January 15, 2023 - "Saint Peter Damian"

We are continuing our series on the Doctors of the Church.  We are now well into the Medieval Era with Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072).  I first encountered this saint when I was in the seventh grade at St. Paul School, Butler.  We had a new principal that year:  Sr. M. Damian Geisler, RSM.  Many years before she had taught my father in the fifth grade.  My father received quite a shock on the first day of school in 1961. Dad always brought us to school on the opening day to see where our classrooms were and to meet our teachers.  Sr. Damian greeted him, “Why if it isn’t John Dillon!  And these must be your children.”  That was our introduction to Sr. M. Damian.  Not long afterward our pastor, Msgr. Spiegel came to school and addressed the student body.  Pointing to Sr. M. Damian, he said, “Now boys and girls some of you may think that Sr. Damian is named for Fr. Damien who worked in Hawaii with those who had contracted leprosy.”  He went on to tell us that the saint for whom she was named was not Fr. Damien of Molokai but instead it was St. Peter Damian.   That began my interest in trying to find out who St. Peter Damian was.  For whom was Sr. M. Damian named?  Here is what I found out over time.
 
Pope Benedict XVI described St. Peter Damian as one of the most significant figures of the eleventh century.  Peter Damian was a monk, a lover of solitude and at the same time was a fearless man of the Church.  He was born into a noble family that experienced economic hardship.  Orphaned at an early age Peter Damian was looked after by his sister Roselinda and his brother Damian.  Peter Damian was educated first at Faenza and later at Parma.  He was a gifted writer and had a promising career ahead of him as a teacher.  But about the year 1035, he decided to leave all that behind him because he felt drawn to a life of seclusion and strict penitential observance.  He entered the hermitage at Fonte Avellana.  About eight years after his entrance into monastic life, he was chosen as prior.  He spent the next ten years founding new monasteries and reforming old ones.  Before long he became famous as an uncompromising preacher against two great errors of his day:  the worldliness of the clergy and also the simoniacal practices of the clergy.  Much against his will he was named Cardinal Bishop of Ostia.  In that role Peter Damian took a prominent part in the work of ecclesiastical reform.  Although Pope Alexander II deprived him of his cardinalate, nevertheless he sent Peter Damian on diplomatic missions to France and Germany.
 
During his life Peter enjoyed great authority in the Church, on account of his learning, zeal, and integrity. In his numerous writings he urged strict monastic discipline and severe mortification and denounced immorality and simony.  He campaigned for the creation of clerical communities of apostolic life without property.  He was an important thinker in the spheres of theology and canon law.  Peter Damian was never formally canonized but since his death he has been the object of veneration in several places.  In 1828 Pope Leo XII extended his feast to the universal Church and named him a Doctor of the Church at the same time.  He is said to have adopted the title Damian in gratitude to his older brother of that name who had arranged for his education.
 
I think that it would be fitting to end this column with these remarks by Pope Benedict given at the conclusion of his conference on St. Peter Damian:
 
Dear brothers and sisters, it is a great grace that the Lord should have raised up in the life of the Church a figure as exuberant, rich, and complex as St. Peter Damian.  Moreover, it is rare to find theological works and spirituality as keen and as vibrant as those of the Hermitage of Fonte Avellana. St. Peter Damian was a monk through and through, with forms of austerity that to us today might even seem excessive.  Yet, in that way he made monastic life an eloquent testimony of God’s primacy and an appeal to all to walk toward holiness, free from any compromise with evil. He spent himself, with lucid consistency and great severity, for the reform of the Church of his time.  He gave all his spiritual and physical energies to Christ and to the Church, but always remained, as he liked to describe himself, Petrus ultimus monachorum servus, Peter the lowliest servant of monks.
 
Until next week,