11 November 2024
Memory of Saint Martin of Tours
Homily
Today we celebrate Saint Martin, well known for his act of charity towards a poor man with whom he shared his clothes, but who was above all a great bishop of the first centuries of the Church, and a bishop who played a very important role in the development of monasticism in the West.
The various stages of his life give us an insight into the richness of Church life in his day (the early 4th century) and the great variety of forms of ascetic and monastic life in his time.
Martin's first career was a military one. The son of a Roman tribune, he was himself a member of Emperor Constantine's guard. He left the army at the age of 40 after serving for 25 years, the last ten of which he spent as a catechumen.
His first teacher was Hilary of Poitiers, having joined a group of ascetics living near this great bishop. He then settled in a monastery in Milan before becoming an anchorite on an island off the coast of Liguria. A little later, he once again came under the direction of Hilary of Poitiers, who had returned from exile, and lived in an isolated cell near the present-day monastery of Ligugé, the oldest monastic foundation we can date in Europe.
His fame spread and a little later he was elected bishop by the people of Tours. Even as bishop, he did not want to give up his monastic life, and founded a new monastery, Marmoutier, not far from his episcopal city, where he could live at least a good part of the time.
Martin was the initiator of several forms of monastic life, and when he died in 397, two thousand monks attended his funeral. This beautiful life of a soldier of the emperor who became a soldier of Christ and of a monk who became a bishop without ceasing to be a monk and without ceasing to give rise to several forms of monastic life should draw our attention to the richness of the forms that monastic life has taken over the ages.
Martin's life shows us that new forms are not normally born to replace outdated and lifeless forms, but on the contrary are born from the very vitality of old forms when these are alive enough to give rise to new life.
May it be the same today.