Sermon for the Feast of St. Wenceslaus by Father Cipolla

Sermon for the Feast of Saint Wenceslaus Sacred Heart, Georgetown, CT, 2022

Today is a national holiday in the Czech Republic in honor of their patron saint, St
Wenceslaus, whose feast we celebrate at this Mass here in Georgetown CT. St
Wenceslaus was born in Bohemia in 903 and died on September 28, 929. Most of
us know nothing about this time in middle Europe. The great saints Cyril and
Methodius were the missionaries to this part of Europe in which paganism
persisted. Wenceslaus’ grandfather became a Christian in this missionary effort
and Ludmilla his grandmother, of deep faith, became Wenceslaus’ teacher, not
only in matters of faith but also of culture, teaching him both Old Slavonic and
Latin.
Wenceslaus’ mother, Dragomir, supported pagan belief and tried to gain control of
the kingdom. She had Ludmilla strangled and civil war broke out. It was the
young Wenceslaus who emerged as the leader of Bohemia, and it became his task
to bring together the warring factions, to deal with the powerful rulers surrounding
him, and to bring to fruition the missionary effort of SS Cyril and Methodius by
leading by example as a Christian leader. His honesty, his realism in dealing with
those in power, and very importantly his attempt to reduce the oppression of the
peasants by the nobility: all this grounded in his Christian faith.
For religious and national motives, Wenceslaus was murdered by his twin brother,
Boleslaus on the feast of SS Cosmas and Damian as Wenceslaus was on his way to
Mass. Wenceslaus’ last words were: “May God forgive you, brother”. He was
hailed as a martyr and by his death did what he was unable to do while he was
living: he made Bohemia Christian.
We look in vain today for a leader whose Christian faith lies at the very heart of
what he says and does in the political sphere. We certainly cannot find such a man
or woman in Europe at this time when Europe is undergoing a rapid de-
Christianization. We cannot find such a person in our own country where
dechristianization is happening but where there seems to be still a sizable part of
the populace that calls itself Christian. And why we cannot find a Wenceslaus in
the United States is because of the American character that insists that religion is a
purely private matter and should have no bearing on one’s actions in the secular
sphere.

St. Wenceslaus is the symbol of what a truly Christian ruler looks like, whose
public actions come from his Christian faith. We all know the Christmas Carol
“Good King St Wenceslaus”, the words of which were written by John Mason
Neale, the great Anglo-Catholic priest in England in the second half of the 19 th
century. The carol is about what it means to be a good king. When seeing a poor
peasant struggling to carry wood in the cold of winter, he acts to help the peasant.
His page warns him that it is too cold, too dark, but the King tells him to follow in
his footsteps to help the peasant and the night will seem less dark and the cold less
cold. The carol ends with these words: “Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth
or rank possessing, ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing”.
We will honor St. Wenceslaus at our gathering after Mass by singing his carol
before our time of fellowship: a fitting thing to do after celebrating this Mass in
his honor.