Catholic Saints & Feasts copertina

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Di: Fr. Michael Black
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  • Riassunto

  • "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.
    Copyright Fr. Michael Black
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Episodi
  • April 28: Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, Priest

    April 28: Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, Priest
    Apr 26 2023
    April 28: Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, Priest
    1673–1716
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of preachers

    Intensely in love with God, his flame burned hot but not long

    The English writer Graham Greene grew up Anglican with the typical anti-Catholic biases of his twentieth-century generation. One of those biases firmly held that Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary and thus deflected toward Christ’s mother the glory due to Him alone. But when Greene started dating an educated Catholic girl, she taught him that Catholics rendered latria (worship) to God, dulia (praise) to the saints, and hyperdulia (an abundance of praise) to Mary. It made sense. Worship is given to God alone. Praise is given to the saints. And Mary is rendered a unique intensity of praise in recognition of her unique role in salvation history. Graham was convinced. For these and other reasons, he entered the Church. He went on to become a well-known novelist on Catholic themes, in part because a teenage girl he once dated knew some basic theology.

    Throughout the centuries since the Reformation, Catholics have been accused of granting to Mary what is due only to God. This false accusation is more apparent than real. But its appearance sometimes even bothers Catholics. As a young man, the future Pope Saint John Paul II wondered whether he gave Mary too central a role in his devotions, prayer, and reading. But the writings of today’s saint, Louis de Montfort, helped the young Pole place Marian devotion in its wider theological context. Pope Saint John Paul II routinely gave thanks to Saint Louis de Montfort’s book, True Devotion to Mary, for helping him develop a more mature Marian spirituality. The Pope even borrowed from de Montfort the Latin Totus Tuus as his papal motto. De Montfort had written to the Virgin, “I am all yours, and all that is mine belongs to you.” When we honor Mary, Mary honors God along with us.

    Louis Grignion de Montfort was never not in love with God. He was one of eighteen children born to his parents. Eleven of them are saints—Louis and ten of his siblings who died as babies shortly after their baptisms. Even as a child, Louis was devoted to prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He studied under the Jesuits as a teen and then attended theology courses at St. Sulpice in Paris. He was ordained a priest at the age of twenty-seven. He at first wanted to become a missionary, like so many ardent French priests of his time. But a spiritual director advised against it, and Louis became a hospital chaplain, preached missions, and served as a confessor. Father Louis was interpersonally awkward and ardent to the point of making others uncomfortable, all of which confined his priestly ministry to non-traditional forums. He also lived radical poverty, owning nothing, carrying no money, and even abandoning his family name, Grignion, to be known only by his town, Montfort.

    Louis de Montfort’s intense devotional life, theatrical preaching style, moral uprightness, and visions of Mary, the angels and satan, were interpreted as holy foolishness by many in the Church who wished him ill. The Jansenists, an ultra-rigorist branch of the French Church, particularly despised his preaching on God’s love and mercy. Saint Louis’ itinerant life ended due to physical exhaustion at the young age of forty-three. He practiced such extreme physical penances that his body was well prepared for the grave when he died. He was a priest only sixteen years. It is possible that his life and writings did more good for future ages than they did for his own. His writings on Mary, in particular, were rediscovered and published in the nineteenth century, leading to his canonization in 1947 and to his wide fame in the Church. Our saint died with a statue of the Virgin Mary in one arm and a crucifix given him by the Pope in the other arm. He felt attacked by the devil in his last agony and yelled at him, “You attack me in vain. I stand between Jesus and Mary. I have finished my course. I shall sin no more.” He was buried, per his request, under an altar dedicated to his Lady…to Our Lady.

    Saint Louis de Montfort, we ask your intercession before God in Heaven to inflame in all hearts a fire that burns like yours with love for the Holy Trinity. Help all who read your works to profit from their wisdom and so grow closer to God’s mother.
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    6 min
  • April 24: Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr

    April 24: Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr
    Apr 24 2024
    April 24: Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr
    1577–1622
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of lawyers & the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

    His murderers cut a leg off his dead body in retaliation for his many journeys

    To understand the historical and religious context for today’s saint, consider an event that took place fifty years before he was born. On January 5, 1527, in Zurich, Switzerland, a young man named Felix Mantz was taken hold of by local officials, had his hands and feet bound to a pole, and was rowed out in a boat to the deepest part of the local river. With a large crowd watching from the shores, he was tossed overboard into the dark water and immediately drowned to death. Felix Mantz’s crime? He believed only adults should be baptized, not children. Mantz was not killed by the Inquisition, the Pope, the local Bishop, or a Catholic mob. His cruel drowning, which mocked his views on baptism, was perpetrated by dissenting Protestants.

    The Protestants of Zurich believed in infant baptism while rejecting all other Catholic beliefs. And they allowed absolutely no dissenting from their own dissenting from Catholicism. Felix Mantz was the first Protestant martyred by other Protestants. Heretics killing other heretics for not conforming to their heresy captures the chaos, intellectual dissonance, and cultural confusion in some regions of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. This total meltdown is known as the Reformation. Today’s saint, Fidelis of Sigmaringen, walked right into this still-raging storm of violence in the early seventeenth century, suffering a fate essentially similar to the Protestant martyr Felix Mantz, though for exactly contrary reasons.

    Its very existence challenged by Protestantism, Counter-Reformation Catholicism swelled like a great ocean, lifting up a sea of scholars, monks, abbots, nuns, priests, and bishops who overwhelmed Europe with their teaching and witness to the perennial truths of Jesus Christ. Saint Fidelis was just one priest-monk among that great tide of the Counter-Reformation, but he was one who became a martyr. He was born as Mark Roy in the town of Sigmaringen in Prussia, in Northern Germany, and raised in the Faith. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1603 and degrees in civil and canon law in 1611, yet he became disillusioned with his career in law. He had always been an exceptionally ardent Catholic, so he entered the Capuchin Order and was ordained a priest in his thirties. He took the religious name of “faithful”—in Latin, “Fidelis.” Fidelis was intelligent, disciplined, and ascetic. His abundant human and spiritual gifts were amplified and sharpened when put in the service of the King of Kings, and he rose to important positions of leadership within the Capuchin Order.

    Having become locally well known for his fervor and holiness, Father Fidelis was appointed by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome to preach, teach, and write in present day Switzerland, with the goal of exhorting the people to return to the embrace of the Mother Church which had given them birth. Father Fidelis desired martyrdom, and it came for him soon enough. In Switzerland, his zeal and example brought some prominent Calvinists back to the true Faith. This made him an official enemy of the Calvinists who controlled much of that land.

    One day, when traveling between two towns where he was preaching and saying Mass, Fidelis was confronted along the road by Calvinist soldiers led by a minister. Fidelis had recently caused an uproar in a nearby town and had barely escaped with his life. The soldiers knew exactly who was before them. They demanded that he abandon his Faith. Fidelis answered, "I was sent to rebuke you, not to embrace your heresy. The Catholic religion is the faith of all ages, I do not fear death." His skull was then cracked open with the butt of a sword, his body punctured with stabs, and his left leg hacked off in retribution for the numerous journeys he had made into Protestant territory. Saint Fidelis died at the age of forty-five, ten years after entering religious life. He was canonized in 1746. Over three hundred miracles were attributed to his intercession during his canonization process. Saint Fidelis was faithful in life and continues to intercede faithfully in death.

    Saint Fidelis, through your intercession before the throne of God, we ask you to fortify all teachers and preachers of the faith to remain faithful to the truth, even to the point of embarrassment, inconvenience, suffering, and death to self.
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    6 min
  • April 25: Saint Mark, Evangelist

    April 25: Saint Mark, Evangelist
    Apr 24 2023
    April 25: Saint Mark, Evangelist
    c. First Century
    Feast; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of lions, lawyers, Venice, interpreters, and prisoners

    He chronicled what the first Pope witnessed

    John’s Gospel offers the reader this brief post-Resurrection scene: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat…” (Jn 21:3). The flock followed where Peter led. How easily Saint Peter moves to the fore in the Acts of the Apostles. How effortlessly he speaks for the entire Community of Faith. Saint Peter even leaves the running of the Church in Jerusalem to Saint James to show that he is not bound to one city or community. Instead, Peter walks toward the widest horizon of evangelization, the capital of the world—Rome. Traitor Peter becomes Pope Peter.

    Peter was, of course, a simple fisherman. It is more interesting to note that he did not remain a simple fisherman. He grew. He matured. He led. And leaders don’t have followers as much as joiners. Saint Mark, whom we commemorate today, was one of the most significant of the many joiners who uprooted themselves to join Peter in his dangerous adventure of founding the Church. Nothing is known for certain of Mark’s origins or his youth. He is not mentioned in the Gospel that bears his name and only the faintest biographical sketch is possible. What is known is that Mark left his homeland in Palestine to follow first Saint Paul, and later, Saint Peter. Mark sailed dangerous seas in primitive boats. He walked long stretches through desolate lands. He tried to convince hardened pagans and skeptical Romans that the Gospel message was true. The words of the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Saint Paul, and the First Letter of Saint Peter all put dots on the large map of Mark’s life. Many blank spaces, however, still lay in between. Mark is traveling with Paul in Asia Minor, then he’s with Barnabas on a boat over here, then he’s with someone else over there, and then he disappears for a number of years. The scattered evidence ends, however, with clear testimony that Mark joined Peter in Rome. In Peter’s first letter, written from the city of his death to the Church in Asia Minor, Pope Peter sends greetings on Mark’s behalf and refers to him as “my son”(1 Pt 5:13).

    Saint Mark is, of course, best known as the author of a Gospel. Like Saint Luke and Saint Paul, he was not one of the Twelve Apostles and so likely never met Jesus Christ in person. Scholars believe that the Gospel of Saint Mark relates the experiences of Saint Peter, Mark’s mentor. Each Gospel has its own unique sources, emphases, and audiences. Mark writes for non-Jews who would be impressed by Christ’s miracles more than His fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. So in Mark’s Gospel are found certain colorful details that suggest the writer was relating the words of an eye-witness. For example, in Mark 5:41 Jesus enters the home of Jairus, a synagogue leader whose daughter lay dead. Christ says to her, “Talitha koum.” Mark then tells the reader what “Talitha koum” means, presumably because his readers did not speak Aramaic. No other Gospel includes this touching detail of the untranslated words coming from the mouth of Christ that day. Mark also places other Aramaic words on Christ’s lips: “Ephphatha,” “Abba,” and “Hosanna.”

    Peter was there when it happened. Peter heard the Lord speak. And Peter was getting old, in prison, or threatened with death. The Gospel he had repeated verbally so many thousands of times had to be written down to send to others, to preserve its accuracy, or to contradict counterfeit versions. And so the natural progression from oral to written history slowly occurred. The Gospel was spoken before it was a book, and the word has primacy over the book. Saint Mark the Evangelist preserved for all time the Word of God, Jesus Christ, by committing Peter’s words to writing, thus ensuring that the eye-witness accounts of Christ’s life did not just float away in the breeze. Once the Word was enshrined on papyrus, Saint Mark had accomplished his mission forever and always.

    Saint Mark, you were a friend of the Apostles and shared their commitment to spreading the faith. From your home in Heaven, may you strengthen all those who lack the courage to live the Gospel message in their own lives so they can witness it to others.
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    6 min

Sintesi dell'editore

"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.
Copyright Fr. Michael Black
Spiritualità Catechesi ed evangelismo
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