Sabbato post Ascensionem — S. Ubaldi Episcopi et Confessoris (III. classis)
The Church, in her wisdom, sets before us this day the figure of a holy bishop. While the apostles still gaze toward the heavens whence their Lord has ascended, the Roman liturgy turns our eyes to one of His faithful stewards, Saint Ubaldus of Gubbio, whose feast falls upon this Sabbatum post Ascensionem. The Epistle is drawn from the praise of the fathers in Ecclesiasticus, and the Gospel from the parable of the talents in Saint Matthew. Two readings, one luminous truth: that the saints are those who, having received the gifts of God, render them back to Him a hundredfold.
I. “Ecce sacerdos magnus” — The Witness of Sirach
The sacred text begins thus: Henoch placuit Deo, et translatus est in paradisum — “Henoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise” (Sir 44:16). From this ancient patriarch the inspired writer leads us through Noe, just and perfect in his generations; through Abraham, the great father of many nations; through Isaac and Jacob; until at last he reaches Moses, the man “beloved of God and men” (Sir 45:1), and Aaron his brother, clothed in the splendor of the priestly vesture.
Why this litany of the patriarchs upon the feast of a bishop? Because, as Saint Augustine teaches in his exposition of the Psalms, the holiness of the New Covenant flows from the same Spirit that sanctified the patriarchs of old: unus enim Spiritus tunc et nunc — one and the same Spirit then and now. The sacerdotal dignity of Aaron, with its bells and pomegranates, its breastplate and ephod, was but a figure and shadow of that priesthood which Christ would establish and which He communicates to His bishops — those whom Saint Cyprian calls praepositi Ecclesiae, the very columns upon which the Church stands. Episcopus in Ecclesia, et Ecclesia in episcopo, the Carthaginian martyr writes in his epistle to Florentius Pupianus; whoever is not with the bishop is not in the Church.
Saint Ambrose, in his treatise De Officiis Ministrorum, written for the clergy of Milan, takes up this very theme: the bishop is the new Aaron, vested not in linen but in charity, anointed not with oil from a flask but with the unction of the Holy Ghost. The garments of glory with which Aaron was clothed (Sir 45:9) prefigure those interior virtues — humility, chastity, patience, prudence — which adorn the soul of a holy prelate. And so, when the Church reads of Aaron upon the feast of Saint Ubaldus, she would have us behold in this twelfth-century bishop of Gubbio the splendor of the eternal priesthood made manifest in flesh and time.
II. “Euge, serve bone et fidelis” — The Witness of the Gospel
The Gospel takes us higher still. A man, going into a far country, distributes his goods to his servants: to one five talents, to another two, to another one, unicuique secundum propriam virtutem — to each according to his proper ability (Mt 25:15). And when he returns, he says to those who have laboured and doubled their portion: Euge, serve bone et fidelis: quia super pauca fuisti fidelis, super multa te constituam: intra in gaudium Domini tui — “Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt 25:21).
Saint Gregory the Great, in his ninth homily upon the Gospels, sees in these talents the gifts of grace, of intellect, of office, of wealth, of opportunity — all that the Lord has placed in our hands not for ourselves but for His glory. Those receive talents, the holy Pope teaches, who have received understanding, or substance, or position, or any natural ability, for the building up of their neighbor. The terror of the parable, he warns, is that the gift not used is the gift accused: the unprofitable servant is condemned not for evil committed but for good omitted. Tot enim sumus debitores quot talenta accepimus — we are debtors in proportion to the talents we have received.
Saint John Chrysostom, in his homilies on Saint Matthew, presses the point further: the Lord does not measure His servants by the magnitude of what they have received, but by the fidelity with which they have laboured. The man with two talents receives the very same praise as the man with five. The bishop in his cathedral and the widow in her cottage shall hear, if they have been faithful, the identical Euge, serve bone. There is no respect of persons before God, only respect of charity.
Saint Jerome, commenting upon this same parable, observes that the buried talent is the gift consigned to the earth of worldly cares — the priest who neglects his breviary, the layman who hides his faith in the silence of human respect, the soul that hoards what was given to be spent. Qui in agro defossus est, he says, terrenis curis obrutus est: he who is buried in the field is overwhelmed by earthly things.
III. Saint Ubaldus, the Faithful Steward
Here, then, we behold the pattern of Saint Ubaldus. Born of noble stock in Gubbio toward the end of the eleventh century, he might have multiplied his patrimony in worldly honours; instead, he gave his goods to the poor and entered the regular clergy, embracing the canonical life. Raised to the see of Gubbio against his protests — for he had refused episcopal consecration more than once and went to Rome itself to plead his unworthiness — he at last accepted the burden under obedience, and ruled his flock with such gentleness that the chroniclers say his face never bore the look of anger.
The famous tale is told of him: that a workman, quarrelling over a vineyard wall, struck the bishop and trampled him in the mud; and Ubaldus, rising, refused to punish the man, but afterwards interceded for him before the magistrate when the civil law would have condemned him. Vince in bono malum (Rom 12:21), Saint Paul had written; Saint Ubaldus made of his episcopate a living gloss upon that verse.
It is recorded also that when the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa marched against the cities of Umbria, Ubaldus went out to meet him, unarmed and unaccompanied, and by the sole authority of his sanctity turned the imperial wrath away from Gubbio. Here is the Aaron of Sirach in twelfth-century vesture: the priest whose breastplate is faith, whose ephod is charity, whose presence parts the waters of wrath as Moses parted the Red Sea.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who was Ubaldus’s contemporary, writes in his De Consideratione to Pope Eugene III that the true prelate is given not a dominion but a stewardship — non dominium, sed ministerium — and must remember that he stands among his people not as their lord but as their servant. Ubaldus was such a one. He doubled the talents entrusted to him not by ambition but by the patient labour of prayer, fasting, and pastoral solicitude; and dying upon this day in the year of grace 1160, he heard, we may piously believe, that word for which every Christian soul should yearn: Intra in gaudium Domini tui.
IV. The Application to Our Souls
What, then, shall we draw from these readings, upon this Saturday between Ascension and Pentecost, when the Church awaits the descent of the Holy Ghost?
First, that the gifts we have received are not our own. Whether five talents or two or one — whether the dignity of holy orders, the duties of a Christian household, or the simple state of an unmarried soul in the world — all is entrusted, none is owned. The Fathers are unanimous: every gift is a debt, and every grace will be answered for.
Second, that holiness consists not in extraordinary works but in faithful ones. Saint Augustine, treating the Lord’s word that he who is faithful in little is faithful also in much (Lk 16:10), reminds us that fidelity in small matters is great before God. Saint Ubaldus, though he wrought miracles and turned away an emperor, would have heard the same Euge had he done nothing more than pray his office with attention and govern his diocese with charity. The miracles were ornament; the fidelity was substance.
Third, that the saints are nearer to us than we suppose. The Church does not place Saint Ubaldus before us as a marble figure but as a living brother in the communion of saints, whose intercession is real and whose example is imitable. We cannot all be bishops of Gubbio; we can all, by grace, be good and faithful servants.
V. A Practical Resolution
In the spirit of this feast, the soul might consider three things this day.
To make a brief and honest examination of one’s “talents” — the natural gifts, the supernatural graces, the duties of one’s state of life — and to ask before God whether each is being laboured upon for His glory or buried in the field of worldly distraction.
To recite the Veni Sancte Spiritus with attention, asking that the Holy Ghost, whose coming we await this Pentecost, may quicken our fidelity in the small and hidden matters which God beholds when men do not.
To invoke Saint Ubaldus as patron of patience and meekness, especially in the trials of family, of labour, and of injury suffered, that we may, like him, vincere in bono malum — overcome evil with good.
Si vis altius proficere: if you wish to go deeper into the theology of the priesthood and the sanctification of the laity through fidelity in their state of life, the Theology and Doctrine path of this catechetical course will lead you through these matters in their proper order — from the dignity of the baptismal priesthood, to the sacrament of Holy Orders, to the universal call to sanctity proclaimed by the Fathers and the saints. The Lives of the Saints path will further place before you the patient bishops and gentle confessors whose imitation is the surest path to that day when each of us, by the mercy of Christ, may hear the Euge, serve bone.
Sancte Ubalde, patiens et mitis, ora pro nobis.