St. Peter Damian, Continued

Yesterday my hand hurt too much for me to say much at all about poor Peter Damian. As part one no doubt made clear, I'm not all that interested in what any Doctor, Peter included, had to say on the subject of sex. Religious discourse is absolutely gorged on discussions of sex. The only reason I have brought up in the first place was it turned up in my Google search for Peter Damian.

Peter did all the things you'd expect of a saint, heroic fasting, vigils, etc., but he did something else too:

He sought out poor people to eat with and liked to minister personally to their needs.

Do you know anyone who does that? Do you do that? It would seem there was a charism at work in him as well. Which is safe to say, because after St. Romauld died, Peter was made Abbot. It took an act of obedience to make him do it. And, apparently he was well loved.

That says something about a person. He was a person who said let me be there in the mess of the great open wound of creation, the pain of the poor and the passion of the suffering. While Peter said no such thing, at least never wrote it down, it is the overwhelming message I get from his life. What convinced me though was this quote

the well prepared mind forgets the suffering inflicted from without and glides eagerly to what it has contemplated within itself.

I take that to mean that no matter what happens in life,
--whose fault it is,
--why it happened
--and all the rest
do not destroy the peace of the soul, because that which we "have contemplated within" is not disturbed. We forget it is there. We forget at that moment of "inflicted" suffering that God is still present within our souls.

Peter was more than able to back up his opinions with copious amounts of ink. He wrote:
--Liber Gomorhianus, attacking the vices of the clergy. Some of the sites yesterday said that he wrote a Liber Sodom, but it is not in John F. Fink, so I discount validity.
--Liber Gratissimus. This supported the grace given at ordination, and saying you still may say mass even when a man paid money for the office. The sacrament is not dependent upon the priest for validity.
--some 153 letters
--53 Sermons