September 2, 2018 - "Saint Peter Damian"

I first became acquainted with St. Peter Damian when I was in seventh grade.  The date was February 23, 1962.  Sister M. Damian, R.S.M., had returned to St. Paul School the previous September as the Principal.  Sister M. Damian had previously taught fifth grade at St. Paul School in 1929-30.  Two of her fifth grade students that year were my father and his brother, my uncle Charles.  Our pastor, Monsignor William J. Spiegel, had come to school on that fateful morning.  When he addressed all of the school children, he reminded us that when we saw Sister M. Damian in the hall way we should be sure to wish her a happy feast day.  Then Monsignor Spiegel went on to say, “Some of you think that her religious name comes from Father Damien, the famous leper priest of Hawaii.  Oh no, she is named for Saint Peter Damian, who was a Bishop and Doctor of the Church. 
 
Considering all that is going on in the Church right now, I think that it would be good to have a look at the life and times of Saint Peter Damian (1007-72), who was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1828.  George Santayana (1863-1952), a noted philosopher, essayist, and novelist, once made the important remark, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Peter was orphaned and treated harshly and cruelly by an older brother with whom he came to live after the death of his parents.  Perhaps because of his experience he was very good to the poor.  It was his custom to have a poor person or two with him at the table and he liked to minister personally to their needs.  Peter escaped poverty and the neglect of his own brother when another brother who was the archpriest of Ravenna took him under his wings.  His brother sent him to good schools.  Peter soon proved himself to be an excellent student. In time he became a professor.
 
Even in those days Peter lived a penitential life.  He wore a hair shirt under his clothes, fasted rigorously, and spent many hours in prayer.  Eventually he left his teaching position and gave himself completely to prayer with the Benedictines of the reform of Saint Romuald at Fonte Avellana.  They lived two monks to a hermitage.  Peter was so eager to pray and slept so little that he developed severe insomnia.  That served as a wake-up call for him to take better care of himself.  When he wasn’t praying, he devoted himself to study of the Scriptures. 
 
The abbot commanded that when he died Peter should succeed him.  In time Abbot Peter went on to establish five other hermitages.  He encouraged his brothers to pursue their life of prayer and solitude.  He wanted nothing else for himself, but things turned out differently for him.  Peter had become associated with a party of reform-minded clerics that the Roman church needed to free itself from all outside control, even of the German emperors, so that here could be proper moral and ecclesiastical reform in Christendom.     Peter worked hard to wipe out simony—the buying of church offices—and encouraged his priests to observe celibacy.  He even encouraged diocesan clergy to live together and maintain scheduled prayer and religious observance.  Indeed, Peter was particularly upset with the corrupt lives of priests.  His Book of Gomorrah was a fierce attack on homosexuality among the clergy.

Peter was on friendly terms with Hildebrand, the leader of the reform-minded clerics in the Roman Curia.  Indeed Peter was named a Cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Pope Stephen IX, probably in 1057, at the urging of Hildebrand.  For the next fifteen years until his death at Faenza in 1072, Peter became a major troubleshooter for the reform party of the curia, being sent on numerous diplomatic missions throughout Italy and even into France and Germany.  He often complained about these tasks, but his commitment to reform meant that he could not refuse the demands placed upon him.
 
The times in which Peter Damian lived were difficult.  He saw pain and suffering, evil and corruption everywhere he looked.  He was not slow in denouncing the evil and corruption in the strongest possible terms.  Bernard McGinn observes in his Doctors of the Church:  Thirty-Three Men and Women Who Shaped Christianity that when you contrast the usually pessimistic Peter Damian with the optimistic Francis de Sales, you can really see the different personalities of the doctors of the church.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John