🕊️Saint Felix of Valois (1127-1212), renouncing his noble lineage, initially withdrew to a dense forest in the diocese of Meaux to live as a hermit in deep contemplation and austerity. However, Divine Providence united him with Saint John of Matha, and together, inspired by a celestial vision, they founded the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. His spiritual work was characterized by heroic charity, dedicated not only to personal asceticism but to the physical and spiritual ransom of Christians enslaved by the Moors, combining the contemplative life with a risky and merciful missionary action, becoming a model of detachment and love for neighbor until his death in the year 1212.
📖Epistle (1 Cor 4, 9-14)
Brethren: We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honorable, but we without honor. Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode; and we labor, working with our own hands. We are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it; we are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all, even until now. I write not these things to confound you, but I admonish you as my dearest children in Christ Jesus our Lord.
✠Gospel (Lk 12, 32-34)
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. Sell what you possess and give alms. Make to yourselves bags which grow not old, a treasure in heaven which faileth not; where no thief approacheth, nor moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
💭Reflections
💎The evangelical exhortation to sell one's possessions and accumulate an inexhaustible treasure in heaven finds a sublime incarnation in St. Felix of Valois, for true spiritual poverty is not merely material lack, but the voluntary detachment that frees the soul for perfect charity. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the perfection of charity consists essentially in the love of God and neighbor, and secondarily in the detachment from all that hinders this love (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 184, a. 3). By renouncing his noble inheritance and founding an order to purchase the freedom of others with money that was not his own, Felix demonstrated that the true treasure lies where the heart loving God resides, transforming temporal currency into the eternal currency of salvation.
⛓️The Apostle Paul, in the Epistle, describes the condition of the apostles as "fools for Christ's sake" and a "spectacle to the world," a reality experienced by the Trinitarians who ventured into hostile lands to ransom captives. This folly of the Cross defies the worldly logic of power and prestige, revealing that God's strength is made perfect in human weakness. St. Augustine reminds us that martyrs and confessors would not have endured such trials had they not possessed an inner vision superior to the outer vision of torments (St. Augustine, Sermon 280). Felix's life was a bloodless martyrdom of dedication, where the humiliation of begging alms for the captives configured him to the suffering Christ, making him the offscouring of the world, yet precious to Heaven.
🔥Finally, today's liturgy invites us to reflect on the inner freedom that precedes outer freedom, a central theme in the ransoming mission of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that freedom is the power to act or not to act, and to perform deliberate actions on one's own, achieving perfection when directed toward God (CCC 1731). St. Teresa of Avila warns that whoever does not detach themselves from everything cannot be free to fly to God (St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection). St. Felix understood that to liberate bodies from the shackles of the Saracens, it was first necessary to have the soul freed from the chains of selfishness and avarice, teaching us that operative charity is the only purse that does not grow old.
🇺🇸See English version of the critical articles here.
