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St. Gatian of Tours
00:17:02
Join Dr. Scott Hefelfinger and Taylor Kemp as they discuss the life and impact of a little-known Saint, St. Gatian of Tours. In the middle of the third century, St. Gatian was sent from Rome to the far reaches of the Christian world, modern day France, to preach and evangelize to the pagan Gauls. By following the example of St. Gatian, we can learn how to give of ourselves in a way that contributes to the patrimony of holiness in our Church.
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints Podcast. My name is Taylor Kemp, the vice president of content here at the Augustine Institute. And with me today is Dr. Scott Heffelfinger, our director of content development. And what is. So you're a faculty member, but you have a particular title now, Scott, what is it?
- [00:36]
B
Very special title. It is concert. Well, I'd like to think so. I like to think so, but concurrent associate professor of theology.
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A
Okay, very good mouthful. It is a mouthful. What do you teach, Scott?
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B
I teach mostly in the area of morals, so moral theology, theology of the interior life. The saints factor into that, too. Catholic social teaching and marriage and family is very good.
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A
I have had Scott as a professor here, and he is a great professor. I would say that if you were not here as well, Scott. I was laughing today because as we always do, we do some preparation for these episodes. Read up about the saints, which is always a joy. And last week you sent me some prep work, basically some of the stuff you were reading for Saint Gation of Tours. And I opened it and this was a first on Catholic Saints. There was a two sentence description for Saint Gation and I messaged you back. I was like, scott, what are we going to talk about?
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B
I know this is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. No, it's, it's true. I mean, Saint Gation, I didn't know of him either before looking closely at the calendar and wanting to talk about him today, his, his feast day, December 18th. And. Yeah, and so he's one of these saints. And we'll talk about this a little later, I think, who just plays this hidden but beautiful role in the life of the church. And another source that I was looking at, the very famous Butler's Lives of the Saints, four giant volumes. And on the major saints you'll find pages and pages of pretty small text. And, you know, there's a lot there. And for Saint Gation, there are basically sort of three real sentences about his life. And here's. Here are the two main ones. I'm just going to read them. He preached the faith principally at tours of which church is venerated as the founder and the first bishop. Okay, so that's important. Having continued his labors with unwearied zeal amid many dangers for 50 years, he died in peace.
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A
That's the episode.
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B
There we go. Thank you, everybody. No, there is one line before that, that kind of sets some of the historical context. So Pope Fabian is the pope around this time in the. In the third century. He's pope from 236 to 250 AD and around 245, he. He sends seven bishops from Rome to Gaul or modern day France to preach the gospel there. And among these seven kind of missionary bishops is Gation, or in the Latin gatianus. And he is sent to Tours. Tours is kind of in the middle ish of France. It's a little southwest of Paris, but it is a thousand miles from Rome. So, you know, he's going a long way and he ends up being the first bishop there. And we just, you know, heard these two lines that we have from Butler's Lives of the Saints. And he does this work day in, day out for 50 years, which is really interesting that we don't know more about him, you know, because he's. That's a long time. It's a really long time. He's born, you know, in the first half of the 200s, the third century there, and he ends up, you know, around 245 again, being sent bishop and then 50 years. So he dies at the end of the century or maybe the turn of the next century.
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A
Yeah, you could say. I mean, even. Even, you know, I'm just thinking about what can we kind of distill out of his life. We know very little. We know some of his labors, and the length of them is just really perseverance kind of came to mind. Like that's a long time to kind of labor. And I think at the beginning you said under dangerous circumstances, but you could certainly say without, you know, without much risk saying. It was certainly probably challenging circumstances, going to a new place, pagan territory, far from Rome, as you said, but clearly a man that labored in the vineyard of the Lord for a long time.
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B
Yeah. I mean, and to go back to the point about that perseverance and that patience, I bet if you were to ask, you know, a bishop today. Right. If they would want to be bishop for 50 years, just knowing, you know, the burdens of being a bishop, the challenges, certainly many joys. But, you know, this is tiring work. I think as a bishop, you pour yourself out in so many ways for your flock. And so that is a really long time. It's actually fascinating. So what my mind started thinking about was, okay, here's the saint. We don't know much about him. One of the things we love doing in the graduate school is to teach the saints and their writings, but to also kind of teach to walk alongside the saints. And so to know so little about the saint, I think is a great opportunity to kind of give our listeners a taste of what we love doing in the graduate school. We have this rich academic program based on scripture and tradition, kind of made more fruitful by the witness and the teaching of the saints. So really a wonderful work that we do and just, you know, to throw it out there. If there's anyone listening who's thought about studying theology or knows someone who's interested in studying theology, we have some amazing degrees, master's degrees in our graduate school. Really encourage you to check it out. We're known for our distance education. We have a really strong distance education program. A lot of students go through that way and do really well. But a kind of hidden gem of what we do, especially now with our new campus in St. Louis, is the on campus program, where we get to liturgically live alongside the saints who, whom we celebrate so well and, and study them in, in a beautiful community there. So, again, anyone thinking about studying theology, look us up. We've got some deadlines approaching. Got some great scholarships out there. I just really encourage you to check it out.
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A
Yeah. And if you're looking, if you just Google Augustine Institute, Graduate School of Theology, you can find the homepage. But, yeah, this is kind of a major. I mean, we're recording this during Advent. This is a major time when kind of applications are coming in. But if you're, you know, any other time of the year, you can, you can always apply. But I, if you've listened to Catholic saints before, you know, I went through the graduate school, so I really loved it. It was super transformative. So, yeah, as Scott was saying, if you love the Lord, if you love scripture, if you love the saints, if you want to work within the church or just simply want to get more, be formed more deeply within the faith, it's a great thing. I highly recommend it. And as he said, for on campus students, we have a beautiful new campus in St. Louis. We have residential buildings on campus. You can live there. There's a very rich liturgical life, as he said, a very rich kind of communal life. So we're building that up. Check it out if you are at all interested.
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B
Yeah. And so, you know, the way that we approach the saints in the grad school is similar to how we approach other things. So there's a historical emphasis that we have to look at the salvation history and then the life of the church and then a scriptural emphasis as well, and both of these help us to understand the saints better, I think. So in the case of Saint Gishan, he enters into history by the pen of a historian who's also a saint. St. Gregory of Tours. Yeah. And this is in the five hundreds. And it turns out St. Gregory is the ninth bishop of Tours. Okay. And what St. Gregory mentions is something about another famous saint from Tours who is, I think, the most well known saint of tours, and that St. Martin of Tours. St. Martin is celebrated quite a bit in Austria, where I lived a number of years. And so I have a love for Saint Martin of Tours and some of the celebrations there. And St. Gregory recounts that St. Martin, when he was bishop, enshrined the relics of Saint Gation in the cathedral there. Now, here's what's interesting. What struck my mind was like, wow, St. Gregory of Tours, St. Martin of Tours, both bishops, the third and the ninth bishop, like, that's doing pretty well, right? St. Gatian is the first bishop. He's a saint. The third bishop's a saint. The ninth bishop is a saint. This is a great legacy of holiness. And so then, as I looked into it, turns out the second bishop of Tours is Saint Latorius. He's also a saint. The fourth bishop is a saint, the fifth bishop is a saint, the sixth, seventh, eighth bishop. All of the first nine bishops are saints. And so, you know, sometimes when we think about the saints, we're kind of like, you know, what is their legacy?
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A
Right.
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B
What is their legacy in the church? And we'll point to miracles, right? Or healings, or they have amazing writings and teachings, or sometimes, you know, they're even works of art. But when we look at Saint Gation, how beautiful is it that his legacy is simply the church in France? I would say, specifically in Tours, a legacy of bringing the faith there, like St. Thomas the Apostle to India, and then planting these seeds of holiness so that the first nine bishops are venerated as saints.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That's incredible.
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A
Yeah, it is. Well, and it's a. It's a. For today, I was kind of thinking it's a cool model for, you know, parish or diocesan life, that it's, you know, what's the greatest contribution that we can make? Wherever it is that we're laboring within the church, for us here as an apostolate, but certainly within parish life and diocesan life, it's to contribute to that kind of patrimony, of holiness, that the greatest kind of evangelical impact we can have, the greatest teaching we can do, the greatest this, the greatest that it's. To be holy is to be transformed by the grace of God and give a true, authentic witness of holiness. And that. That's. Yeah, Saint Gation is a great example. And these successive bishops giving a witness of holiness. And then, you know, the thing I was thinking about earlier with sangation is, you know, when we talk about holiness or, you know, a heroic witness of charity in particular, it's a spending of yourself. Yeah, right. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a giving of self for the sake of other. Whoever that may be, the. The flock, the people of France, the. The people that we minister, whoever it is. And that. That. That came to mind as forgation. But all. But all these bishops is. They're just spending themselves, you know, they're giving themselves away freely. You know, freely we have been, we have received freely we are to give. And that this has this just incredible witness of holiness is beautiful.
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B
Yeah. And I mean, so, you know, I think when we. When we think about, like, well, what can we take away from Saint Gation today? It is this witness of holiness in such a simple but fundamental way. And I think specifically for, you know, I thought he could very well be like the patron saint of bishops, you know, just serving so long. He journeys a thousand miles, you know, sacrificial traveling. This is not like, you know, flying or anything, you know, preaching the gospel day in, day out to pagans who are there, you know, false gods and idols, which is not too dissimilar actually from today, right in the rise of so many false idols out there and a kind of new paganism, but the life of holiness. And then in a particular way, I think, and in a way so important for the office and the. The kind of stature of bishop is this virtue of humility. I mean, he's the first bishop and founder of the Catholic Church in Tours. And yet, you know, we don't really know that much about him. He just sort of disappears into history, but has this legacy of holiness following him. And in my mind, this brought me back. I mentioned, you know, how important scripture is in our programs at the Augustine Institute and to help us understand the realities and mysteries of faith, including the saints. In Colossians, chapter three, verse three, there's this beautiful verse. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And, you know, it's so easy in this day and age to sort of want to make a splash in some way. We think about, you know, avenues of social media or whatever it might be, and we want to be seen, heard, known, and yet in a way, our call is to be radically hidden with Christ, you know, so that when people see us and hear us in a certain way, we almost disappear. And it's Christ that they see. And I think Saint Gaishin models this. Right. His life is just hidden with Christ so that we don't know so much about him, but we see this tremendous, you know, legacy of holiness, of founding the Catholic Church there, basically, and these bishops who follow him.
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A
Yeah, Nick, what comes to mind? I was thinking along similar lines. There's a great, you know, I think. Well, we. Dr. Christopher Bloom published a book. Well, he edited sermons from St John Henry Newman called Waiting for Christ. It's an Advent devotional book that I've come to. To like quite a lot. And the. The book kicks off with a sermon that St. John Henry Newman gave on St. Andrew. It's about Andrew's hiddenness, how he, you know, introduces Peter and John to Christ and then he kind of like, you know, you have the Peter, James and John, like the trio that's closest to Christ. And Andrew's kind of like he was there first and then he was kind of left out. And so St. John Henry Newman reflects on how beautiful his example of humility is and how he kind of just fades to the background at times. But he was in, you know, he was the first one to meet Christ. And that Saint Gation is a good model of that. And, you know, as the fundamental, you know, sin of the fall is pride, that our temptation is always to increase and that there's the counter to that is to be hidden, to allow ourselves to be hidden. And that's a great message, especially, you know, in a timely sense for us now as we are, you know, currently within Advent. But there is a perennial call within the Christian life to choose hiddenness, to choose smallness, so that Christ might expand.
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B
Yeah, when you mentioned St. Andrew, I thought of. I fairly recently watched this documentary on Servant of God, Michelle Dupong, radiating joy. Look for it soon on formed. And she had this beautiful line because she was a missionary. But when people would ask her sort of like, you know, how do you do what you do or how do you think about it and look at all that you're doing for Christ? And she would just sort of recede a little bit and say, you know, I don't do very much. All I do is make an introduction or like, I introduce people to Christ.
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A
That's it.
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B
He does the rest, you know, and. And that again, that's sort of like the essential part of our missionary witness is it's not to necessarily, like, go out there guns blazing, making arguments, or to find the most persuasive words. Of course, you know, we do the best we can, but fundamentally it's to just introduce people to the person of Jesus Christ and then to let him do his work. And I think there's a lesson there for us, too. And I see this in Saint Gation, where this humility, really letting God work in us is the way to communicate sanctity to the world and the life of faith and prayer. It's primarily a receptive reality to just receive the Lord's grace and let him work in our hearts and through that, to communicate holiness to the world.
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A
I agree. I couldn't think of a better place to close. Is there anything else you want to add before we.
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B
No, just. It's great to get to know these. These hidden saints, because through them we. We get to know Christ.
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A
And even if there's only two sentences written, there's so much with it we can distill. So thank you everyone out there for joining us on Catholic Saints, where we seek to unpack the lives of the saints and how God transformed them for encouragement for us, for how we may be transformed. Thank you so much for joining us, and God bless you.