“Vocation crisis may be a matter of smoke and mirrors. But the smoke and mirrors have very real consequences,” Andrew M. Greeley in A Calling in Crisis said.
As early as the ninth century, there was already a crisis in religious vocations.
Saint Oswald, a religious, shone as a “bright star of dignity”, an epitome of goodness, charity and morality for others.
In his 31 years as a religious, eight popes sat on the chair of Peter, none of them was declared saint.
Advocate of moral reforms
Oswald is of Danish parentage and was born in Denmark but he was raised in Great Britain by Saint Odo, the archbishop of Canterbury. He became the dean of Secular Canons of Winchester. He considered the training lax and attempted to introduce reforms, which failed.
Thinking that the “infallible instinct that guided saints during critical times” was the remedy, he thought the restoration of monastic life can be a solution. So he went to the Abbey of Fleury of France in 950 and took the habit of Saint Benedict in 959.
When he returned to England, Saint Odo was already dead. Oswald turned to Oskytel, and the archbishop of York involved him in religious activities. Impressed, Archbishop Dunstan consecrated him as bishop of Worchester in 961.
Rev. Alban Butler, in Index of All Saints, narrates that after his consecration in 962 by Saint Dunstan, Oswald became Dunstan’s staunch supporter to “purify the Church from abuses”.
In 964 he was appointed archbishop of York. As archbishop he visited dioceses; preached and introduced reforms; corrected abuses through fatherly admonitions, dialogues, fasting and prayers.
Oswald was, likewise, tasked by the Duke of Aylwin, the superintendency of the Great Monastery of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire.
Dunstan and Ethelwold of Winschester revived monastic practices. Religious who were not performing their religious vows were sent to a cathedral in Rome administered by a body of religious. Sacred texts.com lists that disorderly clerics were deprived of benefits and replaced with regulars, and finding themselves isolated and their cathedrals deserted willingly disciplined themselves than continue to “injure their own souls, be a mockery to their people by reason of contrast offered by worldliness” and followed the proper decorum of the religious.
He wrote two treatises and several synodal decrees to improve the morality and theological knowledge of the clergy.
In 970 Regularis Concordia, a Code of Monastic Conduct, which he wrote, was agreed upon and implemented.
Two years later, Oswald went to Rome to receive from Pope John XIII a pallium, the symbol of full episcopal authority.
Hagiography hailed him saint
Enhancing the holiness of the people of God is never solely dependent on numbers but on the quality and spirit of priests.
That the spirituality of a generation is one degree less intense than its advocate in Christ is an opinion expounded by Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard, Ocso, in Soul of Apostolate.
“If the priest is a saint, the people will be fervent.
“If the priest is fervent, the people will be pious.
“If the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent.
“If the priest is only decent, the people will be Godless.”
Considered as a holy person during his time, Saint Oswald had a dozen people with him on the dining table, and washed and kissed their feet to nourish his humility and charity.
It was chronicled that his progress to a life of perfect virtue was his belief in the fundamental maxim of eternal truth of Saint Bennet.
“He who desires to give himself up to God must trample all earthly things under his feet, renounce everything that is not God and die to all earthly affection.”
One of the three saints who revived English Monasticism, Oswald died on February 29, 992.
He died while washing the feet of people. Immediately after his death, miracles were reported at his funeral and his tomb.
A hagiographical life written after his death in 992 hailed him as a saint.
***Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons