Resurrection of the Lord Catholic Church

Feast date: Jan 15

On Jan. 15, the Catholic Church remembers Saint Paul of Thebes, whose life of solitude and penance gave inspiration to the monastic movement during its early years.

Surviving in the Egyptian desert on a small amount of daily food, St. Paul the Hermit lived in close communion with God. Before the end of his life at age 113, he met with St. Anthony the Great, who led an early community of monks elsewhere in the Egyptian desert.

Born in approximately 230, the future hermit Paul received a solid religious and secular education, but lost his parents at age 15. During the year 250, the Roman Emperor Decius carried out a notorious persecution of the Church, executing clergy and forcing laypersons to prove their loyalty by worshiping idols. The state used torture, as well as the threat of death to coerce believers into making pagan sacrifices.

Paul went into hiding during the Decian persecution, but became aware of a family member's plan to betray him to the authorities. The young man retreated to a remote desert location, where he discovered a large abandoned cave that had once been used as a facility for making counterfeit coins. He found that he could survive on water from a spring. A raven brought him half a loaf of bread daily.

Forced into the wilderness by circumstance, Paul found he loved the life of prayer and simplicity that it made possible. Thus, he never returned to the outside world, even though he lived well into the era of the Church's legalization and acceptance by the Roman Empire. Later on, his way of life inspired Catholics who sought a deeper relationship with God through spiritual discipline and isolation from the outside world.

One of these faithful was Anthony of Egypt, born in the vicinity of Cairo around 251, who also lived to an old age after deciding during his youth to live in the desert out of devotion to God. Paul of Thebes is known to posterity because Anthony, around the year 342, was told in a dream about the older hermit's existence, and went to find him.

A similar knowledge about Anthony had been mysteriously given to the earlier hermit. Thus, when he appeared at Paul's cave, they greeted each other by name, though they had never met. Out of contact with the Roman Empire for almost a century, Paul asked about its condition, and whether paganism was still practiced. He told Anthony how, for the last 60 years, a bird had brought him a ration of bread each day – a mode of subsistence also granted to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.

After 113 years, most of them spent in solitary devotion, Paul understood that he was nearing the end of his earthly life. He asked Anthony to return to his own hermitage, and bring back a cloak that had been given to the younger monk by the bishop St. Athanasius. That heroically orthodox bishop had not yet been born when Paul first fled to the desert, and Anthony had never mentioned him or the cloak in question. Amazed, Anthony paid reverence to Paul and set out to fulfill his request.

During the return trip, Anthony was shown a vision of St. Paul of Thebes' soul, glorified and ascending toward Heaven. On returning to the first hermit's cave, he venerated the body of its inhabitant, wrapped him in Athanasius' cloak, and carried him outdoors. Saint Jerome, in his “Life of St. Paul the First Hermit,” attests that two lions arrived, demonstrated their reverence, and dug a grave for the saint.

Having given him Athanasius' cloak, St. Anthony took back to his hermitage the garment which St. Paul of Thebes had woven for himself from palm leaves. Anthony passed on the account of his journey and the saint's life to his own growing group of monastic disciples, and it was written down by St. Jerome around the year 375 – approximately 33 years after the death of the first hermit.

Venerated on the same day by Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, St. Paul of Thebes is also the namesake of a Catholic monastic order – the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit – founded in Hungary during the 13th century and still in operation.

Pope Leo XIV meets with family members of those killed in a tragic fire that struck Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on New Year's Day, and offers words of faith and consolation.

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WASHINGTON - “We are tremendously grateful for the Administration’s work to address certain challenges facing foreign-born religious workers, their employers, and the American communities they serve,” said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Bishop Brendan J. Cahill, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration. 

Today, the Trump Administration issued an Interim Final Rule that will soon be published in the Federal Register, which will impact foreign-born religious workers seeking to continue their ministries in the United States. Catholic priests, religious, and others who hold religious worker (R-1) visas are generally required to depart the United States upon reaching the maximum period of stay for that visa (five years) and then can possibly return to the country on a subsequent R-1 visa. Previously, they were required to spend at least one full year outside of the United States between R-1 visas. The rule announced today amends federal regulations to require no minimum time outside of the country before religious workers can return on a subsequent R-1 visa, provided they meet all other requirements. 

This modification gives relief to religious workers and the communities they serve while the religious workers await legal permanent residency (commonly referred to as a “green card”). The wait time for a green card for religious workers has grown to several decades long. For multiple years, the USCCB has been alerting policymakers to the hardship this situation creates for religious organizations and people of faith, especially in more isolated or rural parts of the country. Together with interfaith partners, the bishops have been advocating since 2023 for the specific regulatory change published today. 

Archbishop Coakley and Bishop Cahill’s full statement follows: 

“We are tremendously grateful for the Administration’s work to address certain challenges facing foreign-born religious workers, their employers, and the American communities they serve. The value of the Religious Worker Visa Program and our appreciation for the efforts undertaken to support it cannot be overstated. This targeted change is a truly significant step that will help facilitate essential religious services for Catholics and other people of faith throughout the United States by minimizing disruptions to cherished ministries. 

“In order to provide the full extent of the relief needed and truly promote the free exercise of religion in our country, we continue to urge Congress to enact the bipartisan Religious Workforce Protection Act.” 

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- If Christians are to speak about God, then they must dedicate time each day and week to listening to God's word in prayer and the liturgy, Pope Leo XIV said.

"We are called to live and cultivate friendship with the Lord" through prayer, he said Jan. 14 during his weekly general audience.

"This is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer, in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is he himself who speaks to us through the Church," he said. "It is then achieved in personal prayer, which takes place in the interiority of the heart and mind."

"Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian's day and week," he said. "Only when we speak with God can we also speak about him." 

Speaking to visitors gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall for the general audience, the pope continued a new series of talks dedicated to the Second Vatican Council, which "rediscovered the face of God as the Father who, in Christ, calls us to be his children," Pope Leo said in his first talk introducing the series Jan. 7.

He dedicated his Jan. 14 catechesis to the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, "Dei Verbum," calling it "one of the most beautiful and important" documents of the council.

The document, published in 1965, affirms "a fundamental point of Christian faith," that "Jesus Christ radically transforms man's relationship with God," who is no longer invisible or distant, but has been made flesh, he said.

Out of the abundance of his love, the Lord "speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that he may invite and take them into fellowship with himself," he said. "The only condition of the New Covenant is love." 

While the Covenant is eternal, and "nothing can separate us from his love," the revelation of God has "the dialogical nature of friendship," which "does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words," he said.

Just as human friendships can end with "a dramatic gesture of rupture or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost," one's friendship with Jesus must be cultivated and cared for daily, Pope Leo said.

Therefore, the first step is to cultivate an "attitude of listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts," he said. "At the same time, we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what he already knows, but to reveal ourselves to ourselves."

"If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded," he said.

"Let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation," he said.