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September 15
Saichō, Charles de Foucauld, Catherine of Genoa, and James Chisholm
David Barnhart
September 15, 2025
Common Buckeye, 2025. Own photo.
Today marks the anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.
Today is also the birthday of the Buddhist monk Saichō, in 767 CE. After traveling to China, he founded the Japanese Tendai school of Buddhism.
Today is the birthday of Charles de Foucauld, in 1858, who lived and studied with the Tuareg people in Algeria until his murder in 1916. His life and writings inspired other religious intentional communities around the world. His feast day is celebrated on December 1.
It is also the feast day of Roman Catholic mystic Catherine of Genoa who died in 1510, and Episcopal priest James Chisholm, in 1855, both of whom worked among the sick. Chisholm died of yellow fever while working to bring relief to victims of the epidemic.
Reflection:
Catherine of Genoa wrote:
“I see without eyes, and I hear without ears. I feel without feeling and taste without tasting. I know neither form nor measure; for without seeing I yet behold an operation so divine that the words I first used, perfection, purity, and the like, seem to me now mere lies in the presence of truth. . . . Nor can I any longer say, “My God, my all.” Everything is mine, for all that is God’s seem to be wholly mine. I am mute and lost in God...God so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God, and He continues to draw it up into His fiery love until He restores it to that pure state from which it first issued.”
Catherine’s description of mystical union with God rings true with other mystics from many traditions through the ages.
I also want to share this passage from James Chisholm’s memoirs, which is such a wonderful description of the life of a small parish priest:
“My time is occupied as usual. The routine of a country clergyman’s life is quite unvarying. I spend a part, perhaps not less than half, of each week in visiting. Sometimes I set out on a tour from which I do not reach home again in under four or five days. It is not considered kindly or social in a pastor to go away without taking a meal, at least. As I always endeavor to meet the wishes of those among whim I go, in this respect, I have once or twice, when making calls in considerable haste, been obliged to sit down oftener than the usual number of times. On one occasion… I was actually obliged to take five meals.”
And with the memory of COVID still fresh, I want to share his reflections on the yellow fever epidemic:
“On Wednesday, August 8, there were eleven burials—not funerals—for in these woeful days man received an interment but little better than the burial of a dog.”
and one day when he was feeling just grateful to be alive, he wrote:
“Oh! why do we not always and everywhere feel that the continuance of life and its blessings is one continuous miracle of a wisdom, love, and power no less than infinite?”
Like Constance and her companions and like Annie Cook, yellow fever would claim his life, too. But his determination not to let others die alone, to make them feel cared for until the very last, is a tangible incarnation of the love of Jesus Christ that goes with us all the way to death.
Prayer: God, may our gratitude for the gift of life overwhelm even our fear of death. Amen.