LIVING GOSPEL VALUES LIKE ST. MARTIN DE PORRES..........

In these weeks following the 50th Anniversary of the convening of the Second Vatican Council, and the, "New Pentecost", it inaugurated in the Catholic-Christian Church at the call of Pope John XXIII, today we commemorate one the Saints of God John XXIII canonized for his Holiness and Faithful Witness to Jesus Christ and Gospel Values, St, Martin De Porres.  Juan Martin DePorres, born in Lima, Peru, as the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a former Black woman slave, in 1579, grew up in great poverty with a mother unable to support him.  He received two years of primary school education an was then apprenticed to a surgeon-barber.  However being a very prayerful and spiritual boy, at age 15, Juan Martin asked to enter a Dominican Convent in Lima, as a servant boy who was promoted to being a distributor of alms to the poor.  Unable to fully become  a Dominican because of racial restrictions, piety and ability to impart miraculous cures, led the Friars with whom he lived and worked, to change the restriction and formally and fully admit him into the Dominican Order.  His piety and humility in the face of the poverty and financial struggle the Convent faced, was to proclaim, "I am but a poor mulatto, sell me".  The depth of his piety and spirituality was anchored in the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist.  At age 34, he was assigned as a Dominican Brother to minister to the Sick in the Infirmary, becoming for the next twenty six years a Chaplain ministering and helping heal the ill and the impoverished.  He continued that work even when his superiors placed limitations on him, one incident involving a bleeding Indian he took into his care at the Convent.  His Superior reprimanded him for disobedience, and Martin De Porres responded, "Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know the precept of Obedience took precedence over that of Charity".  His Superior relented and allowed Martin to continue his  went ninistry reaching out to the poor and the suffering, and Brother Martin went to the extent of begging for alms and arranging with his blood sister Juama, to care for the sick and suffering in her home.  Brother Martin is known to have secured the alms to feed 160 persons everyday as well as distribute other alms to countless indigent persons.  His ministry among the ill and the indigent caused him to found an Orphanage and a Children's Hospital.  He died on November 3, 1679, was beatified by Pope Gregory XVI, in 1837; and canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1962.  He is the patron saint of people of Mixed Race, the Poor, Public Health Workers, Race Relations, Social Justice, Barbers, and Innkeepers.  He is also commemorated not only in the Roman Catholic Church, but in the Anglican and Lutheran Denominations of Christianity as well.  St. Martin De Porres continues to stand through time as an exemplary Christian who as a person Faith, held the Common Good of the least among us in a priority position of Life.  How faithfully do we live our Discipleship in Jesus The Christ and the Gospel Values of Charity and Mercy we profess to belive in and seek to practice ?  St. Martin De Porres, Pray For Us, to respond as you did............Fr.  Troy