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"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume...
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"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.
These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.
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These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.
Catholic Saints & Feasts
Catholic Saints & Feasts
July 26: Saints Joachim and Anne
26 LUG 2024 · July 26: Saints Joachim and Anne
Late First Century B.C.–Early First Century A.D.
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saints of grandparents and of Canada (Anne)
God has a family tree, just like all men
Many parents think their child is perfect. Only two sets of parents were ever right. Saint Mary and Saint Joseph had a child through grace and raised that perfect God-son to adulthood. The parents of Saint Mary conceived their daughter in the normal human fashion but without the stain of original sin. So their daughter was superior to them from the start, yet it had nothing to do with hubris. Today’s feast celebrates those humble parents of Mary known to long tradition as Saints Joachim and Anne, though they are unnamed in Scripture. The first mention of Anne and Joachim in the Christian tradition is an apocryphal text from the second century which was judged to be fraudulent by the earliest scripture scholars. The Muslim Quran refers to Saint Anne in Arabic as Hannah, says that she conceived in her old age, expecting a male, but was given a daughter and named her Mary. We honor Saints Anne and Joachim because they reared the perfect child and were grandparents to the Son of God.
It is natural for the Church to exalt the earthly origins of Jesus of Nazareth. It communicates something important—that everyone comes from somewhere and someone, even God. The historical Jesus plants a flag in the ground of a certain place, a certain time, and a certain family. No one is from everywhere. No one is from always. No one is a citizen of the world, really and truly. Everyone has one mom, one dad, and four grandparents.
There is a powerful modern tendency to spiritualize Jesus of Nazareth, to assert that what matters most is that He was, not who He was or what He did. This spiritualizing sees Jesus as the highest human manifestation of an ideal, a concept, or a religious principle, but not necessarily as a real man. Such thinking readily accepts that the divine is in the grand sweep of time, in the universal vagaries expressed by karma, transcendentalism, the chi, the tao, nature, and the dreamcatcher. This approach implicitly sees material reality as a mask, and the natural environment as a curtain that must be pulled to the side to reveal the truer, hidden realities of the spirit-based world that invisibly governs the earth. There are many problems with such a worldview. Most significantly, it rejects, a priori, that God would communicate Himself to us in outward, tangible, historical forms.
Christianity is not a pastiche of environmental concerns, emotions, moral truisms, and soft love. The Church is not a big electric blanket that covers the whole world. She doesn’t exist to make us feel cozy. God comes to us through the very outward, historical forms of a hierarchical institution, through the water, bread, wine, and oil of the sacraments, through words, events, and people. God can speak to us from the inside, from the spirit, from the quiet of the heart. Yes. But He comes to us primarily, in a manner protected from subjective misinterpretation, in outwardness, in time, and in structures. The Supreme Being not only sustains history, then, He is found at a certain point inside of history. History, for the Christian, doesn’t just recede further and further into the past. It is ever present to us because God is ever present to us.
For the salvation of just one single man, there would be no need for a Church, for the incarnation, or for the cross. But no one exists by himself, and so no one can save himself by himself. There is never just one man. Everyone comes from two others. The body implies descent from others in a way a spirit does not. Jesus Christ gave us His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, not a treatise of lofty ideals. He did not hand out Bibles at the Last Supper, look the Apostles in the eyes, and say “Read this in memory of me.” When He gives us His body, He gives us the DNA of Mary and Anne and Joachim. We touch God. We eat God. We digest God. God becomes part of us. His body becomes our body. And that Body, that flesh and that blood, came down through His grandparents, Saints Joachim and Anne.
Saints Joachim and Anne, may your quiet, hidden roles in the Divine plan inspire all who do the Church’s work behind the scenes and out of view to persevere in supporting the Church's saving mission.
July 25: Saint James, Apostle
24 LUG 2024 · July 25: Saint James, Apostle
First Century
Feast; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Spain, equestrians, and pilgrims
Herod strikes again
The primary legacy of the Twelve Apostles is silence. Yes, their voices are sometimes heard in the Gospels, briefly. Yes, they traveled, evangelized, and built up the Church, discreetly. And yes, they were martyred, save John, though obliquely. Who went exactly where, and did what, is guesswork. When, how, by whom, and where each Apostle died is largely conjecture. Even most of their burial places are uncertain. After the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, and especially after the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the Apostles dispersed throughout the deserts and mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean world. They gave their backs to Jerusalem. And as they walked away, their trails were lost, sand filled their footsteps, and history’s endless cycles erased their exact tracks. With some few exceptions, most of the valuable details were forgotten. The Apostles are now twelve islands of names in a sea of silence.
Some footprints of today’s saint, James the Greater, were preserved by Scripture. James was a member of the Twelve and of the Three; Peter, James, and John were the inner core that formed a shield of fidelity encircling Jesus Christ. James and his brother, John the Evangelist, author of the fourth Gospel, were fishermen who were called from their job on a lake to become fishers of men. It’s possible that other men were called before or after James and John, and that these unknown men laughed in Christ’s face, thought Him crazy, asked a thousand questions first, or just refused to follow a man they did not know and who offered no assurances. Those who said “No” to Christ are lost to history. Christ’s was not an open invitation. He was on a mission and kept walking. There was a moment, and then the moment passed. James and John seized their Christ-moment with both hands and never let go.
Peter, James, and John were in the home of Jairus when his servant was raised from the dead. On Mount Tabor they gazed in awe at the illuminated face of Christ, His translucent skin radiating like the sun. And these three were at Christ’s side in the intense stillness of a Thursday evening in the Garden of Gethsemane, providing what consolation their presence could. In the Gospels, Saint James is impetuous and full of character. He was not like vanilla ice cream. Everyone likes vanilla ice cream. James’s personality seemed to be more like sandpaper or barbed wire. You felt his roughness. You got hurt if you crossed him. James wanted Christ to rain fire on the Samaritans for their obduracy. He even desired to be seated at Christ’s right hand in the Kingdom of God, which led the Lord to prophesy his fidelity unto death.
Saint James’ shocking martyrdom was dutifully recorded by the early Church. Saint Luke’s Acts of the Apostles states that "King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (Acts 12:1–2). No other Apostle’s martyrdom is recorded in the New Testament. Perhaps he was singled out by Herod because of his fiery temperament. He would not have been one to retract a statement. He and his brother, after all, earned the nickname “Sons of Thunder” from Christ himself (Mk 3:17). And so it was that James probably knelt, his neck resting on a block of wood as his head extended just past it. And then the sword fell, the red blood ran, and the holy crown of martyrdom rested gloriously on a head without a body.
Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in a letter sent to the Church of Ephesus in about 110 A.D., wrote “The more I see a bishop keeping silent, the greater should be the reverence I have for him.” A vast forest grows in total silence. The martyrdom of James was like a large tree crashing to the floor of that forest. His death shook the land. Yet the forest continued growing. And it has been growing now for two thousand years. Like a great, but silent, verdant forest, the Church’s growth continues. Thousands of miles from Jerusalem and two thousand years after his death, the silence of this Apostle, as that of all the Apostles, still echoes. Every time a baby is baptized, a Mass is said, or a priest quickly walks through the door of a hospital room to anoint a dying man, the mission of the Church which the Apostles established carries on.
Saint James, you died a shocking and unjust death. May your courageous witness to Christ at the end of your life, and your impetuous generosity toward Him during your life, make all Catholics bold and forthright in their love of the things of God.
July 24: Saint Sharbel (Charbel) Makhluf, Priest and Hermit
24 LUG 2024 · July 24: Saint Sharbel (Charbel) Makhluf, Priest and Hermit
1828–1898
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Lebanon
The purest cedar of Lebanon
Today’s memorial was first inserted into the liturgical calendar in the United States in 2004. Prior to that, today’s saint was known primarily among the Christians of Lebanon, either in their homeland or in Lebanese diaspora communities outside of the Middle East. The dominant form of Catholicism in Lebanon is the Maronite Church. Maronites are united to the Bishop of Rome. The universal Church is like an umbrella under which are found different rites, or ritual forms of praying. The vast majority of the world’s Catholics pertain to the Latin Rite. But millions of other Catholics, fully members of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, worship using an Eastern, or Middle Eastern, liturgy. To the casual Western observer, this liturgy can seem exotic. The Maronite liturgy, rituals, church customs, and forms of prayer are, however, of ancient origin and enrich an already diverse Church with theological fruit picked from one of Christianity’s oldest orchards.
Saint Sharbel, baptized as Youssef (Arabic for Joseph), was one of five children born into a poor family from a remote village in the hills of Lebanon. They were devout Maronite Catholics whose relatives included priests and monks. Youssef shepherded his family’s small flock of animals when he was young. Very early on, he displayed a tender devotion to the Virgin Mary and a natural disposition toward prayer. In his early twenties, he left the family home to enter a monastery. In due time he made his religious profession and took the name Sharbel (or Charbel) after a second-century martyr from Antioch, a city not far from Lebanon. He then studied, was ordained a priest in 1859, and returned to his monastery to live as a strictly observant monk practicing austere mortifications. In 1875 he was granted the privilege to live as a hermit in a chapel under his monastery’s supervision and care.
And there he stayed—alone, isolated, mortified, poor, reflective, and silent—for the next twenty-three years in Christian “solitary confinement,” willingly separating himself from the world so he could more easily attach himself to Christ. He died of a stroke at the age of seventy while saying the Divine Liturgy. He slumped to the floor with the Holy Eucharist still in his hands! Saint Sharbel lived the model life of an Eastern hermit-monk in the ancient tradition of Saint Anthony of the Desert.
Western monasticism is focused on community life and liturgy, common meals and spiritual reading, farming, schools, chant, and hospitality. The Eastern monastic tradition has less engagement with the world, and the monks have less contact with each other. Eastern monasteries are often perched on remote mountaintops. They are inaccessible, unadvertised, and imposing. Their monks are like eagles, proud and alone, dwelling in the heights. Western monasteries, on the contrary, are easily found, open their doors to every visitor, and often flower into schools and universities. Some Benedictine monasteries are even embedded within bustling campuses. The different modes of life, rules, and apostolates of Eastern and Western monasticism are stark.
Although little known during his lifetime, miracles were attributed to the intercession of Saint Sharbel soon after his death. His body was exhumed and for many decades was found to be incorrupt, although it eventually decomposed. Father Sharbel was never photographed during his lifetime, and only a few monks ever saw him after he entered the monastery. But in May 1950 some Maronite monks from the U.S. visited Father Sharbel’s grave on his birthday and took a photo. When the film was developed a mysterious hooded figure with a white beard appeared among them. When shown the photo, some elderly monks from the monastery had no doubt. It was Sharbel. All images of the hermit Sharbel are based on this photo.
Saint Sharbel was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1965 at a Mass at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. And in 1977 he became the first Eastern Christian to be canonized in modern times. Various Lebanese government officials attended the Canonization Mass, along with members of Saint Sharbel’s family. At the time, a proud Lebanese-American bishop described the new saint as the “Perfume of Lebanon” and as proof that the Maronite Church “is a living branch of the Catholic Church and is intimately connected with the trunk, who is Christ…” Devotion to Saint Sharbel is widespread in Eastern Christianity. In an unusual but beautiful proof of the universality of the Church, devotion to Saint Sharbel was also brought by Lebanese immigrants to Mexico, where images of the pensive, hooded, mysterious looking saint are ubiquitous, and his intercession constantly sought.
Saint Sharbel, may your serene example of prayer, fasting, and mortification be an inspiration for all who do battle in the spiritual desert, for all who struggle with the sins and temptations offered by the world, the flesh, and the devil. Help us to follow your unique path of holiness.
July 23: Saint Bridget of Sweden, Religious
23 LUG 2024 · July 23: Saint Bridget of Sweden, Religious
1303–1373
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Europe, Sweden, and widows
A royal widow’s visions awe the masses
Upon entering the baroque Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, on the first pillar to the right, is a fragment of a medieval fresco by the master Giotto. It is incongruous with the style of the rest of the often restored Basilica. The fresco has been preserved, partial but unchanged, because of its historical importance. It depicts Pope Boniface VIII proclaiming the first Jubilee Year in 1300. That Jubilee, and its indulgences, brought so many pilgrims to Rome that the original intention to celebrate a Jubilee every one hundred years was reduced to every fifty years. 1350, then, saw the second great Jubilee. Ironically, the Pope was living in Avignon at the time. For political reasons, he was unable to visit the eternal city during the very Jubilee he had called.
Among the throngs of pilgrims who did swamp Rome in 1350, however, was today’s saint. Saint Bridget made the grueling journey from far away Sweden. Unlike a typical pilgrim, however, she did not return home after earning her indulgence. Rome became her new home and the platform that made her, and her writings, famous. Bridget only returned to her birthplace twenty-three years later, when her daughter Catherine, also a canonized saint, carried her mother’s remains triumphantly back to Sweden. They rest today in a secular museum which, before the Reformation, had been the first monastery Bridget founded.
The details of the first half of the life of Saint Bridget of Sweden evoke a place long lost to history—Catholic Scandinavia. For hundreds of years, the true faith thrived in these lands and incubated great saints such as Bridget. She was married at the age of thirteen and lived happily with her husband for twenty-eight years, bearing eight children. They were a pious couple, even completing the famous pilgrimage to the Shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. But her husband died while Bridget was only halfway through her life’s journey. Bridget then spent three years in mourning in a Cistercian monastery. During this period, the spiritual visions she had experienced throughout her life increased in number and vivacity.
After a particularly powerful vision in 1346, she founded the monastery that would eventually be her burial place. But it wasn’t built to house an existing order. Responding to the words of Jesus, Bridget wanted to reform monastic life by founding a new congregation, the Order of the Most Holy Savior, or the Bridgettines. The Rule for the new Order was revealed to her throughout numerous and detailed visions. The Order was based on the Rule of Saint Benedict and was approved by the Pope only near the end of Bridget’s life. The Bridgettine Order spread throughout Europe and is found in numerous countries today, due largely to its founder’s incredible spiritual visions.
Saint Bridget, like Saint Catherine of Siena, labored to convince the popes to return to Rome from Avignon. She invoked the Lord’s opinions about the papal exile as He expressed them in her visions. One letter she wrote to the pope was so strongly worded that her envoy refused to read it when he was in the Holy Father’s presence. An Italian woman Bridget had become friends with during the Jubilee of 1350 donated a large palace in central Rome to Bridget. Saint Bridget and her sisters established their Roman foundation in that centrally located palace, and within its walls Saint Bridget died. A Bridgettine convent occupies the very same building today and preserves the founder’s rooms, as well as a relic of Bridget and her saintly daughter.
Saint Bridget was canonized eighteen years after her death, in 1391, due to her Christian virtue, her deep and sincere piety, her life of strict poverty and assistance to the poor, her devotion to the Virgin Mary, and her many pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints. She was a saint who loved saints. But she became famous for other reasons—mainly because of her intense, highly detailed, and provocative spiritual revelations. The revelations were written down in both Swedish and Latin, translated into multiple languages, and then diffused throughout Europe. Christ’s arresting words on death and judgment, heaven and hell, and right and wrong sparked the imaginations of all who read Saint Bridget’s writings. Saint Pope John Paul II named Saint Bridget a co-patron of Europe in 1999.
Saint Bridget, may your example of poverty, devotion, and prayer be an example to all who seek to live a life in Christ, and may your writings fire our imaginations to burn ever hotter and brighter with love of God.
July 22: Saint Mary Magdalene
22 LUG 2024 · July 22: Saint Mary Magdalene
First Century
Feast; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of perfumers, converts, and hairdressers
An Apostle to the Apostles first spreads the Good News
“Cherchez la femme“ is a French phrase meaning “Look for the woman.” It is used as a convenient shortcut in movie or literary criticism to discover what is driving a plot, especially in a detective story. Why did the man risk his life? Cherchez la femme? Who had a motive to lie? Cherchez la femme? Where is the treasure buried? Cherchez la femme? It’s a cliché, of course, but clichés often convey some truth. Look for the women in the Gospels, and you will not be disappointed. Search for one woman in particular, Mary Magdalene, and you will find yourself present at all the most important Gospel events: the passion, the crucifixion, the burial, and in a garden for the resurrection, just moments after a huge stone is rolled away from a tomb, allowing the Lord to step forth into a new world. Saint Mary Magdalene is present at key moments, says key things, and is a key witness. She opens the door to Gospel scenes that would otherwise remain hidden from view.
Saint Mary Magdalene was among that troop of women who congregated on the outer edge of the twelve Apostles. These were probably women of means, who “provided for” Jesus and the Apostles “out of their resources” (Lk 8:3). When these women are named, Mary Magdalene is always named first, similar to Saint Peter’s position in the listing of the Apostles. Mary Magdalene is named many more times in the Gospels than most of the Apostles themselves, signaling her importance. The Gospel of Luke relates that seven demons were driven from her (Lk. 8:2). But there is debate over whether Mary Magdalene is also the sinful woman who anoints Christ’s feet and if she is also Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Building on the presumption that the sinful woman was Mary Magdalene, medieval traditions wrongly described her as a repentant prostitute. Artistic depictions almost universally show her as sultry, forlorn, and repentant. Despite the dubious connection between Mary Magdalene and prostitution, this association continues today and will likely take centuries to purify.
A “combined Mary” understanding rolls all three of the above Marys—the woman from whom demons were expelled, the repentant sinner, the sister of Lazarus—into the one person of Mary Magdalene. Mary was an extremely common Jewish name. It requires, then, careful attention to the text to sift which Mary is doing what in the New Testament. Magdala was a town on the Sea of Galilee. So when Mary from Magdala is referenced, the reader can trust that her town is adjoined to her name on purpose to distinguish her from other Marys.
An old Christian tradition calls Mary Magdalene the “Apostle to the Apostles.” The resurrected Christ appeared to her first, before all others. She is the proto-witness. Mary and other women go to the tomb of Jesus to anoint His body. They see the stone rolled away and enter. The body is not there. An angel tells them to not be afraid, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter” (Mk 16:7), so Mary dutifully fulfills his angelic orders. It is a woman, then, who tells the men, who spreads the news of all news to everyone else. The men come running and verify her account. The tomb is empty. As usual, Mary respectfully remains on the fringe of the Apostles. She weeps outside the tomb while Peter and John are inside. Time passes as they try to absorb what this all means until, finally, the “disciples returned to their homes” (Jn 20:10). But Mary does not go home.
And then it happens. Mary is alone again, crying. She just can’t believe it. She has to take another look. So she bends her body in half to peer into the low empty tomb once again. When she straightens up, she notices a man standing just behind her. She thinks he is a gardener. A short, awkward conversation follows and then abruptly concludes: “Mary!”...“Rabbouni!” (Jn 20:16). Her name is in the mouth of God! A name is enunciated and a new life begins! At Baptism. At Confirmation. At religious vows. May we all hear the voice of the risen Christ speak our name, directly to us, just as Mary Magdalene did, when we hopefully walk for the first time in the garden of paradise: “Ashley!” ”Susan!” “Tom!” “Marty!” “Quinn!” “Juliette!”...and on and on and on until the end of time.
Saint Mary Magdalene, assist all who seek your intercession to be humble followers of Christ, doing, from the margins, what is necessary to carry forward the ministry of Christ’s Church, quietly accomplishing God’s will without recognition except for its eternal reward.
July 21: Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, Priest and Doctor
21 LUG 2024 · July 21: Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, Priest and Doctor
1559–1619
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Brindisi, Italy
A little-known Doctor of the Church did it all and did it well
Julius Caesar Russo was born into a religious family, yet from a young age was drawn to join another religious family—that of Saint Francis of Assisi. After his father’s early death, little Julius was placed in the care of the Friars Minor by his mother. Upon moving to Venice, though, he came to know the Capuchins, another expression of Franciscanism, and joined their Order as a teenager. He took the religious name of Lawrence, was ordained a priest in 1582, and from that point on plowed his way through life like a high speed train. Father Lawrence bulleted north and south, east and west, stopping in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Bohemia, Spain, and Portugal. This one-man army seemed to be everywhere, doing everything, and yet always made the salvation of his own soul his highest priority.
Father Lawrence was smart. Very smart. His intellectual gifts were fully deployed in the service of the Lord to master whatever discipline he studied. He learned the biblical languages of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. In addition to his native Italian, he also spoke Spanish and German, which he put to extensive use in his ministry in Central Europe. His knowledge of Scripture was so wide and so deep that it seemed he had memorized the entire Bible. He even earned the esteem of Jewish scholars for his profound understanding of rabbinic texts.
Lawrence also cultivated a burning love for Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Holy Eucharist in long hours of prayer. It sometimes took hours for him to say Mass. He seemed to be carried away in ecstasy and had the gift of tears. This level of fervor, education, poverty, intelligence, and devotion to the Church made Saint Lawrence of Brindisi the ideal priest for his time and place. He was many things, but among them he was the ultimate Counter-Reformation warrior.
Saint Lawrence explained with great force and lucidity the truths of the Catholic faith to those who had fallen into the trap of Protestantism. He calmly elaborated upon the Scriptural and patristic foundations of the Papacy, Bishops, Mary, and the Sacraments. Lawrence was the anti-Luther and the epitome of the great Capuchins who invigorated Franciscanism in the 1500s and beyond. Amid all of his labors as a preacher and teacher, Lawrence also carried out a parallel set of demanding duties in the administration of the Capuchin Order. He was a novice master, provincial, and minister general, or head, of the Order. Father Lawrence completed mountains of work, day in and day out, for many years, a sustained drive and competence which inevitably led to him being burdened with still more weighty responsibilities.
As a Franciscan dedicated to preserving and restoring peace, Lawrence was tasked by both the Holy Father and secular princes with various diplomatic missions geared toward settling controversies among Christian states and between these states and the surging Ottoman Empire. Yet Lawrence’s desire for peace was not divorced from truth, from the right to self-defense, or from love of Christian Europe.
He was the chaplain of a Christian army which was mustered in Germany against the Turks at Lawrence’s insistence. Lawrence then personally led the troops into battle with his crucifix held high. The German army’s victory was attributed to our saint’s intercession and inspiring example. Saint Lawrence died on his birthday, July 22, at age sixty, while on a diplomatic mission to Lisbon, Portugal. He is buried in a monastery in Northern Spain and was canonized in 1881. In 1959 Pope Saint John XXIII proclaimed Saint Lawrence of Brindisi an Apostolic Doctor of the Church for his creative yet orthodox writings on the Virgin Mary and for his commanding erudition in, and harmonious presentation of, Scripture, patristics, and fundamental theology. He is the third Franciscan Doctor of the Church, along with Saints Bonaventure and Anthony, and, unfortunately, one of the least well known.
Saint Lawrence, you were ideally suited to the needs of your age and moved all you met through your virtuous example, vast knowledge, and life of prayer. Through your intercession, help all priests, especially Franciscans, to not spare themselves but to emulate your zeal.
July 20: Saint Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr
19 LUG 2024 · July 20: Saint Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr
First or Second Century
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of Ravenna, Italy, and invoked against gout and epilepsy
An elusive early bishop’s memory is preserved in art
Ravenna, a city on Italy’s eastern Adriatic Coast, is a miniature Istanbul. It has perhaps the most impressive groupings of Byzantine churches and mosaics outside of the former Constantinople. In the centuries after the Western Roman Empire declined, Italy was ruled by various Northern tribes. The Roman Empire was thus reduced to its eastern half in today’s Greece, Turkey, and Syria. Its capital was Constantinople, and its westernmost outpost, and only secure toehold on the Italian peninsula, was Ravenna.
Ravenna’s art and architecture, then, reflect Eastern styles rather than Western ones. And it was in Ravenna where today’s saint, Apollinaris, was bishop for twenty-six years, and where two basilicas with impressive artistic and historical pedigrees still bear Apollinaris’ name. These two permanent proofs of his significance date from the sixth century and, together with an almost equally ancient church in Rome dedicated to his honor, testify to Apollinaris’ legacy in the early Church.
The life of Apollinaris is the subject of conjecture more than analysis. Very little is known about him. Some traditions hold that he was a disciple of Saint Peter and came from Antioch, where Saint Peter was the first bishop. Other traditions, based on some historical evidence about the sequence of bishops in Ravenna, assert that he was bishop there in the late second century. Some legends speak of him as a martyr, while others say he suffered for the faith in the manner of a confessor but was not a blood martyr. Owing to these conflicting histories, and to his apparent lack of universal significance, Saint Apollinaris was removed from the sanctoral calendar in 1969 as part of the liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican Council. There was never any question, however, of removing him from the Church’s official roster of saints. After a long absence, the 2002 edition of the Roman Missal restored the Optional Memorial of Saint Apollinaris.
In the older of the two churches of Saint Apollinaris in Ravenna, an ancient mosaic communicates the essentials. The mosaic is not peripherally located. It is front and center in the main apse, in the direct field of vision of any and all who walk through the doors of the church. It shows a man with white hair. He is old. His skull is shaved. It is the tonsure, showing his religious dedication. A large golden halo circles his head. He is a saint. He is wearing liturgical vestments—a chasuble and stole. He is a priest or bishop. His arms are wide open in what is called the orans, or praying, position so common to early Christian frescoes and mosaics. He is saying Mass. He is wearing a pallium, a small band of white lamb’s wool worn by Metropolitan Archbishops. He is the Archbishop of Ravenna.
Twelve lambs, representing the faithful, look to the figure from both sides. He is an important pastor, a shepherd. His main garment is a white alb. In keeping with the mosaic’s age, and with Ravenna’s status as an imperial city, the alb looks more like a flowing Roman toga. The empire is alive and well. The figure is an equal to all the powerful of the city. Above the figure, tiny, dark stones spell out: ＋SANTUS APOLENARIS.
Most of the church’s mosaics were wantonly destroyed, likely by the soldiers of a neighboring city, in the fifteenth century. But not this mosaic. It was famous then and is famous now. It is the most tangible evidence imaginable of the importance of today’s saint, an early bishop who suffered for a revolutionary new faith that knew about conquering death.
Saint Apollinaris, we know little about you except what is most important. You were ordained to participate in the fullness of the priesthood of Christ. You gave witness to the faith that your people remembered and memorialized. May we lead lives that are equally deserving of honor and commemoration.
July 18 (U.S.A.): Saint Camillus de Lellis, Priest
17 LUG 2024 · July 18 (U.S.A.): Saint Camillus de Lellis, Priest
1550–1614
In the U.S.A. this Optional Memorial is transferred to July 18
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of hospitals, nurses, and the sick
A one-man Red Cross who burned with love for the sick
Like so many saints, Camillus de Lellis ran hard in whatever direction he was heading. When he was a soldier, he ran hard toward the noise of battle. When he was a gambler, he ran hard toward the betting tables. When he was a sinner, he ran hard toward his taste of the day. And when he had a conversion, he ran hard toward the tabernacle. And there, finally, he stopped running. Once he found God, he stayed with Him. Today’s saint spent long hours with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Silent contemplation fueled his soul, and he motored through each day with a high-octane love for the sick and the dying, which attracted numerous followers, led to the founding of a religious order, and eventually made Camillus a saint.
As a physically large teenager, Camillus became a soldier, alongside his soldier father, to fight the Turks. In the army he learned to gamble, an addiction that matured with him and which ultimately reduced him to abject poverty. At a low point in his life, he volunteered to work at a Franciscan monastery that was under construction and became inspired by a monk to seek admission to the order. But they wouldn’t take him. Camillus had a serious leg wound that refused to heal. He would have been more burden than blessing, so he moved on. He went to Rome to care for the sick in a hospital where he had previously been a patient. But he was repelled by the inadequate medical care, the moral deprivation of the nurses, and the lack of spiritual attention given to the patients. Camillus decided something better was needed for the sick and found the solution when he looked in the mirror.
Camillus was inspired by his saintly spiritual director, Saint Philip Neri, to establish a company of consecrated men who would serve the sick purely out of love for God. They served in the hospital of the Holy Spirit, still found today on the Tiber River close to the Vatican. Camillus and his co-workers earned a reputation for providing excellent medical care, for indefatigable service, and for doing their work with an intense spirit of prayer. While carrying out this demanding apostolate, Camillus also attended seminary and was ordained a priest in 1584. As the years passed, more men joined, new houses were established in other cities, and the rule for the Order of Clerks Regular, Ministers of the Infirm (M.I.), simply known as the Camillians, was approved by the Pope in 1591.
Father Camillus instituted medical reforms that were rare for his time in regard to cleanliness, diet, infectious diseases, the search for cures, and the separation of healthcare administration from healthcare itself. When his order expanded to other countries, they even staffed a medical field unit accompanying soldiers in battle, an important innovation. This, together with his order’s habit bearing a large, simple, red cross on the front, made Camillus a precursor of the modern Red Cross.
Saint Camillus was practical as well as mystical. He wanted the best, physically, spiritually, and morally, for all those he cared for. Every patient was his Lord and Master. No patient, no matter how diseased, foul, dirty, or rude, was beyond his care. Along with his religious brothers, he even took a special fourth vow to care for those with the plague who might infect him. Two Camillians died of the plague in Camillus’ own lifetime. “More love in those hands brother” was his constant refrain to his confreres. His example resonated, and the work of the Camillians continues today in various countries.
After his order was firmly established, Saint Camillus succumbed to various diseases in 1614 in Rome. Soon after his death, two doctors from Holy Spirit Hospital came to examine the body, as Camillus was already considered a saint. They cut open his chest wall and removed his heart. An eyewitness wrote that his heart was huge, and as red as a ruby. Camillus was canonized in 1746, and a large statue of him adorns a niche in the central nave of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Along with Saint John of God, who was also a soldier, Saint Camillus is the patron saint of hospitals and the sick. Just a few hundred feet from the tourist hordes crushing to enter the Pantheon in the heart of Rome, the modestly sized but luxurious baroque church of Saint Mary Magdalene fronts a small piazza. Inside, usually alone, and resting in peace, are the remains of Saint Camillus de Lellis.
Saint Camillus, you knew the rough life of the soldier, gambler, and wanderer. Because of your experiences, you practiced great empathy for the outcast, the sick, and the dying. Help us to be like you, to translate our empathy into action, and to be motivated primarily by love of God.
July 16: Our Lady of Mount Carmel
16 LUG 2024 · July 16: Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patroness of the Carmelites, and for deliverance from Purgatory
A Crusader legacy enriches the Church’s inner life
A few miles from Lebanon near Haifa, a large city in the north of present-day Israel, is the Holy Land’s Masada of Catholic prayer and spirituality. Mount Carmel rises high into the sky, dominating the landscape below. On this promontory, one of the most dramatic and memorable scenes of the Old Testament unfolded.
In the ninth century before Christ, the prophet Elijah made a death challenge to hundreds of pagan prophets to determine if the God of the Jews was greater than Baal. Two altars are built. Wood is laid about both. Two oxen are slaughtered and placed on the altars. The pagans pray to Baal to accept their sacrifice. Nothing. They pray through the morning. Nothing. They pray through the afternoon. Elijah mocks them. They hop around the altar. They slice their skin, mixing their blood with that of the oxen. Still nothing. They move to the side. Elijah steps up and gives commands. Yahweh’s altar is drenched with water. It is drenched twice more. Elijah pleads that Yahweh accept the sacrifice. And then…a ball of fire cuts through the night sky and BAM! The water evaporates and the sacrifice is totally consumed by the blazing fire of the true God. Then the shocking revenge. Elijah slits the throats of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal at a brook that soon runs red.
God showed His power in stunning fashion on Mount Carmel centuries before Christ ever walked the earth. Two millennia later, the Holy Land was Crusader territory. Chivalric Orders of Knights had conquered Jerusalem and dotted the Mediterranean Coast with Crusader castles to protect the flow of pilgrims and soldiers to and from the holiest sites of Christianity. Some of those knights and dames knew Mount Carmel was holy ground. So in the crags, folds, and valleys of this isolated mountainscape, pocked with numerous caves and grottoes, hermits retreated to lead lives of prayer, fasting, and penance. When political and social realities changed by the end of the thirteenth century, and Christians once again lost the Holy Land, these hermits returned home and established new “Mount Carmels” throughout Europe, evoking the spiritual isolation of their lost mountain in Northern Israel.
The Order of Mount Carmel is an engine room of prayer, a religious family of both male and female contemplative religious. Carmelites’ radical dedication to contemplative prayer, detachment, poverty, and death to self has attracted and formed men and women of the greatest holiness: Saints Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). Integral to Carmelite spirituality is the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
The origins of today’s liturgical feast are somewhat unclear, but the underlying devotion is not. The Virgin Mary’s steady, quiet presence in the life of our Lord is notable for its subtlety. Her inner life and secret generosity is what attracts, more than her actions or speech. No word is limited to a book. The Word of God existed from eternity in the Trinity, became flesh, taught, performed miracles, died and rose long before the Word was written down. Mary is the mother of that rich Word. Her word of “Yes” to the Archangel Gabriel gave space for the Word to dwell among us.
In his 1994 book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Pope Saint John Paul II wrote that “Carmelite mysticism begins at the point where the reflections of Buddha end…” The goal of spirituality is not merely to renounce the evil world but to unite the soul to the personal God of Jesus Christ. Purification and detachment are not ends in themselves. They help one cling to God more easily. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is not a chameleon. She doesn’t change colors to satisfy any and all “spiritualities.” She is the mother of God and the icon, par excellence, of the queen of the virtues—humility.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, through your example of humble docility to the will of God, we seek your intercession to make us more prayerful, more detached, more recollected, and more committed to whatever God asks of us.
July 15: Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor
15 LUG 2024 · July 15: Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor
1221–1274
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of those with intestinal problems
He seemed to have escaped the curse of Adam’s sin
The scholarly heft of Saint Bonaventure legitimized the eccentric Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Bonaventure was to the Franciscans what Thomas Aquinas was to the Dominicans. These contemporaries form twin summits of scholastic thought, first-rate intellectuals whose eminent writings lent their young, revolutionary religious orders credibility. Aquinas and Bonaventure received their doctorates on the very same day and are shown as equals in Raphael’s Disputation of the Holy Sacrament. Both Thomas and Bonaventure were also pious, poor, humble, and holy, giving their theological work even greater weight. Saint Bonaventure was part of that huge influx of second-generation Franciscans who never knew their founder. He joined the order in 1243, received his doctorate in theology from the University of Paris, and became master of the Franciscan school at Paris in 1253. In 1257 he was elected minister general of the entire Franciscan order. He was just thirty-six years old.
The pressing responsibilities of religious leadership constrained Bonaventure from total dedication to the life of the mind. He had limited time to read, write, and do research once he was elected head of his order, making the first half of his life his most prolific period of scholarship. But that scholarship was so comprehensive as to be a complete system of thought. He wrote on everything—fundamental theology, the nature of dogma, Scripture and history, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, angels, creation, the virtues—and all of it was suffused with a mature spirituality focused on the individual soul progressing toward God. With this intensely spiritual focus, Bonaventure is said to be more Augustinian in his theology than Aquinas, who is more Aristotelian. The former’s goal was to love, the latter’s to speculate and to know. Bonaventure’s writings on dogma were influential at the Council of Trent and continue to be read.
Bonaventure led his order in a period of sharp tension among Franciscans over the legacy of Saint Francis. Should the order own property directly or just use property owned by others? Should the brothers be educated and teach or remain simple and only preach? Should the brothers live in the growing cities of the medieval world or stay in the country like Francis himself? Should the brothers in Northern Europe be allowed to wear shoes or must they go barefoot like Saint Francis commanded? These, and many other questions, cleaved the body Franciscan. Many of the diverse interpretations of Francis’ legacy were unresolvable, and, in the early sixteenth century, the order morphed into three entities, each embodying a particular spiritual emphasis.
Saint Bonaventure navigated these sharp tensions with great skill. His erudition, great patience, and love of others sewed the diverse patches of Franciscanism into a whole cloth. He had to chastise, punish, and correct too. But he was outstanding in listening to every side before making his final decisions. That Franciscanism survived is thanks to today’s saint, who has been called the Franciscans’ “Second Founder.”
In 1273 Bonaventure was made a cardinal bishop by the pope. Knowing of this Franciscan’s humility and his refusal to accept a previous episcopal appointment, the pope inserted into his bull an order that Bonaventure could not decline the honor. Bonaventure was in the kitchen washing dishes when the papal envoys arrived with the news. Saint Bonaventure died with his boots on, while participating in and aiding the pope at the Council of Lyon in 1274. Aquinas had died on the way to the same Council. Bonaventure was buried in Lyon, canonized in 1482, and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1557. Unfortunately, his tomb was desecrated by French Protestants and revolutionaries in later centuries, and his body has been permanently lost. His first professor at Paris, Alexander of Hales, gave him a supreme compliment. He said that Bonaventure “seemed to have escaped the curse of Adam's sin.”
Saint Bonaventure, you had few equals in knowledge, love, prayer, and virtue. Through your heavenly intercession, help all Catholics to progress toward union with God by the many paths you yourself walked so long before us.
"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume...
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"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.
These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.
mostra meno
These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.
Informazioni
| Autore | Fr. Michael Black |
| Organizzazione | Michael Black |
| Categorie | Cristianesimo |
| Sito | - |
| - |
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