May 10: Saint John of Ávila, Priest and Doctor
1499-1569
Optional Memorial: Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Andalusia Spain and Spanish clergy

His humble epitaph reads “I was a sower”

Some of the most passionate and daring missionaries stayed close to home. They never sailed the high seas or crossed a snow-capped mountain. Today’s saint was one of them. He was an only child, and after his parents died, Fr. John sold his family property, travelled to Seville, cut all ties, and prepared to sail to New Spain (Mexico), one more wave in that surging missionary tide which crashed on Mexico’s shores throughout the 1500s. But it was not to be. St. John of Ávila never walked up the ship’s plank. He never crossed the ocean. While waiting for his ship in Seville, his skills as a preacher and catechist, and his obvious holiness, were noticed by the local bishop, who convinced him to preach, teach, and evangelize in Andalusia, in Spain’s rugged south.

Saint John then spent himself crisscrossing a region that had only recently been conquered by the Spanish crown, and so was still populated by Spanish Muslims and Jews whose conversions to Catholicism were often more matters of expedience than religious conviction. In this newly opened mission field, our saint’s broad, humanistic education perfectly matched the pastoral need. Father John harmonized orthodox theology, renaissance humanism, rigorous morality, and an insightful spirituality into a powerful synthesis which, when conveyed through his compelling preaching, moved his congregations to their very cores. As John migrated through the great cities of southern Spain - Seville, Córdoba, Granada – large numbers of the faithful followed him everywhere, eager to absorb every word that flowed from his mouth or pen.

People of every class, educational level, and depth of religious commitment found St. John fascinating. In his own lifetime he came to be known as “Master Ávila” for his dominance of the sacred sciences and his vigorous pastoral efforts. He converted, or led to deeper conversion, Saint John of God, founder of the Hospitaller Order, and Saint Francis Borgia, a future Master General of the Jesuits. He was a friend of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and advised Saint Teresa of Ávila, foundress of the Discalced Carmelites. Despite these, and many other, personal connections to famous religious orders and their founders, St. John always remained a diocesan priest, not a religious order priest, something unusual for a priest of his era with such wide influence.

Saint John’s erudition and solid virtues were further buttressed by his life of abject poverty and physical suffering. He was also part of that loud, pan-European cry for church reform that preceded the Council of Trent by decades. Saint John established several seminaries and colleges, provided spiritual direction to multitudes of laity, religious and seminarians, wrote a long spiritual treatise called Audi filia (“Listen daughter”) and was invited by a bishop to attend the Council of Trent as his theological adviser, though illness prevented Saint John from making the journey.

John was declared Venerable in 1759, Blessed in 1893, and Saint in 1970. Proving that saints are always contemporary, he was declared a doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 after a petition from the Spanish episcopacy for such an honor was duly studied and approved by the Vatican. The Papal Bull declaring him a Doctor of the Church states: “The teaching of John of Ávila is outstanding for its quality and precision, and its breadth and depth, which were the fruit of methodical study and contemplation together with a profound experience of supernatural realities.”

In his last few years, Saint John suffered acute physical pain and was largely confined to his humble home. Confinement allowed him to finally perfect his...

May 3: Saints Philip & James, Apostles 
First Century
Feast; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of hatmakers and pastry chefs (Philip) and pharmacists (James)

The smaller the town the bigger the man

The popes follow one another chronologically just like the presidents of the United States. One after another, after another, each inheriting the powers and responsibilities of his office. President John F. Kennedy followed President Dwight D. Eisenhower, just as Pope Saint John Paul II followed The Venerable Pope John Paul I. But there is a difference. Jesus’ placing of Saint Peter as the symbolic and jurisdictional head of the universal Church is, of course, more significant than the popular election of a political leader. The papacy is also different in that every pope is, theologically speaking, the “direct successor” of Saint Peter, the first pope. From this perspective, every pope after Saint Peter is a second pope. So, for example, the two hundredth pope, chronologically, was still the second pope, theologically.  No president would claim he is the direct successor of George Washington. He is the successor of his predecessor. Theological truths transcend space and time, since their source, God, exists outside of space and time.

The Office of St. Peter is theologically guaranteed by the easy-to-find, on-the-surface-of-the-text words of Christ telling Saint Peter that he is the rock upon which He will build His Church. Today’s Pope, and every pope, occupies that same office, is protected by that same divine guarantee, and immediately succeeds Saint Peter when he is chosen by the Holy Spirit to occupy his chair.
What pertains to the Office of the Bishop of Rome also pertains to the Office of the Twelve Apostles. Today’s saints, Philip and James, were called by name by Christ Himself. And after being called, they took the step that many who are called never take. They followed! The Twelve walked at Christ’s side on dusty trails during His years of public ministry. They ate and drank with Him by the fire. They slept under the cold desert sky with Him. And Jesus looked right into their eyes, and only their eyes, and spoke directly to their faces, and only their faces, when He said on a Thursday night that was deeply holy, “Do this in memory of me.” And then they did that, and many other things besides, in memory of Him, for the rest of their lives.

The four marks of the true Church are proof of its authenticity. “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic” are the trademark stamp of the true Church, proving it is the Church  founded by Jesus Christ. No other ecclesial community bears this trademark, and none except the Orthodox even claims to bear it. The mark of “One” means the Church is visibly one in spite of its many tongues, nations, classes, and races. The Church is one in her doctrine, her Sacraments, and her hierarchy. This oneness is not theoretical. It is tangible, real, and identifiable even to those without a doctorate in theology. This one, Christ-founded Church began with twelve followers who gathered as one around Jesus. These Twelve eventually appointed their own successors, who then, in turn, appointed successors, and so on through the centuries down to the present.

The universal college of bishops, the successor body to the Twelve Apostles, is the means by which the Oneness, or unity, of the Church is expressed, protected, and guaranteed. Bishops are not a secondary attribute or development of Christianity. They are embedded into and conjoined with the Word of God in one complex reality. They are not an outside source of authority external to Scripture. There simply would be no Scripture without that pre-existing authority which nurtured and developed it. The Church was the incubator of the New Testament.

Not much is known with certainty about the Apostles Philip and James, apart from their names and some few references in...

April 28: Saint Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr
1803–1841
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of Oceania

Musumusu axed him to death for no reason at all

In Paris, just a few blocks down the Rue du Bac from the shrine of the Miraculous Medal, is a fine, imposing stone building. There are a lot of fine, imposing stone buildings in Paris, so from the outside this one is not exceptional. But once the visitor passes inside the complex of chapel, museum, dormitories, and garden, he understands what a venerable institution he is visiting—The Paris Foreign Mission Society. Approximately 4,500 missionaries went forth from this unique Society, mostly to Southeast Asia, to build the Church and preach the Gospel. From its beginnings in the seventeenth century until today, but most conspicuously in the nineteenth century, hundreds of priests and bishops from the Society were martyred, died violent deaths, or fell victim to tropical diseases. Of these, twenty-three Paris Foreign Missionaries are canonized saints.  Other non-martyr French saints of the same era—Saint John Vianney, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint Catherine Laboure—together with the missionary martyrs, sparkle as the jewels in the crown of the vibrant Church of nineteenth-century France.

Today’s saint, Peter Chanel, was just one such Frenchman who left the comfort and familiarity of home to become a daring and rugged missionary priest. Peter Chanel grew up in rural France working as a shepherd. While in school, he loved to read about French foreign missionaries and wanted to emulate them. So he decided, “I will become a missionary priest!” After seminary studies, Peter was ordained a diocesan priest and served in parishes. But a few years later, he became one of the founding members of the Society of Mary, the Marists. And as a Marist father, he voyaged on the high seas to at last fulfill his missionary dreams. He sailed to one of the most tiny, remote, and unknown islands in the South Pacific. In 1837 Father Peter Chanel stepped ashore the speck of volcanic rock called Futuna to preach there, for the very first time, the name of Jesus Christ.

On unknown Futuna, Father Chanel gave his all, at first drip by drip and then all at once. A lay brother who was with him later said of Father Chanel, “Because of his labors, he was often burned by the heat of the sun and famished with hunger, and he would return home wet with perspiration and completely exhausted. Yet he always remained in good spirits, courageous and energetic…” His apostolic labors generated few converts, but there was some progress nonetheless. Like so many missionaries, Peter had to overcome the counter-witness given by fellow European Christians trading in the area who cared little about their religion. In 1841 when the local Chieftain’s son asked to be baptized, the Chieftain sent his son-in-law, Musumusu, to stop the conversion. A fight within the family ensued. Musumusu then went to Father Chanel’s home and clubbed the priest with an axe until his blood puddled in the dirt. Father Peter was not yet forty years old when his missionary dream was fulfilled in martyrdom, giving Oceania its patron saint.

The island of Futuna, in which our saint had such mixed success, converted completely and totally a few years after Saint Peter’s martyrdom. Musumusu himself repented of his crime and was baptized. The island is, even in modern times, almost one hundred percent Catholic. An impressive church is the heart and center of every small town. Saint Peter Chanel’s body now rests in a large Basilica in the city of Poi. The beauty and smell of tropical flowers always adorn the church. And on the night of April 27, the vigil of his Feast Day, hundreds of Futunians sleep outside the Basilica waiting for the festivities of their saint’s feast day to begin the next morning. The brief life and sudden death of Saint Peter Chanel is...

Thursday of Holy Week (Holy Thursday)
c. 33 A.D.
Triduum; Liturgical Color: White

No last will and testament has been as heeded as Christ’s

From the moment Christ first uttered the words at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday evening, the Church has never ceased to be faithful to them: “Do this in memory of me.” These words of a man about to die, if not a dying man, were a commandment more than a request, marching orders more than a mission statement. And everyone in that upper room understood exactly what He meant. No last will and testament of any man has ever been as faithfully fulfilled as these last words of Christ. What Christ ordered to be done has been done, and continues to be done, every day, throughout the world, by every single priest who stands at an altar and recites the words of consecration in persona Christi.

The world has never moved on from Christ and never will. He is not in the world’s rear-view mirror. He is here, He is present, He is alive. And in every tight corner of the globe, from a tidy Polish village to a rambling Filipino city, from a Palestinian monastery hugging a sun-baked cliff to an Argentinian parish in a sprawling suburb, the Mass makes Him real because it is done in memory of Him. Literally every minute of every day, Mass is celebrated across the globe in a ceaseless offering to God the Father. “From the rising of the sun to its setting,” in a thousand tongues, priests bend slightly over their chalices and the white linens covering their altars and carefully repeat a chain of words in a cadence known to all the faithful: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it…Take this all of you, and drink from it…This is my Body…This is my Blood.” No words are more familiar. None! Not Shakespeare’s, not Caesar’s, not Lincoln’s. The everlasting words of the cross-cultural and cross-generational Christ simply have no equal.

If we expect from the Church the sacraments, we will never be disappointed. If we receive from the Church more than the sacraments, we should rejoice. The Last Supper fulfills and completes the Jewish Passover sacrifice ordered by God of Moses and the Jews in Egypt. The Last Supper, at the same time, prefigures in an unbloody way the physical sacrifice Christ would make on the morrow on the hill of Calvary. In the Last Supper, Christ also gives priests the perennial form for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Last Supper, then, is a composite act of Jewish and Christian ritual, of Old and New Testament theology, of historical and spiritual realities all packed into one dense liturgical act which the Church presents anew at every Mass. The Mass is the Christian work of art par excellence. It is the public act which never stops showing. It is the magnet which pulls mankind through the doors of thousands of churches every morning, noon, and night.

We do this in memory of Him because God deserves worship as a matter of justice, not charity. We do this in memory of Him because He ordered us to do so. We do this in memory of Him because it prefigures what we will hopefully do in heaven for eternity. And we do this in memory of Him for a thousand million reasons locked in the quiet places of a thousand million hearts: For Jill to come back home. So that Robert survives the war. In thanksgiving for a good husband. So that a pain in the gut not be what it might be. In gratitude for the rain that saved the crops. At a king’s crowning, a convict’s death, or the bond of marriage. For the shocked just after the martyrs’ mangled bodies were dragged out of the arena over the blood-stained sand. In thanksgiving because my father did not die of cancer, and in remembrance of my cousin who did. For the fireman who couldn’t find his way out of the building, for the barren woman, for the anniversary of an aged couple, or for the nation on its birthday. There is no end of reasons.

Month after month, year after year, century after...

April 4: Saint Isidore, Bishop & Doctor 
c. 560–636
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of the internet

There was little he did not know

The vast colonial ambitions of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went hand in hand with equally epic Catholic missionary efforts. This unity of purpose, these shared goals, with civil and ecclesiastical resources and powers working in concert, was the natural consequence of a country with a total unity of identity. Today’s saint was a singularly important, if remote, source for that powerful concurrence of Iberian theology, culture, art, and language which, after centuries of gestation, became the Spanish juggernaut that conquered and evangelized a hemisphere in the 1500s.

As a youth, Isidore received an excellent classical education in the Roman tradition, similar to the classical learning Saint Augustine imbibed two centuries before him and utilized to such great effect. Yet Isidore not only learned a great deal, he also remembered it and was uncommonly dedicated to his intellectual pursuits, writing numerous weighty tomes. The breadth and depth of his learning were without equal in his time. It was simply said that Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, knew everything. He is considered by many to be the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church, those early Christian theologians whose writings are the gold standard for all subsequent theologians.

His knowledge was put to good use. As the Roman world, which had dominated Spain for so many centuries, slowly crumbled away in the fifth and sixth centuries, Visigothic (Western Goths) tribes overran Spain. Like their Gothic cousins in Central Europe, the Visigoths were Arians, and Arians were heretics. They denied that Christ was consubstantial with the Father and accepted all that flowed from that erroneous starting point. Saint Isidore played an important role in the assimilation of the Visigoths to Nicene Catholicism after one of their Kings abandoned Arianism. Theological unity having been achieved, the old Roman culture of Iberia slowly blended with Visigothic culture to form something new—Spain. Saint Isidore was, then, a nation builder, because he was first a Church builder. And he built the Church not just through his massive erudition but also through effective headship in calling and guiding Church synods, by establishing liturgical unity through the Mozarabic Rite, and by encouraging scholarship and learning through the Cathedral schools he mandated in every diocese.

Saint Isidore’s most enduring work is his Etymologies (or Origins), an enormous compendium of universal knowledge. It was the standard encyclopedia in Medieval libraries and continued to be utilized as late as the Renaissance. No author’s manuscripts were more widely copied in the Middle Ages than Isidore’s. Although Saint Isidore was not a creative thinker in the same class as Saint Augustine or the Eastern Fathers of the Church, his mind was such a vast storehouse of knowledge that Pope Saint John Paul II named him the Patron Saint of the Internet.

After a long reign as Archbishop of Seville, in his last days Saint Isidore prepared for death by wearing sackcloth and ashes, confessing his faults to his people in church, and asking their forgiveness. He died in his late seventies in 636, just four years after Mohammed, the founder of Islam, died in Saudi Arabia. About seventy-five years after their deaths, Muslim armies crossed the strait of Gibraltar from North Africa and began the long conquest which obliterated the Visigoths. The Spanish reconquest of their nation would take centuries until, in 1492, the last Muslim stronghold, Granada, fell. Both sides were inspired by faith more than patriotism. Both sides fought. Both sides thought they were right. In the end, the nation Isidore created was the stronger and drove Mohammed’s heirs back over the...

February 5: Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr
c. Third Century
Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
(When Lenten Weekday, Optional Memorial; Violet)
Patron Saint of Sicily, breast cancer, rape victims, and bellfounders

Of all the men drawn to her, she desired only one

Pope Saint Gregory the Great reigned as the Supreme Pontiff of the Church from 590–604. His family loved Sicily and had property there, so the young Gregory was familiar with that beautiful island’s saints and traditions. When he became Pope, Saint Gregory inserted the names of two of Sicily’s most revered martyrs, Agatha and Lucy, into the heart of the Mass, the Roman Canon. Saint Gregory even placed these two Sicilians just before the city of Rome’s own two female martyrs, Agnes and Cecilia, who had been part of the Roman Canon for many centuries prior. It was this papal decision that has preserved Saint Agatha’s memory more effectively than anything else. Liturgy is inherently conservative and protects the Church’s oldest memories. So on the lips of thousands of priests every day are the names of some of the Church’s most revered female martyrs: “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.”

Not much is known for certain about the life and death of Saint Agatha, but long tradition supplies what primary documents lack. Pope Damasus (366–384) may have composed a poem in her honor, indicating how widespread her reputation was by that early date. Agatha was from a well-off family in Roman Sicily, probably in the third century. After dedicating her life to Christ, her beauty drew powerful men to her like a magnet. But she refused all suitors in favor of the Lord. Perhaps during the persecution of the Emperor Decius around 250, she was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and martyred. She refused to renounce her faith or to give in to the powerful men who desired her. An ancient homily relates: “A true virgin, she wore the glow of a pure conscience and the crimson of the lamb’s blood for her cosmetics.”

It is also the constant tradition that her torture included sexual mutilation. Saint Lucy is shown in art with her eyeballs on a platter. Saint Agatha is normally shown holding a plate on which rest her own breasts, as they were cut off by her pagan tormentors before her execution. This peculiar image is, in fact, carved into the entrance of Rome’s sixth-century church of Saint Agatha, a church re-dedicated by Pope Saint Gregory himself so long ago.

Men commit most of the physical violence in the world. And when their victims are women, that violence can be particularly vicious because their victims are so defenseless. The stories of the early male martyrs of the Church relate tales of extreme torture by
their Roman captors. But the stories of the women martyrs often relate something more—sexual humiliation. Few male martyrs suffered similar indignities. Saint Agatha and others were not only physically tough to endure the pain they did but also mentally and spiritually powerful to have resisted, to the death, the public embarrassment and degradation particular to them as women. They were the strong ones. Their male captors looked weak.

It was Christianity’s exaltation of women, children, slaves, prisoners, the old, the sick, the foreigner, and the outcast that caused the vast leaven of the Church to slowly rise in the Mediterranean world. The Church did not create a victim class who complained about a privileged class. The Church preached the dignity of persons. The Church did not even preach equality of individuals or teach that governments must enact laws protecting the unprotected. That is all so modern. The Church spoke in theological language and taught that every man, woman, and child was made in God’s image and likeness and so deserved respect. It taught that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for every person. The Church gave, and...

February 3: Saint Ansgar, Bishop
801–865
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Scandinavia, Denmark, and Sweden

He sowed the frozen turf of the North, though little bloomed

Today’s saint walked the forests of Northern Europe during that stretch of history later known, prejudicially, as the “Dark Ages.” He lived three hundred years after the fall of Rome and yet three hundred years before the soaring gothic spires of the High Middle Ages pierced the blue sky. “Ansgar” is a grunt or a mere sound to modern ears. It seems fit for a remote, cold, and brutal age. It is difficult to imagine a child running into the warm embrace of a sunny Ansgar. But the real Saint Ansgar broke bread with Northern Vikings and rough warriors of the forest with names just like his own: Horik, Drogo, Gudmund, and Vedast. Ansgar was one of them, with one big difference—he was a Catholic.

The one thing, a very big thing, that links such long-ago saints, priests, and bishops to us moderns is the Catholic faith. We share the exact same faith as Saint Ansgar! If Saint Ansgar were to step out of the pages of a book today, in his bear fur pelt and deerskin boots, and walk through the doors of a twenty-first-century Catholic church, he would be at home. His eyes would search for the burning flame of the sanctuary lamp, and upon spotting it, he would know. He would bend his knee before a tabernacle housing the Blessed Sacrament, just as he did thousands of times in the past. He would walk past statues of Mary and the saints and know their stories. He would hear the same Gospel, make the same sign of the cross, and feel the same drops of blessed water on his forehead. Nothing would be unusual. Our faith unites what time and culture divide. The Church is the world’s only multicultural, transnational, timeless family. There is nothing else like Her.

Saint Ansgar left his native region in Northern France, after receiving a good Christian education, to become an apostle monk to Northern Germany. He was named by the Pope as Archbishop of Hamburg and, from that post, organized the first systematic evangelization of Scandinavia. These regions were far, far away from the more developed civilizations of Italy, Spain, and France. Yet Saint Ansgar and his helpers traveled that far, and risked that much, to plant the Catholic faith in the frozen ground of what is today Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Yet nearly all the seeds of faith that Saint Ansgar planted were to die in the ground shortly after his own death. Sadly, his missionary efforts produced no long-lasting fruit. The age of the Vikings dawned, and it would be two centuries before Christianity would again flourish and spread across the northern arc of Europe. Yet even that second evangelization would come to a bitter end! In the sixteenth century, Scandinavia abandoned Catholicism for its shadow under the influence of Father Luther and his followers.

What a lesson to be learned! As Saint Paul wrote, one plants, one waters, and God gives the growth: “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each” (1 Co 3:8). Saint Ansgar carried out God’s will. He labored for the Lord and for the faith. What happened after that was up to God in His providence. Carrying out God’s will should be enough for us, as it was for our saint today. We must plant and till, even though harvest time may never come.

Saint Ansgar, you persevered in difficult times to bring the faith to a pagan land. You saw success and then failure, glory and then disappointment. Your work did not outlast you but pleased God nonetheless. May we see our work as our duty, even when the fruit of our labor is harvested by someone else, or not at all.

February 3: Saint Blaise, Bishop and Martyr
c. Early Fourth Century
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of wool combers and sufferers of throat diseases

The memory of an obscure bishop-martyr endures

A secularist does not evaluate religion on its own terms but on its practical benefits. Is a religion true? It doesn’t matter. But if you can prove that empty stomachs are now full, that malarial fevers are cooled, and that formerly dusty roads are now paved due to religion, then religion is indeed useful and good, all truth claims aside. Religion’s role in physical healing would be another proof of its great good, if not its truth. For all the incontestable progress of medicine, cancers still spread, tumors still grow, and infections still poison. Even the most modern of moderns, in a state of total vulnerability, understands in his deepest of deeps that physical healings surge from sources other than modern science. PhDs wash in the River Ganges, rocket scientists lower their bodies into the cool baths of Lourdes, and surgeons spread sacred oil on their skin hoping against hope for a cure that has eluded medicine.

The memory of Saint Blaise, a man of obscure origins, stands behind one of the most enduring healing traditions in all of Christendom. In the holy name of Blaise, two candles are crossed, X-shaped, and pressed against the neck to ward off and cure diseases of the throat. Oils and relics, candles and flames, bread and wine, words and blessings. God’s face does not appear in the ash cloud rising from a volcanic eruption or in a golden pile at the end of a rainbow. The Christian believes that God’s salvation and healing power come through His Holy Mother, through His saints, and through the creation He molded in His own hands.

A believer doesn’t believe in belief, any more than a soldier loves patriotism. A soldier loves his country, and a believer loves God. And because the believer loves God, he loves a someone, not a something, and waits in line and shuffles forward, step by step, to the priest holding those X-shaped candles on today’s feast. Because it is usually winter, the believer adjusts his jacket collar, feels the milky wax candle against his tender throat, closes his eyes, and prays that the cough disappear, that his voice remain strong, or that the faintest lump turn out to be nothing at all. Saint Blaise is primarily a “Northern” saint invoked to remedy mostly cold-climate ills.

Details of Saint Blaise’s life are difficult to verify. Some traditions, dating from centuries after he lived, state that he was a bishop in Armenia, east of modern-day Turkey. His reputation for holiness drew people to him in search of a cure for their infirmities. It is said that Blaise was tortured and murdered in an anti-Christian persecution. Every saint, no matter how remote his life or obscure his story, casts some light on the truths of our faith. The life of Saint Blaise and the tradition of throat healing that still surrounds him tell us that holy lives have power. His life tells us that holy people intercede for less holy people, and that the less powerful, the less wise, and the less good depend on the strong, the intelligent, and the virtuous in order to leave their state of dependence, ignorance, and sin.

In the same way that salvation is mediated, healing is as well. Whether through the skilled hands of a surgeon, the chemicals of a drug, or the intercession of a saint, healing comes. The many channels branch out from the one source who is God. We, the faithful, when fragile and afraid, patiently sit in the doctor’s office for our name to be called, wait at the pharmacy counter for the prescription to be filled, or line up in church for the candles to rest softly on our clavicles. Healing is on offer, we are ripe to be cured, and any sacred intervention is welcome, no matter whence it comes.

Saint...

February 2: The Presentation of the Lord
Feast; Liturgical Color: White

God goes to Church

The various names, meanings, and traditions overlapping in today’s Feast churn like the crystals in a kaleidoscope, revealing one image and then another with every slight rotation of the tube. The Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is, rotate, also the Purification of Mary. But, rotate, it’s also known as the “Meeting of the Lord” in the Christian East. And, rotate, it’s also the Feast of Candlemas, marking forty days after Christmas. The multiple names and meanings of today’s Feast have given birth to surprisingly broad and varied cultural expressions. The biblical account of the Presentation is the source for the “two turtle doves” in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” for the sword piercing Mary’s Immaculate Heart in Catholic iconography, for the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the rosary, and for the Canticle prayed by all the world’s priests and nuns every single night of their lives. The Presentation is even the remote source of the frivolous American folkloric tradition of Groundhog Day.

Behind all of these names and meanings are, however, a few fundamental theological facts worthy of reflection. The Lord Jesus Christ, forty days after His birth, in keeping with both the biblical significance of the number forty and with Jewish custom, was presented in the temple in Jerusalem by His parents, Mary and Joseph. Saint Luke’s Gospel recounts the story. After the Presentation, Jesus was to enter the temple again as a boy and later as an adult. He would even refer to His own body as a temple which He would raise up in three days. Jesus’s life was a continual self-gift to God the Father from the very beginning to the very end. His parents did not carry their infant Son to a holy mountain, a sacred spring, or a magical forest. It was in His temple that the God of Israel was most present, so they brought their Son to God Himself, not just to a reflection of Him in nature.

The extraordinarily beautiful temple in Jerusalem, the building where Jesus was presented by His parents, was burned to ashes by a powerful Roman army under the future Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. It was never rebuilt. A tourist in Rome can, even today, gaze up at the marble depictions of the sack of the Jerusalem Temple carved on the inside vaults of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Christianity has never had just one sacred place equivalent to the Jewish Temple or the Muslims’ Kaaba in Mecca. Christianity is historical, yes, but it has a global reach rising above any one culture or region.

Christ is destined for all cultures and all times. Every Catholic church with the Blessed Sacrament is a Holy of Holies, which fully expresses the deepest mysteries of our faith. There is no strict need to go on pilgrimage to Rome or to Jerusalem once in your life. But you do have to go on pilgrimage to your local parish once a week for Mass. Every Catholic church in every place, not just one building in one place, encompasses and transmits the entirety of our faith. God’s hand must have been involved in the headship of the Church migrating from Jerusalem to Rome in the first century. Our Pope does not live in the historical cradle of the faith he represents, because Saint Peter saw no need to remain in Jerusalem in order to be faithful to his Master. The Church is where Christ is, Christ is in the Holy Eucharist, and the Holy Eucharist is everywhere.

We go to church, as the Jews went to their one temple or to their many synagogues, because God is more God in a church. And when we experience the true God, we experience our true selves. That is, we are more us when God is more God. God is interpreted according to the mode of the interpreter when He is sought in a glowing sunset, a rushing waterfall, or a stunning mountain. In nature, God is whoever the seeker wants Him to be. In a church, however, God...

January 31: Saint John Bosco, Priest
1815–1888
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of editors, publishers, schoolchildren, and juvenile delinquents

His fatherly heart radiated the warm love of God

Some saints attract the faithful by the raw power of their minds and the sheer force of their arguments. Think of Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Augustine. Other saints write so eloquently, with such grace and sweetness, that their words draw people to God like bees to honey. Think of Saint John Henry Newman or Saint Francis de Sales. Still other saints say and write almost nothing, but lead lives of such generous and sacrificial witness that their holiness is obvious. Think of Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Today’s saint was not a first-class thinker, eloquent writer, bloody martyr, or path-breaking Church reformer. Yet his abundant gifts drew people to God in their own unique way.

Saint John Bosco was, to put it in the simplest terms, a winner. His heart was like a furnace radiating immense warmth, fraternal concern, and affectionate love of God. His personality seemed to operate like a powerful magnet that pulled everyone closer and closer in toward his overflowing, priestly, and fatherly love. His country-boy simplicity, street smarts, genuine concern for the poor, and love of God, Mary, and the Church made him irresistible. Don Bosco (‘Don’ being a title of honor for priests, teachers, etc.) had charm. What he asked for, he received. From everyone. He built, during his own lifetime, an international empire of charity and education so massive and so successful that it is impossible to explain his accomplishments in merely human terms.

Like many great saints, Don Bosco’s external, observable charisms were not the whole story. Behind his engaging personality was a will like a rod of iron. He exercised strict self-discipline and firmness of purpose in driving toward his goals. His gift of self, or self-dedication, was remarkable. Morning, noon, and night. Weekday or weekend. Rain or shine. He was always there. Unhurried. Available. Ready to talk. His life was one big generous act from beginning to end.

Saint John grew up dirt poor in the country working as a shepherd. His father died when he was an infant. After studies and priestly ordination, he went to the big city, Turin, and saw first-hand how the urban poor lived. It changed his life. He began a ministry to poor boys which was not particularly innovative. He said Mass, heard confessions, taught the Gospel, went on walks, cooked meals, and taught practical skills like book binding. There was no secret to Don Bosco’s success. But no one else was doing it, and no one else did it so well. Followers flocked to assist him, and he founded the Salesians, a Congregation named after his own hero, Saint Francis de Sales. The Salesian empire of charity and education spread around the globe. By the time of its founder’s death in 1888, the Salesians had 250 houses the world over, caring for 130,000 children. Their work continues today.

Don Bosco was not concerned with the remote causes of poverty. He did not challenge class structures or economic systems. He saw what was in front of him and went “straight to the poor,” as he put it. He did his work from the inside out. It was for others to figure out long-term solutions, not for him. Don Bosco did not know what rest was and wore himself out by being all things to all men. His reputation for holiness endured well beyond his death. A young priest who had met him in Northern Italy in 1883, Father Achille Ratti, later became Pope Pius XI. On Easter Sunday 1934, this same pope canonized the great Don Bosco whom he had known so many years before.

Saint John Bosco, you dedicated your life to the education and care of poor youth. Aid us in reaching out to those who need our assistance today, not tomorrow, and here, not...

January 28: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor
1225–1274
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of universities and students

A theological Grand Master, he positioned every piece exquisitely on the chessboard

The silhouette of Saint Thomas Aquinas hovers like a giant on the highest summit of human thought, casting so wide and deep a shadow over the landscape that all subsequent thinkers labor on the shady slopes below him. It is fair to say that Thomism, the thinking method and intellectual conclusions of Saint Thomas, has been the Catholic Church’s standard theology since he lived in the thirteenth century.

Saint Thomas understood that all thinking about God is done from inside original sin and within the parameters of human intellectual capacity. The uncreated, timeless, mysterious God, then, is by definition incomprehensible to creatures trapped in time, space, matter, sin, distraction, and confusion. God is outside of the universe, rather than being just one important ingredient in the recipe of reality. This essential “otherness” of God means that His presence is not completely accessible to the senses. It is not just a question of seeing farther, understanding more deeply, hearing more acutely, or feeling more intensely. Twenty senses instead of five would still not be enough to capture God, because He transcends all other forms of being known to us. In the 1950s, a Russian cosmonaut looked out over space from his orbit miles above the earth and declared "I have found no God." He was looking for something that wasn’t there and answering a question that was poorly posed.

Sometimes God is described as the highest being in an immense hierarchy of beings. From this perspective, the tiniest specks of organic or inorganic life, up and onward through plant and animal life, mankind, the planets and the solar system itself, are all beneath and owe their creation to the super being of God Himself. In this “ladder-of-existence” understanding, every being is a rung leading to higher and higher rungs at the top of which stands God.

Such an understanding of God is inaccurate, Aquinas would hold. God is not the highest of all beings but Being itself. Every person at one time did not exist. Creation itself, including mankind, is created, meaning at some point it was not. But God cannot not be. For Saint Thomas, God’s essential action is to exist. It is intrinsic to His nature as God. God, then, is not something in the air but the air itself. He is not the biggest whale in the ocean. He is the water. This means that there is no strict need to provide scientific evidence for God, because even asking the question presumes the reality all around us. Science, for example, can explain the chemical composition of ink, but it has nothing to say about the meaning of words printed in ink. Science clearly has limits.

Thomism’s understanding of God as non-contingent being, which makes all dependent existence possible, is intellectually sophisticated and also deeply attractive. This understanding of God meshes nicely with an appreciation for the natural beauty of the earth, love of art, and charity for our fellow man, while also allowing space for God to reveal Himself more fully, and gratuitously, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. Importantly, it also avoids confusing God’s creation with God Himself.

Saint Thomas’s encyclopedic knowledge and massive erudition existed harmoniously with a humble nature and a simple, traditional Catholic piety. He was a well-balanced man and a dedicated Dominican priest. This synthesis of childlike wonder and deep inquiry marked his life. After having a mystical vision of Jesus Christ on the cross while praying after Mass one day, Saint Thomas abandoned any further writing. He died on his way to the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, not yet fifty years old. He is buried in Toulouse, France, retaining his...

January 27: Saint Angela Merici, Virgin
1474–1540
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of disabled and physically challenged people and illnesses

A holy woman tries to change the world one girl at a time

Although not common, some older images and statues of Saint Francis of Assisi show him balancing three orbs on his shoulders. They appear to be globes, heavenly realms, or the earth, the moon, and the sun. But the three orbs actually represent the three orders in the Franciscan family: the first order for men, the second order for women, and the third order for the laity who desire to live by the Franciscan Rule. Today’s saint, Angela Merici, was a Third Order Franciscan, a lay woman who followed a strict rule of Franciscan life outside of a convent.

Angela’s holiness, mystical experiences, and leadership skills ultimately led her beyond her Franciscan commitment to found her own community of “virgins in the world” dedicated to the education of vulnerable girls or, in modern parlance, at-risk youths. She placed the community under the patronage of Saint Ursula. The community, after Angela’s death, was formally recognized as the Ursulines and gained such renown for their schools that they came to be known as the female Jesuits.

Saint Angela saw the risk that uneducated girls in her native region of Northern Italy would end up being abused sexually or financially and sought to counter these possible outcomes through education. She gathered a like-minded group of virgins around her into a “company,” a military word also used by Saint Ignatius in founding his “Company of Jesus” around the same time. Saint Angela organized her city into districts which reported to “colonels” who oversaw the education and general welfare of the poor girls under their care. Saint Angela’s cooperators did not understand their dedicated virginity as a failure to find a husband or a rejection of religious life in a convent. They emulated the early Christian orders of virgins as spouses of Christ who served the children of their Beloved in the world.

Living in the first part of the sixteenth century, Saint Angela was far ahead of her time. Teaching orders of nuns became normative in the Church in later centuries, staffing Catholic schools throughout the world. But nuns did not always do this. This practice had to start with someone, and that someone was today’s saint. Bonds of faith, love of God, and a common purpose knitted her followers together into a religious family that served the spiritual and physical welfare of those who no one else cared about. Women make a house a home, and Saint Angela sought to change society one woman at a time by infusing every home with Christian virtue emanating from the heart of the woman who ran it. She trained future wives, mothers, and educators in their youth, when they were still able to be formed.

The Papal Bull of Pope Paul III in 1544, which canonically recognized her community, stated of Saint Angela Merici: “She had such a thirst and hunger for the salvation and good of her neighbor that she was disposed and most ready to give not one, but a thousand lives, if she had had so many, for the salvation even of the least…with maternal love, she embraced all creatures...Her words...were spoken with such unheard of effectiveness that everyone felt compelled to say: ‘Here is God.’”

Saint Angela Merici, infuse in our hearts that same love for which you left worldly joys to seek out the vulnerable and the forgotten. Help us to educate the ignorant and to share with the less fortunate, not only for their spiritual and material benefit but for our everlasting salvation.

January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops
First Century
Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saints of stomach disorders

Saint Paul could not do it alone

Today’s saints were two bishops from the apostolic period of the Church, those decades immediately following the death and resurrection of Our Lord. In this grace-filled time, the Apostles and Saint Paul were carving the first deep furrows into the pagan soil they traveled, planting in the earth the rich seeds of Christian faith which succeeding bishops would later water, tend, and harvest.

Little is certainly known about today’s saints apart from references to them in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Saint Paul. But these numerous references are enough. The generations of theologians, bishops, martyrs, and saints who lived in the post-apostolic period give universal and consistent witness to the veracity of Paul’s letters and the events they recount. There are theological, more than historical, lessons to be taken from the lives and ministry of today’s saints.

Saints Timothy and Titus were apostles of an Apostle. They shared in the ministry of Saint Paul, who had a direct connection to Christ through a miraculous occurrence on the road to Damascus, a feast commemorated, not coincidentally, the day prior to today’s memorial. Timothy, Titus, and many others, known and unknown, carried out on a local level a priestly ministry which Paul engaged in on a more regional level. It was Saint Paul’s practice, and probably that of the other surviving Apostles, to appoint assistants wherever they went who acted with the authority of the Apostle who appointed them. These assistants were variously called priests or bishops, terms that were often interchangeable. Deacons, of course, shared in the priestly ministry too, but more as assistants to bishops.

A direct connection to an Apostle, either through his personal ministry or through a group or delegate he appointed (through an ordination rite), was fundamental to establishing a church. Accredited leaders were needed. This is a constant theme in the writings of Saint Paul. No Apostle—no Church. The body could not be separated from the head and still survive. In other words, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel always—always—occurred contemporaneously with the foundation of a solidly structured local Church. The modern tendency to emphasize the internal, personal, and spiritual message of Christ over the external, public, hierarchical Church which carries His message is a dichotomy unknown to early Christianity. For early Christians and faithful Christians still today, the Church carries a message and is itself a message. The content of the Gospel and the form of the Gospel community go hand in hand. The constant, amoeba-like splitting of Protestant communities attests to the inevitable divisions which result when the Church and its message are separated.

A later tradition holds that Saint Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Equally ancient traditions state that Saint John the Evangelist retreated to Ephesus before dying on the island of Patmos, and that Mary followed John to Ephesus, living in a house above the town. It is possible, then, that Saint Timothy drank from the deepest wells of the Christian tradition. Sitting around the warm glow of a fire at night, he may have heard about the life of Christ from the very lips of the most important witnesses—Mary and John. We can imagine that Timothy heard about many of the unwritten events of Christ’s life from Saint John. It is this same John who ends his Gospel by writing that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Timothy and Titus were bearers of the very oldest Christian traditions.

Saints Timothy...

January 25: The Conversion of Saint Paul
First Century
Feast; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of missionaries, evangelists, and writers

One man can change the world

In the long history of the Church, no conversion has been more consequential than Saint Paul’s. Paul had not been ambivalent toward the Church before he converted. He had actively persecuted it, even throwing rocks at the head of Saint Stephen, in all likelihood. But he changed, or God changed him, on one particular night. And on that night, Christianity changed too. And when the course of Christianity changed, the world changed. It is difficult to overemphasize the import of Saint Paul’s conversion.

One way to think about the significance of an event, whether big or small, is to consider what things would have been like if the event had never occurred. This is the premise behind the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” You compare actual life with a hypothetical “what if” alternative scenario. What if Saint Paul had remained a zealous Jew? What if he had never converted? Never wrote one letter? Never travelled the high seas on missionary voyages? It can safely be assumed that the world itself, not just the Church, would look different than it does today. Perhaps Christianity would have remained confined to Palestine for many more centuries before breaking out into wider Europe. Maybe Christianity would have taken a right turn instead of a left, and all of China and India would be as culturally Catholic as Europe is today. It’s impossible to say. But the global scale of the effects of Paul’s ministry speak to the significance of his conversion.

Some conversions are dramatic, some boring. Some are instantaneous, some gradual. Augustine heard a boy in a garden repeating, “Take and Read,” and knew the time had come. Saint Francis heard Christ say from the cross, “Rebuild My Church,” and responded with his life. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the father of abortion in the United States, repudiated and repented of his life’s work and searched for a real Church to forgive his real sins. He ultimately bowed his head to receive the waters of baptism.

The details of Paul’s conversion are well known. He was, perhaps, thrown from his horse on the road to Damascus (except that Acts makes no mention of a horse). Maybe he just fell down while walking. While stunned on the ground, Paul heard the voice of Jesus ask: “Why are you persecuting me?”—not “Why are you persecuting my followers.” Jesus and the Church are clearly one. To persecute the Church is to persecute Christ. Jesus is the head, and the Church is His body. Paul did not convert to loving Jesus while saying that the Church was just an accidental human construct that blocked him from the Lord. No, of course not! He believed what right-minded Catholics have believed for centuries and still believe today. To love Jesus is to love the Church, and vice versa. It is impossible to love the Lord while disregarding the historical reality of how the Lord is communicated to us. The Church is not just a vehicle to carry God’s revelation. The Church is as much a part of God’s revelation as Scripture.

Paul’s conversion teaches us that when Jesus comes to us, He doesn’t come alone. He comes with His angels, saints, priests, and bishops. He comes with Mary, the sacraments, doctrine, and devotions. He comes with the Church, because He and the Church are one. And when we go to the Lord, we don’t go alone either. We go as members of a Church into whose mystical body we were baptized. Thus Saint Paul heard from God Himself, and thus we believe today.

Saint Paul, we ask your openness to conversion when we hear the Lord speak to us as He spoke to you. Assist us in responding with great faith to every invitation we receive to love the Lord more fully, to know Him more deeply, and to spread His word more broadly to those who need it.

1567–1622
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of writers and journalists

A talented gentleman of sterling character embodies holiness

It is almost an act of rudeness to limit the life of today’s saint to a page or two. Saint Francis de Sales was a religious celebrity in his own day and age. He was an erudite, humble, tough, and zealous priest and bishop. He was holy and known to be holy by everyone, especially those closest to him. He mingled easily with princes, kings, and popes, who enjoyed his charming and educated company. He incessantly crisscrossed his diocese on foot and horseback, destroying his own health, to visit the poor and humble faithful who were drawn to him as much as the high born. He embodied to the fullest that extraordinary pastoral and intellectual productivity, characteristic of the greatest saints, which makes one wonder if he ever rested a single minute or slept a single night.

Saint Francis de Sales was born and lived most of his life in what is today Southeast France. His father ensured that he received an excellent education from a young age, and his son excelled in every subject. His intellectual gifts, holiness, and engaging personality made him, almost inevitably, an ideal candidate for the priesthood and eventually the episcopacy. He was duly appointed the Bishop of Geneva, a generation after John Calvin, a former future priest, had turned that deeply Catholic city into the Protestant Rome. Saint Francis was Bishop of Geneva primarily in name, not fact.

In carrying out his ministry, Francis’ weapon of choice was the pen. His apologetic and spiritual works brought back to the faith tens of thousands of former Catholics after they had dabbled in Calvinism. Saint Francis’s works were so profound and creative, and his love of God so straightforward and understandable, that he would be declared a Doctor of the Church in 1877. In his most well-known book, Introduction to the Devout Life, he addressed himself to “people who live in towns, within families, or at court.” His sage spiritual advice encouraged the faithful to seek perfection in the mechanic’s shop, the soldier’s regiment, or on the wharf. God’s will was to be found everywhere, not just in monasteries and convents.

Many arduous pastoral trips through the mountains of his native region eventually wore him out. Saint Francis never insisted on preferential treatment despite his status. He slept, ate, and traveled as a common man would. When he lay dying, mute after a terrible stroke, a nun asked him if he had any final words of wisdom to impart. He asked for some paper and wrote three words on it: “Humility, Humility, Humility.” Saint Francis is buried in a beautiful bronze sepulchre displaying his likeness in the Visitation Basilica and Convent in Annecy, France.

Saint Francis de Sales, we ask your intercession to aid us in leading a balanced life of study, prayer, virtue, and service. You were a model bishop who never expected special privilege. Help all those who teach the faith to convey doctrine with the same force, clarity, and depth that you did.

January 23: Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin (U.S.A.)
1838–1918
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Hawaiʻi, lepers, outcasts, and sufferers of HIV/AIDS

She learned generosity at home and lived it her whole life

Today’s saint was a model female Franciscan who emulated Saint Francis’ heroic example of personally caring for the outcasts of all outcasts—lepers. Saints are not born, of course; they are made. And Saint Marianne Cope came from a specific time, place, and family. She could have developed her abundant talents in many directions and used them for many purposes, but she re-directed what God loaned her to serve Him, His Church, and mankind. The Church, the Franciscans, and Hawaiʻi were the arenas in which this elite spiritual athlete exercised her skills. She was asked for much and gave even more. She became a great woman.

Marianne Cope was born in Germany and was brought to New York state by her parents when she was still a baby. She was the oldest of ten children. Her parents lived, struggled, and worked for their kids. She saw generosity in action at home every day. She quit school after eighth grade to work in a factory to financially support her ailing father, her mother, and her many siblings. The challenges inherent to immigration, a new culture, illness, a large family, and poverty turned Marianne into a serious, mature woman when she was just a teen.

Marianne fulfilled her long-delayed desire to enter religious life in 1862. Once professed, she moved quickly into leadership positions. She taught in German-speaking Catholic grade schools, became a school principal, and was elected by her fellow Franciscans to positions of governance in her Order. She opened the first hospitals in her region of Central New York, dedicating herself and her Order to the time-honored religious vocation of caring for the sick, regardless of their ability to pay for medical services. She was eventually elected Superior General. In her early forties, she was already a woman of wide experience: serious, administratively gifted, spiritually grounded, and of great human virtues. But this was all mere preparation. She now began the second great act of her drama. She went to Hawaiʻi.

In 1883 she received a letter from the Bishop of Honolulu begging her, as Superior General, to send sisters to care for lepers in Hawaiʻi. He had written to various other religious Orders without success. Sister Marianne was elated. She responded like the prophet Isaiah, saying, “Here am I; send me!” (Is 6:8). She not only sent six sisters, she sent herself! She planned to one day return to New York but never did. For the next thirty-five years, Sister Marianne Cope became a type of recluse on remote Hawaiʻi, giving herself completely to the will of God.

Sister Marianne and her fellow Franciscans managed one hospital, founded another, opened a home for the daughters of lepers, and, after a few years of proving themselves, opened a home for women and girls on the virtually inaccessible island of Molokai. Here her life coincided with the final months of Saint Damien de Veuster. Sister Marianne nursed the future saint in his dying days, assuring him that she and her sisters would continue his work among the lepers. After Father Damien died, the Franciscans, in addition to caring for the leprous girls, now cared for the boys too. A male Congregation eventually relieved them of this apostolate.

Sister Marianne Cope lived the last thirty years of her life on Molokai until her death in 1918. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and canonized by him in 2012. She loved the Holy Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and the Church. And because she loved God first, she loved those whom God loves, her brothers and sisters in Christ. She sacrificed for them, left home and family for them, put her health at risk for them, and became a saint through them.
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