ST PETER DAMIAN'S GREAT CHARITY TO HIS NEGLECTFUL FATHER

St Peter Damian had reason to be angry with his mother and father.  He was born after the turn of the first millennium in 1007 to a family who lived in grinding poverty even though they were aristocrats. When he was a baby, his older brother took issue with his birth because he was another mouth to feed, and so his mother stopped breastfeeding little Peter. A servant took pity on the starving babe and fed him. Fortunately, this early neglect did not impair Peter's mind and he grew up to be one of the smartest churchmen that the world has ever seen. 

But before he could even do his basic schooling, his mother died, and his father took a new wife, who had a heart of stone. It seems his father liked his women cold and callous. Peter tried to win her affection, but she snubbed his efforts to make her love him. Instead, she treated him with outright aggression. She had him banished from his home, he was sent to live with her brother, and made to herd the pigs. Peter's father did nothing to stop this travesty. Peter was living as the prodigal son, without having squandered his inheritance and without having rejected his family. Young Peter took this adversity as being for his best; he put himself into the hands of God and looked to the Lord as being his true Father when his biological parents had failed him. He saw God's mercy as being evident in everything, "God has His designs in all that He does, and they are designs of mercy; we have but to abandon ourselves into His Hands, He will direct all things for the good."

He saw that temporary suffering in this life may be embraced as a way that we may expiate our sins here as opposed to enduring the permanent suffering of Hell, "When you are scorned by others and lashed by God, do not despair. God lashes us in this life to shield us from the eternal lash in the next." And Peter knew misery; he was often hungry and had only rags covering him while he tended oinking, grunting pigs. Back home, his father died, and instead of nurturing resentment, Peter prayed his heart out for his dad. Then one day, he found a gold coin on the road. He could have used it to make his life more comfortable; he could have bought some decent food or even new clothes, but instead he made haste to a priest and gave it to him as a stipend for Holy Mass to be offered for his father's soul. 

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This post was informed by Schouppe's Purgatory  which you may buy here. 

The classic painting was executed by Giuseppe Milani.  The three figures from left to right are St Peter Chrysologus, Romuald and St Peter Damian.