Transverberation - St. Teresa of Jesus of Avila

Opt. Memorial - August 26  (Memorial for OCD Nuns)

In seeing the risen Christ, she experienced a mystical Transverberation, which she described as the piercing of her heart by an angel. She called this spiritual union with God, her "mystical marriage."

In 1559, P. Álvarez becomes her confessor. Near her fortieth year, God-states started to descend like a monsoon on the parched landscape of Teresa’s soul. It began with an ordinary day in which the unsuspecting nun was strolling to the oratory. A statue of Christ, known as the "Ecce Homo," which someone had placed in the corridor, caught her eye. The next thing she knew, Teresa was prostrate on the floor, sobbing. The image of the suffering redeemer unlocked decades of remorse and longing. The flow of tears seemed to serve as a purifying stream, washing away all her pent-up agitation. When at last she rose to her feet again, she felt refreshed, renewed, and even reborn.
From then on, Teresa experienced a relentless series of supernatural states. Visions of the resurrected Christ, his Blessed Mother, and various saints were punctuated by spiritual voices in which specific messages were transmitted, such as, "Now I want you to speak not with men but with angels."

Teresa understood what this meant. She plunged into a life of unceasing prayer with all the zeal of a convert. Her raptures were frequent and famous. Sometimes she entered into trancelike states that paralyzed her for hours, and she seemed to stop breathing. When these things happened in public, Teresa found them terribly embarrassing. Legend tells it that as Teresa was in the choir singing among her sisters one day, she began to levitate. When the other nuns started to whisper and point, Teresa lowered her gaze and realized that she had risen several inches above the stone floor. "Put me down!" she demanded of God. And he did.

Once, when the Christ child appeared and asked her who she was, she replied, "I am Teresa of Jesus. Who are you?" "I am Jesus of Teresa," he said.

Perhaps the most influential of Teresa’s mystical moments was immortalized in marble by the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He called it Saint Teresa in Ecstasy. In this unabashedly sensual image, we see the nun swooning blissfully backward while a clearly delighted androgynous angel plunges a flaming sword into her, leaving her on fire with love for God. This experience has come to be known as the "Transverberation" and it occurred repeatedly over a sustained period of Teresa’s life. Each time the blade was withdrawn, Teresa felt as if her very entrails were being pulled out with it. "The pain is so severe," Teresa writes in her autobiography, "it made me moan. The sweetness of the intense pain is so extreme, there is no wanting it to end, and the soul isn’t satisfied with anything less than God." She had to admit that "the body has a large share" in this agonizing ecstasy.

As word began to spread about Teresa’s extraordinary experiences, the eyes of the Inquisition turned toward the middle-aged nun. But Teresa’s scrutiny of her own states was at least as severe as theirs. Fruitlessly, Teresa spent years seeking wise counsel to help her determine once and for all whether her visions, locutions, and raptures came from God or from the devil, or maybe even from mental pathology, all expressions of which at that time were lumped under the single heading of "melancholy."

Teresa seemed to find her spiritual gifts more humbling than exalting. While she praised God continuously for blessing "a common woman" with such glorious tastes of his love, she remained equally devoted to the sanctity of the ordinary. Provisions were often scarce in convent life and Teresa enjoyed cooking and eating. "God," Teresa would say, "lives also among the pots and pans." Once, upon being politely questioned about the obvious pleasure she took in food, Teresa was said to have commented, "When praying, pray. When eating partridge, eat partridge," and returned with gusto to her meal. "God save me from pious nuns," was a prayer Teresa was heard to mumble frequently under her breath.

By the time Teresa of Avila met John of the Cross, one of the few men she ever seemed to have recognized as being worthy of guiding her soul, she was learning to balance the inner life with the outer, to keep her ecstatic impulses in check when it was time to tend to the business of religious reform. Frustrated by her observations of the lazy slide of an Order founded originally on the ideals of simplicity and silence, Teresa took it upon herself to spearhead a return to a path of poverty and contemplative prayer in the Carmelite community.

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“I saw an angel beside me toward the left side, in bodily form…He was not very large, but small, very beautiful, his face so blazing with light that he seemed to be one of the very highest angels, who appear all on fire. They must be those they call Cherubim…I saw in his hands a long dart of gold, and at the end of the iron there seemed to me to be a little fire. This I thought he thrust through my heart several times, and that it reached my very entrails. As he withdrew it, I thought it brought them with it, and left me all burning with a great love of God. So great was the pain, that it made me give those moans; and so utter the sweetness that this sharpest of pains gave me, that there was no wanting it to stop, nor is there any contenting of the soul with less than God”. (St. Teresa, Life…Chapter 19).

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Transverberation;

of the Heart,

of St. Teresa of Avila

Among savants in the field of the Fine Arts there exists the firm and widespread belief that great masterpieces of poetry, painting, music, etc. are not from men, but from God. They are one in the conviction that He bestows upon the authors of such masterpieces an altogether rare and extraordinary kind of soul that is delicately attuned to beauty and possessed of the happy faculty of making it palpable, i.e., of reproducing it in meter, rhythm, sound, color and matter. In this way, God makes His divine perfections (of which all created beauty is but a faint shadow) known to mankind.

Now there exists another class of persons who are also blessed by God with a distinctive, uncommon kind of genius. They are the Mystics. To each of these, God gives a soul that is peculiarly sensitive to the realities of the supernatural order. That world we ordinary souls know by Faith. So do the Mystics, of course, but over and above, there is found in them, in the lower faculties of their soul, a kind of ‘resonance’ to the truths of the Faith. They enjoy the singular knack of being able to perceive supernatural entities through the medium of the senses, namely, in visions, locutions, divine “touches”, etc.

Because she is both saint and “bon fide” mystic, Teresa is a benefit to mankind. To her was granted experience of many supernatural realities: the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, an intellectual vision of the Blessed Trinity, the splendor of a soul in the state of grace, the power of holy water over demons, and many others. The heroic virtues she displayed for the greater part of her life placed her beyond the possibility of deceiving or being deceived in these matters, and so our Faith in Divine Revelation is deepened and strengthened.

The mystical favor granted St. Teresa, which she herself, in the words we have reproduced above, describes so beautifully, accompanied the infusion by God into her soul of an extraordinary grace. It is one He wants to give to all His saints but not to all does He make it known in this way. We see from the circumstances that this was the communication of an exalted degree of purifying and transforming Charity. The messenger was a Cherub, one of those whose office it is to impart sublime knowledge and love of God to lower orders of angels. The little fire on the end of the spear represents the intensity of the love, the spear itself, the death-dealing blow inflicted by it upon all base loves. It seemed to draw out her vital organs, signifying that henceforth she would live for God alone. The pain gives us to understand what a lofty knowledge of God was communicated to her, for her human nature was hard pressed to bear the weight of it (Who can see God and live?). The exquisite delight engendered by that knowledge gives us an inkling of the surpassing joy that comes of possessing Him who is ineffable goodness and loveliness. Who, reading of this, is not convinced of the reality of God’s gifts to man? Who does not reverence and esteem them all the more?

Now, it would be the height of foolishness for us to wait around for the Lord to bestow upon us a similar favor. At any rate, it isn’t wise to hold our breath till it happens. God has provided an ordinary way of pouring into our souls the grace of transforming love. We are reminded of it in the Carmelite Feast of the Transverberation of the Heart of St. Teresa, in the Chapter (short instruction) of Vespers and Lauds: “God’s Word to us is something alive, full of energy; it can penetrate deeper than any two-edged sword, reaching the very division between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow, quick to distinguish every thought and design in our hearts”. (Heb. 4,12 – Knox Transl.) The Word of God is the ordinary way. It can accomplish in us, gradually, over a long period of time, what the angel affected in Teresa in an instant. Or better, just to keep the records straight, what the angel brought about in her was merely the culmination, the grace which terminated and crowned the work that the Word of God had been doing in her soul little by little, day by day, year after year.

The Word of God is, then, in its own right, a dart. And it is wielded by other of God’s angels the Priests and Bishops of the Church. With it, they, too, aim to pierce the very substance of our souls, to bring death to ignoble love of self, to illuminate our minds with divine truth, and enkindle in our hearts an unadulterated love for God and man. It reaches down into the division of soul and spirit, distinguishing clearly the animal man from the spiritual man (who is created according to God in the justice and holiness of truth). It penetrates to the division between joints and marrow, that is, it instructs us concerning the relationships binding us to our fellow men in the body politic. It is the discoverer of our real self, laying bare the secret chambers of our minds and hearts.

It is God’s Will that we take the dart, which is God’s Word (St. Paul calls it the Sword of the Spirit) and plunge it frequently into the depths of our souls. We do this when we practice mental prayer daily. If we are faithful, we shall soon discover that it can and does transform us completely. It purges away all sinful affection, opens the eyes of our spirit to the ravishing beauty of the divine nature, and wins us the grace to live for God alone.

Bl. Mary of Jesus Crucified, virgin OCD

The Little Arab

1846-1878 – Opt. Memorial - August 25

Mariam Baouardy was a child of Galilee, Palestine. Her family originated in Damascus, Syria. They were Christians of the Melkite Greek-Catholic Rite, descendants of the Archeparchy of Antioch, the place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. The Baouardy lived in the hill country of upper Galilee. Her father, Giries (George) Baouardy, came from Horfesch, Palestine; her mother, Mariam Shahine, came from Tarshiha, Palestine. Druse, Sunni Muslims, and Christians’ Arabs populated both villages. They were folk of very modest means. Mariam bore her husband 12 sons; none survived their infancy to the great sorrow of their parents.

Mariam, devoted to the Virgin Mary, prayed for a daughter. She prevailed upon her husband to travel to Bethlehem and to beseech the Mother of God for a girl-child. They did so. At the Grotto of the Nativity of Jesus they poured out their request in prayer. They then returned to Galilee and their home in Ibillin. On January 5, 1846, the eve of the Epiphany, an infant daughter was born. Ten days later in the local Melkite Church she received Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist. She was named after the Virgin and called, Mariam.

Two years later a baby boy was born. He was named Boulos (Paul). The tiny family had a short time together. Both mother and father died within a few days of each other. Giries’ last words, while looking at a picture of Saint Joseph were: “Great Saint, here is my child. The Blessed Virgin Mary is her mother. Please look after her, be her father.” A maternal aunt from Tarshiha took tiny Paul into her home; a paternal uncle in Ibillin adopted Mariam.

Mariam dwelled in the comfortable home of her uncle receiving all proper care and attention. One incident from the time of her childhood revealed significant insight into her forming character. It clearly indicated the direction of her life to come. It took place in her uncle’s orchard amidst the apricot, peach and pecan trees. She kept a small cage filled with small birds, a gift given to her. One day she desired to give them a bath. Her child-like well-intentioned efforts caused their death from drowning. Their death broke her small heart. Grief-stricken she began to bury them when deep inside she heard a clear voice, “This is how everything passes. If you will give me your heart, I shall always remain with you.”

When Mariam was eight years old her uncle left Palestine with the entire family and settled in Alexandria, Egypt. She was not to see her beloved Ibillin till shortly before her death in 1878.

According to oriental custom, Mariam, then age 13, was promised in marriage. The wedding was arranged without the bride-to-be’s consultation or consent. This was a common custom among Middle Eastern Christians as well as Muslims. Mariam’s reaction was one of shock and deep sadness. The night before the wedding ceremony was sleepless. She was not prepared at all for the life of a married woman. She prayed earnestly that night for guidance and solace. In her heart’s depths she again heard a familiar voice; “Everything passes! If you wish to give me your heart, I will remain with you.” Mariam knew it was her master’s voice, the one, the only spouse she would have - Jesus. The remainder of the night was spent in deep prayer before the icon of the Virgin Mother of Jesus; she then heard the words, “Mariam, I am with you; follow the inspiration I shall give you. I will help you."

Her adoptive uncle reacted with wild rage when he saw that Mariam would not marry, but would remain a virgin. He tried outburst of rage, screams, hits and slaps. Nothing would change her determination. He then resorted to treating her as a hired domestic, giving her the most difficult kitchen tasks and subjecting her to a position lower than his hired help.

Mariam sank into a deep sense of desolation and desperation. She turned to her younger brother, Boulos. She wrote a letter to her brother inviting him to come and see her in Alexandria. In her isolation from her uncle’s family she turned to a Muslim domestic to have him deliver her letter to Nazareth. The young man encouraged Mariam to reveal her personal troubles. He became outraged at her uncle’s treatment of her and played upon the mind and feelings of the young girl. He introduced conversion to Islam as a remedy to Mariam’s problems. His words and actions focused young Mariam directly upon her Christianity. Her realization of the young man’s true intentions stiffened her will. She denied his advances and loudly proclaimed her faith in the Church of Jesus. “Muslim, no; never! I am a daughter of the Catholic Apostolic Church, and I hope by the grace of God to persevere until death in my religion, which is the only true one.”

Her so-called protector, furious at being rejected by this little Christian became violent. Eyes flashing with hatred he lost control and kicked her to the floor. He then drew his sword and slashed her throat. Thinking her dead he dumped her bloody body in a nearby dark alley. It was September 8, 1858. What followed was a strange and beautifully moving story, told years later by Mariam, to her Mistress of Novices at Marseilles, France. “A nun dressed in blue picked me up and stitched my throat wound. This happened in a grotto somewhere. I found myself in heaven with the Blessed Virgin, the angels and the saints. They treated me with great, kindness. In their company were my parents. I saw the brilliant throne of the Most Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ in His humanity. There was no sun, no lamp, but everything was bright with light. Someone spoke to me. They said that I was a virgin, but that my book was not finished. When my wound was healed I had to leave the grotto and the Lady took me to the Church of St. Catherine served by the Franciscan Friars. I went to confess. When I left, the Lady in Blue had disappeared.”

Years later when in ecstasy, on September 8, 1874, the feast of our Lady’s nativity, Sr. Mary said, “On this same day in 1858, I was with my Mother (Mary) and I consecrated my life to her. Someone had cut my throat and the next day Mother Mary took care of me.”

Mariam never saw her uncle again. She supported herself by working as a domestic. An Arab Christian family, the Najjar, hired her to work for them. After two years she was directed by her confessor; to the Sisters of St. Joseph. With several postulants from Lebanon and Palestine, she stayed with the Sisters. Soon her health declined and mystical phenomena began. It was disturbing to the congregation. They became upset over her supernatural actions and aura and would not permit her to enter the novitiate. Her Mistress of Novices, Mother Veronica, took her to the Carmelite convent of Pau where both gained admission. Mariam entered Carmel at age 21 as a lay sister. After two months she entered the cloister to begin her novitiate. She took the name of Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified.

Little Mariam Baouardy, now known as Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, was professed on November 21, 1871 as a Carmelite Religious. Prior to that action she was subjected to severe supernatural adversities. One of the most terrible was diabolic possession for a period of 40 days. She persevered in her simple child-like faith in God the Son and His Holy Mother Mary. Her rewards were those reserved for the most privileged of humans. She was fixed with the stigmata of her crucified Savior, experienced levitations, transverberations of the heart, knowledge of hearts, prophecies, possession by the Good Angel, and facial radiance. Again and again she would say,

“Everything passes here on earth. What are we? Nothing but dust, nothingness, and God is so great, so beautiful, so lovable and He is not loved.”

Sister Mariam of Jesus Crucified had an intense devotion to the Holy Spirit, Possessor of the Truth without error or division. Through the Melkite Patriarch Gregory II Sayour, she sent a message to Pope Pius IX that the Church, even in seminaries, is neglecting true devotion to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Her prayer to that great Unknown was:

“Holy Spirit; inspire me. Love of God; consume me. Along the true road, lead me. Mary, my good mother, look down upon me. With Jesus, bless me. From all evil, all illusion, all danger, preserve me.”

This simple prayer has gone around the world.

Sister Mariam was instrumental in the founding of a missionary Carmel in Mangalore, India, in 1871, and in Bethlehem of Palestine. Also she was the inspiration for the establishment of the Congregation of the Betharram Priests of the Sacred Heart.

On 5 January 1878, Sister Mariam entered her 33rd year of life. One day in August she fell while working in the convent injuring her severely. Gangrene set in quickly and spread the infection to her respiratory tract. She never recovered from this trauma. On 26 August 1878, she suffered a life-threatening suffocation attack. She died soon after murmuring, “My Jesus, mercy.” It was ten minutes past five in the morning. (5:10 AM)

Her tomb is engraved with this inscription:

“Here in the peace of the Lord reposes Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified, professed religious of the white veil. A soul of singular graces, she was conspicuous for her humility, her obedience and her charity. Jesus, the sole love of her heart called her to Himself in the 33rd year of her age and the 12th year of her religious life at Bethlehem, 26 August 1878.”

She is still known today as “Al Qiddisa” (The holy one) in Ibillin, Palestine. On November 13th, 1983 - Pope John Paul II beatified her in solemn ceremony at Vatican City. She is scheduled for formal canonization this year placing her among the Saints in formal proclamation.

The “Little Arab”, a living lesson of the virtues of humility and the love of God, His son Jesus and His Mother Mary, is a special inspiration to those who pursue the Truth as present in the Holy Spirit of God . . . And she was one of us, a Melkite Catholic and a Carmelite.

"I thirst, I thirst for Jesus alone! Happy the souls who suffer in secret, known to God alone! How I love a soul suffering with patience, hidden with God alone! Once you have given God something, you must never take it back." - Bl. Mary of Jesus Crucified

“The ego is that which ruins the world. Those who are self-centered bring sadness and anguish with them. One cannot have God and the self-together… One prays, one implores, and the prayer does not rise up, does not reach God. He who has no egoism has all virtues and peace and joy."

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - (Edith Stein)

1891-1942 – Memorial - August 9

Edith Stein is one of those people whose entire life seems to be a sign. She was born on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, October 12, 1891 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), the youngest of eleven children in a devout Jewish family.

When she was not yet two years old her father died suddenly, leaving Edith’s mother to raise the seven remaining children (four had died in childhood) and to manage the family business. Brought up on the Psalms and Proverbs, Stein considered her mother a living example of the strong woman of Proverbs 31, who rises early to care for her family and trade in the marketplace. By her teenage years, Stein no longer practiced her Jewish faith and considered herself an atheist, but she continued to admire her mother’s attitude of total openness toward God.

Like many before and since, Edith Stein came to Christianity through the study of philosophy. One of the first women to be admitted to university studies in Germany, she moved from the University of Breslau to the University of Gottingen in order to study with Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Stein’s philosophical studies encouraged her openness to the possibility of transcendent realities, and her atheism began to crumble under the influence of her friends who had converted to Christianity.

During the summer of 1921, at the age of twenty-nine, Stein was vacationing with friends but found herself alone for the evening. She picked up, seemingly by chance, the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, founder of the Carmelite Order. She read it in one sitting, decided that the Catholic faith was true, and went out the next day to buy a missal and a copy of the Catholic catechism. She was baptized the following January (1922), but her desire immediately to enter the Carmelites was delayed for a time. Her advisers saw that her conversion and claustration would be a double blow to her mother, and they knew the Church could benefit enormously from her contributions as a speaker and writer.

Stein eventually became a leading voice in the Catholic Woman’s Movement in Germany, speaking at conferences and helping to formulate the principles behind the movement. By the time Hitler rose to power in early 1933, Stein was well-known in the German academic community. Hitler’s growing popularity and the increasing pressure on the Jewish people, prompted her to request an audience with the pope in the spring of 1933. She hoped that a special encyclical might help counteract the mounting tide of anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, due to bureaucratic confusion, her request was not granted. By March of that year, Stein’s colleagues at the Educational Institute in Munster realized that they could protect her no longer, and so offered her a teaching position in South America. Since this would mean that her mother, now eighty-four, would never see her again, Stein felt that the time had come to fulfill her long-standing desire to enter religious life.

While on a trip during Holy Week of 1933, Edith stopped in Cologne at the Carmelite convent during the service for Holy Thursday. She attended it with a friend, and by her own account, the homily moved her very deeply. She wrote:

I told our Lord that I knew it was His cross that was now being placed upon the Jewish people; that most of them did not understand this, but that those who did would have to take it up willingly in the name of all. I would do that. At the end of the service, I was certain that I had been heard. But what this carrying of the cross was to consist in, that I did not yet know.

On October 15, just after her forty-second birthday, Edith Stein entered the Carmel of Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Stein’s family saw her entry into the convent as a betrayal, and as coming at the worst possible time, just when Jewish persecution was intensifying. Christianity was the religion of their oppressors; they couldn’t understand what it meant to her. When Stein’s mother heard of her decision to enter the convent she was crushed.

“Why did you have to get to know him (Jesus Christ)? He was a good man — I’m not saying anything against him. But why did he have to go and make himself God?” It was only after her mother’s death in 1936 that Stein’s sister Rosa felt free to be baptized as a Catholic as well.

Stein remained in Cologne for five years, participating in the life of the community with great joy while continuing her scholarly work. After the terror of kristallnacht (November 9 1938), the nuns in Cologne feared for Stein’s safety and decided to send her secretly to the Carmel in Echt, the Netherlands. Her sister Rosa later joined her there as a Third Order Carmelite, serving as the convent prioress. When Holland fell to the Nazis, Edith and Rosa Stein were in danger again, and plans were made to move them to Switzerland. Before these could be finalized, the Dutch bishops issued an encyclical attacking the anti-Semitic atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo retaliated immediately by rounding up all Roman Catholic Jews to be sent to the death camps. Edith and Rosa Stein were arrested on August 2, 1942. When Rosa seemed disoriented as they were led away from the convent, Edith gently encouraged her, “Come, Rosa. We go for our people.” The sisters were deported to Auschwitz and were gassed and cremated on August 9, 1942, during the Nazi persecution. They died martyrs for the Christian faith after having offered their holocaust for the people of Israel. Edith Stein was fifty years old.

Reports from those who were close to Sister Teresa Benedicta in those final days show her to have been a woman of remarkable interior strength, giving courage to her fellow travelers and helping to feed and bathe the little ones when even their mothers had given up hope and were neglecting them. One woman who survived the war has written a description of Stein during the time their group was awaiting transportation to “the East.” “Maybe the best way I can explain it is that she carried so much pain that it hurt to see her smile... In my opinion, she was thinking about the suffering that lay ahead. Not her own suffering — she was far too resigned for that — but the suffering that was in store for the others. Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.” Although she did not seek death, Stein had often expressed her willingness to offer herself along with the sacrifice of Christ for the sake of her people, the Jews, and also for the sake of their persecutors. Pope John Paul II on May 1, 1987 beatified her at Cologne and then on October 11, 1998, canonized her.

A woman of singular intelligence and learning,

she left behind a body of writing notable for its doctrinal richness and profound spirituality.

St. Albert of Trapani, priest

1250-1307 – Memorial - August 7

Albert's parents promised that if they were blessed with a son, he would be dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Albert was born in Trapani, Sicily, during the 13th century. He was educated in a Carmelite monastery, and joined the order at the age of 18. After his priestly ordination, he was sent to nearby Messina, where he gathered thousands with his preaching and miracles.

In 1296, he was appointed Sicilian Carmelite provincial of the Carmelite Province of Sicily. He became distinguished for his dedication to preaching and by his reputation for working miracles. He was known especially for his great desire to lead a holy life and for prayer.

In 1301, the city of Messina was under siege and blockade by Duke Robert of Calabria. Disease ridden and facing imminent starvation, the Messina city fathers asked Albert and the monastery for intervention. Albert celebrated Mass, offering it as a plea for God's deliverance. As he finished, three ships loaded with grain, ran the blockade. The city was saved from starvation, and Robert lifted the siege. (Albert was so well remembered for this intervention that a city gate was dedicated in his honor over 300 years later.)

In his later years, after serving as a missionary, Albert retired to a small monastery near Messina, and spent his time in prayer, meditation, and communion. He died in Messina, probably in 1307. He was the first saint whose cult spread throughout the Order and, as a result, he is considered its patron and protector or "father", a title he shared with the other saint of his time, Angelus of Sicily. In the 16th century it was decided that every Carmelite church should have an altar dedicated to him. Among the many with a devotion to this saint were Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi.

In 1454 he was beatified & on May 31, 1476 Pope Sextus IV canonized him.