Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today's Gospel has a very important lesson for our times. Only one thing is necessary, and you can't buy it in a store or on the internet. That one thing is possessing God by love. Everything else is relative to that. It is a good thing to welcome pilgrims, and the value of this action comes from the charity with which it is done. This world will pass away, and with it, the opportunity to serve others, but love will remain. Mary is simply loving, and that she will be able to do eternally. God sent Jonah to Nineveh to call that wicked city to repent and turn to God. He didn't want to go, but a running away got him nowhere.
So God called him a second time, in words almost identical to the first time, and in this time he went to preach. Amazingly, they did repent, did penance, and God spared them.
Today, Francis can honor St. Daniel and his companion martyrs, who similarly went to call a non-Christian people to turn to God and be saved. However, they didn't get as good of a response as Jonah did. They were also unlike Jonah in that they were very eager to go. This was the second group of Franciscan martyrs that went to preach in North Africa.
The first ones went with St. Francis' blessing and died in 1219. St. Francis, who personally longed for martyrdom, praised what they had done, and many priors wished to follow their example, including St. Anthony. The Franciscan rule says that those who believe God has called them to the missions should ask leave of their minister provincial. At the time, going to the missions was tantamount to martyrdom, which requires a special grace that no one can presume to have. In 1227, our group of seven received permission to go from Brother Elias, confirming their vocation. It was the year after St. Francis' death, and Brother Elias was now the minister general. The head of the group was St. Daniel, a holy prior whom St. Francis had appointed the minister provincial of Calabria. Since he was the minister provincial, he could hardly ask himself for permission, so he asked the minister general.
While he was from the deep south of Italy, another member of the group, Nicholas of Sassoparato, was from the marches of Ancona in the north. St. Donovo, another member, was from near Siena in Tuscany. He was the only religious brother in the group. All the rest were priests.
The other three were Sts. Samuel, Angelo, and Ugollino. The group first sailed from Tuscany to Spain. There, in the kingdom of Aragon, they looked for a ship that could take them to Africa, and they found one that could take the four of them to Ceuta, across the strait from Gibraltar. St. Daniel took that ship with three companions, leaving the other three to find another ship. Ceuta allowed merchants to come and trade. They had to stay outside the city. No Christians were allowed to enter. So St. Daniel and his companions ministered to the merchants who had come from Pisa, Genoa, and Marseille. On Thursday, September 30, the other priors arrived. They spent the following day conferring about how to save their souls and the souls of the Muslims, and to preach the Gospel to the poor Saracens who were deprived of it. On Saturday, they went to confession and received communion from St. Daniel. Then they spent the night in prayer. Recalling what Our Lord had done at the Last Supper, they washed one another's feet, and they exhorted each other to die courageously, if that was the lot that the Lord had reserved for them. When Sunday, October 3, dawned, they went into the city and began preaching faith in Jesus Christ in the streets and squares. They didn't know the local language, so they spoke in Italian and Latin, which some people could understand. With simple but ardent words, they argued that the Christian religion is necessary for salvation. This made quite a stir. First they were insulted, then they were beaten, and finally they were dragged before the governor. Through an interpreter, he interrogated them, and they showed that the Holy Spirit responded by proclaiming to him and to his court the truths of the Catholic faith. The governor thought that they were crazy. He mocked what they said, had them put in chains and thrown in prison for a week.
During that time, they were insulted and tormented. They also had time to write a letter to some Christians to explain what they had done and declare their readiness to receive martyrdom.
The letter is almost all quotations from Scripture.
On Sunday, October 10, they were brought before the governor again. He asked them if they were sorry for having spoken against Muhammad and his law. They replied by confirming all they had taught, and they added that there was no salvation in the law of Muhammad. If the Saracens wanted to be saved, they had to believe in Jesus Christ and receive baptism.
The governor then separated them and tried to win them over individually by promising rewards and threatening tortures. When he failed, he condemned them all to death by decapitation. They were brought back to the prison while things were prepared. There, they kissed St. Daniel's hands for bringing them to this point. He blessed them and said, Rejoice, my faithful companions in the Lord. This is a feast day for us. The angels are coming to meet us to lead our souls into the eternal tabernacles. Today the martyrs will receive us into their ranks. The heavens are already opening above our heads, and shortly we shall be in possession of eternal bliss. They went joyfully to the place of execution, knelt and presented their heads to the blade of the executioner. When they were dead, the crowd tore their bodies apart. The Christians managed to recover and bury the remains.
A Portuguese prince negotiated with the ruler of Morocco to obtain their relics and brought them to Spain. There, many miracles occurred, leading to their canonization in 1516.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.