#stalberthegreat

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Our Morning Offering – 17 April – Guide Me Lord By St Albert the Great

Our Morning Offering – 17 April – “The Month of the Resurrection” –Monday in the Second Week of Easter Guide Me LordBy St Albert the Great (1200-1280)Doctor of the Church O Lord Jesus Christ,Who seeks those who strayand receives them when returning,make me approach Theethrough the frequent hearing of Thy Word,lest I sin against my neighbour,by the blindness of human judgement,through the…

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Quote/s of the Day - 7 November -

Quote/s of the Day – 7 November –

Quote/s of the Day – 7 November – The Memorial of All Dominican Saints

Just a few quotes from Dominican Saints

“Heretics are to be converted by an example of humility and other virtues far more readily, than by any external display or verbal battles. So let us arm ourselves with devout prayers and set off, showing signs of genuine humility and go barefooted to combat Goliath.”

St Dominic (1170-1221)

“Anyone…

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One Minute Reflection – 15 November – 'Let us try to merit this hour of eternal delights.'

One Minute Reflection – 15 November – ‘Let us try to merit this hour of eternal delights.’

One Minute Reflection – 15 November – Friday of the Thirty Second week in Ordinary Time, Year C, Gospel: Luke 17:26–37 and the Memorial of St Albert the Great OP (1200-1280) Doctor of the Church and of Bl Bl Mary of the Passion FMM (1839-1904)

“Whoever seeks to gain his life, will lose it but whoever loses his life, will preserve it.   I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed, one…

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Our Morning Offering - 15 November - Supreme Lord By St Albert the Great

Our Morning Offering – 15 November – Supreme Lord By St Albert the Great

Our Morning Offering – 15 November – Friday of the Thirty Second week in Ordinary Time, Year C and the Memorial of St Albert the Great OP (1200-1280) Doctor of the Church

Supreme Lord By St Albert the Great (1200-1280) 

We pray to You, O Lord, who are the supreme Truth, and all truth is from You. We beseech You, O Lord, who are the highest Wisdom and all the wise depend on You, for their wisdom. Yo…

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Saint of the Day – 15 November – St ALBERTUS MAGNUS/Albert the Great O.P. (1200-1280) Doctor of the Church – Doctor universalis (Universal Doctor)- Dominican Friar, Priest, Bishop, Theologian, Scientist, Philospher, Teacher, Writer.   Born in c 1200 at Lauingen an der Donau, Swabia (part of modern Germany) – 15 November 1280 at Cologne, Prussia (part of modern Germany) of natural causes.   Patronages – • medical technicians• natural sciences• philosophers• schoolchildren• scientists (proclaimed on 13 August 1948 by Pope Pius XII)• students• theology students.    St Albert was Beatified in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV and Canonised and created a Doctor of the Church in 1931 by Pope Pius XI.   St Albert was known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus and, late in his life, the sobriquet Magnus was appended to his name. Scholars have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages.

Born around 1206 in Launingen, Germany, Albert was educated as a young man at the University of Padua, and joined the Dominican Order in 1223.   He spent the following years engaged in various studies and teaching assignments in several German cities, most prominently Cologne.   He left Cologne for the University of Paris in 1245.

It was there that one of his students, a brilliant if quiet and heavy-set young man was so impressed by him that he later accompanied him back to Cologne and later became his most famous pupil!   Albert said of his student, St Thomas Aquinas, after St. Thomas’ remarkable explanation of a difficult treatise, “We call this young man a dumb ox but one day his bellowing in his teaching will be heard throughout the world.”

Not that St Albert wasn’t an intellectual heavyweight in his own right.   He was known as Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great).   St Albert can truly be called a Renaissance man, a century before the Renaissance actually began!   This Dominican friar and bishop was also known for his scholarly contributions to the sciences and philosophy as well as theology.   The publication of his complete writings in Paris in 1899 came to 38 volumes and covered his extensive knowledge of such diverse subjects as theology, botany, astronomy, mineralogy, alchemy (the forerunner of chemistry), justice and law among others!   He was the first to comment on virtually all of the writings of Aristotle, thus making them accessible to wider academic debate.   The study of Aristotle brought him to study and comment on the teachings of Muslim academics, notably Avicenna and Averroes and this would bring him into the heart of academic debate.

In 1254 Albert was made provincial of the Dominican Order and fulfilled the duties of the office with great care and efficiency.   During his tenure he publicly defended the Dominicans against attacks by the secular and regular faculty of the University of Paris, commented on John the Evangelist and answered what he perceived as errors of the Islamic philosopher Averroes.

In 1259 he took part in the General Chapter of the Dominicans at Valenciennes together with Thomas Aquinas, masters Bonushomo Britto, Florentius, and Peter (later Pope Innocent V) establishing a ratio studiorum or program of studies for the Dominicans that featured the study of philosophy as an innovation for those not sufficiently trained to study theology.   This innovation initiated the tradition of Dominican scholastic philosophy put into practice, for example, in 1265 at the Order’s studium provinciale at the convent of Santa Sabina in Rome, out of which would develop the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the “Angelicum”

In 1260 Pope Alexander IV made him bishop of Regensburg, an office from which he resigned after three years.   During the exercise of his duties he enhanced his reputation for humility by refusing to ride a horse, in accord with the dictates of the Order, instead traversing his huge diocese on foot.   This earned him the affectionate sobriquet “boots the Bishop” from his parishioners.   In 1263 Pope Urban IV relieved him of the duties of bishop and asked him to preach the eighth Crusade in German-speaking countries.  After this, he was especially known for acting as a mediator between conflicting parties.   In Cologne he is not only known for being the founder of Germany’s oldest university there but also for “the big verdict” (der Große Schied) of 1258, which brought an end to the conflict between the citizens of Cologne and the archbishop.   Among the last of his labours was the defense of the orthodoxy of his former pupil, Thomas Aquinas, whose death in 1274 grieved Albert (the story that he travelled to Paris in person to defend the teachings of Aquinas can not be confirmed).

After suffering a collapse of health in 1278, he died on 15 November 1280, in the Dominican convent in Cologne, Germany.   Since then 15 November 1954, his relics are in a Roman sarcophagus in the crypt of the Dominican St Andreas Church in Cologne. Although his body was discovered to be incorrupt at the first exhumation three years after his death, at the exhumation in 1483 only a skeleton remained.

Pope Pius XI, when he canonised him in 1931, said he had “that rare and divine gift, scientific instinct, in the highest degree.”   Like St Thomas, he was very much influenced by Aristotle in seeing the compatibility of natural sciences and philosophy with theology. Also like his star pupil, he rightly saw God’s hand behind all creation!

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

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On the memorial of St Albert the Great, let us give thanks for the gift of his life - 15 November

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Quote/s of the Day – 15 November – The Memorials of St Albert the Great (1200-1280) Doctor of the Church and St Raphael Kalinowski (1835-1907)

“Nor could He have commanded anything more lovable, for this sacrament produces love and union. It is characteristic of the greatest love to give itself as food. “Had not the men of my text exclaimed: ‘ Who will feed us with his flesh to satisfy our hunger?’ as if to say: ‘I have loved them and they have loved me so much that I desire to be within them and they wish to receive me so that the, may become my members.’ There is no more intimate or more natural means for them to be united to me and I to them. Nor could He have commanded anything which is more like eternal life. Eternal life flows from this sacrament because God with all sweetness pours Himself out upon the blessed.”

St Albert the Great (1200-1280) Doctor of the Church

“Our Redeemer ever present in the most Blessed Sacrament, extends His hands to everyone. He opens His heart and says, ‘Come to Me, all of you.'”

St Raphael Kalinowski (1835-1907)

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

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Our Morning Offering – 24 October

Our Lord, King of all! St ALBERT the GREAT O.P.

We pray to You, O Lord, who are the surpeme Truth, and all truth is from You. We beseech You, O Lord, who are the highest Wisdom, and all the wise depend on You for their wisdom. You are the supreme Joy, and all who are happy owe it to You. You are the Light of minds, and all receive their understanding from You. We love, we love You above all. We seek You, we follow You, and we are ready to serve You. We desire to dwell under Your power for You are the King of all. Amen

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

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Quote of the Day – 5 August – Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major/           Our Lady of the Snow

“Mary is the Divine Page on which the Father wrote the Word of God, His Son.”

St Albert the Great (1206-1280) Doctor of the Church

(via Quote of the Day - 5 August - Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major/Our Lady of the Snow)

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“Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray the Lord that learned theologians will never be lacking in holy Church, wise and devout like St Albert the Great and that he may help each one of us to make our own the “formula of holiness” that he followed in his life: “to desire all that I desire for the glory of God, as God desires for his glory all that he desires”, in other words always to be conformed to God’s will, in order to desire and to do everything only and always for his glory.” Pope Benedict GENERAL AUDIENCE – Saint Peter’s Square, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100324.html

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Blessed Memorial of St Albert the Great / Doctor of the Church – November 15 

Albert the Great was a 13th-century German Dominican who decisively influenced the Church’s stance toward Aristotelian philosophy brought to Europe by the spread of Islam. He was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank. He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite fierce family opposition, he entered the Dominican novitiate. Students of philosophy know him as the master of Thomas Aquinas. Albert’s attempt to understand Aristotle’s writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves recognition on his own merits as a curious, honest and diligent scholar. His boundless interests prompted him to write a compendium of all knowledge: natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. His explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. “Our intention,” he said, “is to make all the aforesaid parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins.” He achieved his goal while serving as an educator at Paris and Cologne, as Dominican provincial, and even as bishop of Regensburg for a short time. He defended the mendicant orders and preached the Crusade in Germany and Bohemia.

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Saint of the Day – November 15 – St Albert the Great.Albertus Magnus OP (c 1200-1280) Religious, Bishop, Doctor of the Church, Theologian, Philosopher, Teacher, Preacher, Writer – Called doctor universalis and doctor expertus and magnus/the great – Patron of medical technicians; natural sciences; philosophers; scientists; students

German-born, St. Albert the Great was one of the Church’s greatest intellects. He studied at the University of Padua and later taught at Hildesheim, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Regensburg and Strasbourg. He entered the Dominican Order and taught at the University of Paris, where he received his doctorate in 1245. St. Thomas Aquinas is counted among his former students. Albert eventually became a provincial of the Order as well as Bishop of Regensburg. He was perhaps the greatest scientist of the Middle Ages and gained an excellent reputation in astronomy, biology, chemistry, geography, law, mathematics, physics, scripture, theology, and much more.

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Happy Feast Day of The Great St Albert – November 15 – Patron of medical technicians; natural sciences; philosophers; scientists; students; World Youth Day (Died in 1280) 

One of St. Albert’s pupils was the great St. Thomas Aquinas. It is believed that Albert learned of the death of St. Thomas directly from God. He had guided St. Thomas in beginning his great works in philosophy and theology. He also defended his teachings after Thomas died. (Image 3 Albert & Thomas) As St. Albert grew older, he became more holy. Before, he had expressed his deep thoughts in his writings. Now he expressed them in his whole way of living for God.