Today is the feast day of St John of Capistrano. We probably are familiar with him by his Spanish name, as mission San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California was named after him by the Franciscan missionaries who brought God’s word to the native people of California. The Spanish missionaries usually named missions and areas after the saint of the name in which they arrived in that location. St John of Capistrano was born in 1386 in the kingdom of Naples in Italy. He was imprisoned during a war with a neighboring town. He entered the Franciscan community in Perugia after his release. After being ordained to the priesthood, he brought his gifts of preaching to countries all over Europe – throughout Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Through his preaching, John of Capistrano tried to unify the Christians throughout the European realm. He also wrote religious tracts against different heresies. He died in 1456 at the age of 70.
We have been hearing from St Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Ephesians these past several weeks. Today, in his letter to the Ephesians, St Paul writes how he is a prisoner of the Lord as he write from his imprisonment in Rome. Writing this message behind bars, it gives weight to his message to the Ephesians to be worthy of the calling to live a Christian life that they received through their baptism. He exhorts them to be patient, gentle, and humble. He was also probably praying that he himself would be follow those same virtues in his challenging life circumstances. He calls them to live in unity as one Body and one Spirit, of which those virtues would help to achieve. We can think of the ways our faith and God’s love can set us from free from all that keeps us down.
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