Bl. Ghebre-Michael

 Apart from the post yesterday, most of our Saints this month have been from the Church's early centuries and the Middle Ages. I think we need a Saint from more modern times for balance.

Ghebre-Michael was born in Ethiopia in 1791. He was a part of one of the three Ethiopian sects called the Kevats. At an early age he lost an eye in an accident. This rendered him unfit to perform most types of work in his culture. After his early education, he went to High School in one of the local monastic schools, where he was known as a gifted student. He was professed as a monk in the Coptic Orthodox Church in 1813. As a monk, he started studying the history of monasticism and set out to discover the cause of the declining standards of monasticism in Ethiopia. He was permitted to visit other monasteries around the country in the course of his research. At each monastery he visited, he formed small groups of like-minded monks. He instructed them and left them to form the nucleus of monastic reform in their own monastery. He then decided to go to Jerusalem for further research.

On this pilgrimage, Michael met a Catholic Bishop named Guistino de Jacobis. Ghebre-Michael's initial reaction to the bishop was one of mistrust and suspicion, simply because he was a Catholic priest. However, as they traveled and lived in close company day after day, he began to admire de Jacobis for his holiness, prayer life and his way of handling people and situations. 

Upon returning to Ethiopia, Ghebre-Michael's hope had been to convert the new Orthodox Bishop to his way of thinking of theological truth and monastic reform. After meeting with the bishop, he realized that his vision would not be. The bishop had his own political agenda and saw the monk as an obstacle to his plans. The bishop openly opposed Ghebre-Michael and some of the bishop's followers even tried to poison him. This disappointment led him to once again seek out the Catholic Bishop, de Jacobis. Over a period of about 6 months, the two had many discussions and in 1844, de Jacobis brought Ghebre-Michael into the Catholic Church. It was six years later that de Jacobis asked Ghebre-Michael to give some thought to becoming a priest (most Ethiopian monks were not priests). Ghebre-Michael was ordained on January 1, 1851. 

Later that year, the Orthodox bishop instituted a persecution of Catholics and de Jacobis and Ghebre-Michael were arrested. The bishop was eventually released, but Ghebre-Michael was kept in chains and tortured in an attempt to get him to apostatize. He died of his ill-treatment on August 28, 1855 (or July 30). He was buried where he died, at the side of the road under a cedar tree. His remains were never found. He was beatified as a martyr in 1926. 

His feast day is July 14 and is also celebrated on August 30 by the Vincentians. Blessed Ghebre-Michael, pray for us.