldiers who laughed. When he asked for his discharge from the army before a battle, the Emperor Julian accused him of cowardice. Martin answered: Christi ego miles sum: pugnare mihi non licet, “I am Christ’s soldier; it is not lawful for me to fight,” and he offered to stand unarmed in the front line the next day with only the sign of the cross for protection (Vita Martini 4). He did not see glory or disgrace. He saw his Lord.
Take heed that the light which is in thee be not darkness. This is the warning in the middle of the Gospel, and it is not idle. The most dangerous darkness is the kind that thinks it is light: zeal that has lost charity, orthodoxy that has lost mercy, piety that has become a display. The bishops who sought Priscillian’s death believed they were defending the faith. Martin’s eye saw what theirs did not. A lamp that burns men does not give light.
As a bright lamp, shall enlighten thee. The last line of the Gospel describes a man whose whole body is lightsome, “having no part of darkness.” The Fathers knew that this is a promise more than a description. It is fulfilled in its fulness only in the resurrection, when “the just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43). But it begins here, in the saints, whose bodies, worn by penance and charity, already let the light through.
Martin died at Candes, a village of his diocese where he had gone to make peace among the clergy, in November of 397, at about eighty years of age. He asked to be laid on sackcloth and ashes, saying that a Christian ought to die in no other way. When his disciples begged him not to leave them, he prayed the words the Church still sings in his Office: Domine, si adhuc populo tuo sum necessarius, non recuso laborem: fiat voluntas tua. “Lord, if I am still needed by Thy people, I do not refuse the labour: Thy will be done” (Sulpicius Severus, Epistula 3). He lay with his eyes and hands raised to heaven, and would not let them turn him on his side, so that his spirit might go straight to the Lord. Sulpicius writes that his face, at death, shone as if it were already glorified, and his body looked like the body of a child.
III. The Mass as a whole: light comes down, and light goes up
St. Thomas built the Summa Theologiæ on the movement of exitus and reditus: all things come forth from God and return to Him (Summa Theologiæ I, q. 2, prologue). Today the Mass tells that story in the language of light.
The light comes forth from God. “Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). No man lights his own lamp. Christ, “the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9), kindles it. The eye receives the light, and if it is single, the light fills the whole body. That is the first movement, the going out of God’s light into the soul.
Then the light goes out from the soul into the house: “that they that come in, may see the light.” It does not stop there. Our Lord, saying the same words in the Sermon on the Mount, tells us where the light finally goes: “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). The light returns to its source as praise. That is the reditus.
The Epistle shows the same circle in the priest. Everything he has is received: God “made him to increase,” “gave him the blessing,” “gave him a great priesthood.” And everything rises back to God “for an odour of sweetness.” The lamp burns, and the incense rises. Both are consumed, and both are given back.
The Mass itself is where this circle is closed each day. The candles on the altar burn before the Sacrifice. The priest, lamp on the lampstand, stands at the altar not to be seen for himself but so that all who enter may see Christ. And the Light Himself comes down upon the altar under the veils of bread and wine, so that those who receive Him may become light, and their works may rise to the Father as praise.
IV. The Collects
Deus, qui conspicis, quia ex nulla nostra virtute subsistimus: concede propitius; ut, intercessione beati Martini Confessoris tui atque Pontificis, contra omnia adversa muniamur.
“O God, who seest that we subsist by no strength of our own: mercifully grant that, by the intercession of blessed Martin, Thy Confessor and Bishop, we may be defended against all adversities.”
The Collect of St. Martin is one of the oldest in the Missal, and it is strikingly humble. It does not begin by praising the saint. It begins with a confession about ourselves: ex nulla nostra virtute subsistimus, “we stand by no strength of our own.” God sees this, conspicis. He looks at us with a single eye and sees exactly how weak we are.
This is the right prayer for Martin’s feast, because it is the secret of his life. The soldier who offered to stand unarmed before the enemy did not trust in his own courage. The bishop who threw down pagan shrines did not trust in his own strength. The old man who said non recuso laborem did not trust in his own endurance. He trusted in Christ, and so the Church asks, through him, that we may be “defended,” muniamur, fortified as a soldier is armed, against every adversity. The arms he laid down before the Emperor Julian have been given back to us in another form.
Præsta, quæsumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, qui beati Mennæ Martyris tui natalitia colimus, intercessione eius in tui nominis amore roboremur.
“Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who celebrate the heavenly birthday of blessed Mennas, Thy Martyr, may by his intercession be strengthened in the love of Thy name.”
The commemoration asks for the same thing in another word: roboremur, that we may be made strong. The strength of a soldier is in his body. The strength of a martyr is in his love.
V. St. Mennas: the other soldier
The tradition of St. Mennas has come down to us in several forms, and its details are uncertain. The core of it is this. Mennas was an Egyptian who served as a soldier in the Roman army in Phrygia, in Asia Minor. When the edicts of Diocletian began to be enforced, he left the army and withdrew into the desert, to live there in fasting and prayer. Later, on a day when the town was gathered for public games in honour of the gods, he came down from the mountains, walked into the middle of the crowd, and declared himself a Christian. He was tortured and beheaded. His body was carried back to Egypt and buried at a place southwest of Alexandria, where a great city of pilgrimage grew up around his tomb. For centuries pilgrims carried home little clay flasks stamped with his image, standing between two camels, and these flasks have been found all over the Mediterranean world.
Mennas and Martin each left the army for Christ. Mennas went into the desert and then came out to die. Martin went into the monastery and then came out to live, for another sixty years, and to spend himself to the last. The Church honours them on the same day because both were soldiers of the same King, and both understood that the lamp is not lit to be kept in a hidden place. Mennas set his on the lampstand in a theatre full of pagans, and it burned out in a moment. Martin’s burned slowly, through a long life, and gave light to a whole nation.
VI. A word for practice
Examine. Is my eye single? When I do good, whom am I looking at: God, or the people watching, or myself? Is there a part of my life that I keep in darkness, a habit, a grudge, a love of money, that I have never let the light reach? Have I hidden my faith “under a bushel” out of fear, embarrassment or convenience, at work, among friends, in my own family? And the harder question Martin’s life asks: has my zeal for what is right ever lost its charity? Have I been willing to see another man harmed for the sake of being correct?
Do. Give something away today that costs you, as Martin cut his cloak: not from your surplus, but from what you need. Look for Christ in someone you would ordinarily pass at the gate. Pray for soldiers and veterans, living and dead, and for all who carry arms, that they may serve justly and be brought to Christ. In this month of the holy souls, pray especially for those who died in war, and for those who have no one to pray for them.
Pray. The Collect of the day, slowly, with its first words taken to heart: ex nulla nostra virtute subsistimus. Then St. Martin’s own prayer, adapted to your state: “Lord, if I am still needed by Thy people, I do not refuse the labour. Thy will be done.”
Aspiration. Domine, si adhuc populo tuo sum necessarius, non recuso laborem: fiat voluntas tua. “Lord, if I am still needed by Thy people, I do not refuse the labour: Thy will be done.”
Devote. On this Wednesday, the day traditionally kept in honour of St. Joseph, ask the help of the just man whose eye was single, who heard the angel and “did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him” (Matt. 1:24), and who, like Martin, spent his life in a hidden place until God set his light before the whole Church. Ask St. Martin to obtain for you a simple eye and a generous hand. Ask St. Mennas for the courage to confess Christ in public when the crowd is against you.
If you wish to go deeper: the Lives of the Saints path tells the full life of St. Martin of Tours, from the gate of Amiens to the cell at Marmoutier and the deathbed at Candes, and the story of St. Mennas and the great shrine at his tomb. The Church History path takes up the conversion of rural Gaul, the beginnings of Western monasticism at Ligugé and Marmoutier, and the Priscillianist affair, the first execution of a heretic by the secular power, and the protest of Martin and St. Ambrose against it. The Sacred Liturgy path considers the cult of confessors, Martinmas and St. Martin’s Lent, and the origin of the chapel and the chaplain in Martin’s cloak. The Theology and Doctrine path treats the purity of intention in moral theology, the “single eye” of the Fathers, and its place in St. Thomas’s account of the goodness of human acts.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims, with the Vulgate. The Fathers are given in paraphrase with their loci: St. Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam VII; St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke (on 11:33); St. Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte II.13.45-46; St. John Chrysostom, Homiliæ in Matthæum 20; St. Bede, In Lucæ Evangelium expositio IV (on 11:34). St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ I, q. 2, prologue. For St. Martin: Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 3-5, 9-10, 20, 27; Epistula 3; Dialogi III.11-13; Chronica II.50. The account of St. Mennas follows the traditional Passio and the Roman Martyrology for 11 November; its details are uncertain and are given as the tradition records them.
Martinus adhuc catechumenus hac me veste contexit.