Catholic Saints & Feasts Podcast Por Fr. Michael Black arte de portada

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

De: Fr. Michael Black
Escúchala gratis

Acerca de esta escucha

 "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 Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
Episodios
  • July 15: Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor

    July 15: Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor
    Jul 15 2025
    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.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • July 14: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin (U.S.A.)

    July 14: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin (U.S.A.)
    Jul 14 2025
    July 14: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin (U.S.A.)
    1656–1680
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Canada and orphans

    Tough as a hide, pure as a fawn

    Kateri (Iroquois for “Catherine”) Tekakwitha lived a short life of twenty-four years, the same age attained by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux at her death. Kateri’s father was a pagan Mohawk Chief and her mother a Christian Algonquin. The Mohawk people were the easternmost tribe of the larger Iroquois Confederacy. Her younger brother and both of her parents died in a smallpox epidemic which damaged young Kateri’s vision and scarred her face. She was taken in by an aunt and an uncle, the Chief of the Turtle Clan, and grew up in their longhouse. Over time she mastered the domestic arts typical of the women of her tribe—fashioning animal skins into belts and clothes, weaving, cooking, and other skills. Kateri was shy, perhaps due to her impaired vision and damaged skin. But she listened carefully. Very carefully. Jesuit missionaries visited her relative’s home and taught them about Jesus Christ and the Catholic religion. Kateri was there in the background, sweeping, cooking, and sewing, paying close attention to what the adults were saying around the table, something typical of adolescents in every culture.

    More than being converted, Kateri converted herself. After dramatically refusing an arranged marriage, eighteen-year-old Kateri approached a Black Robe, Jesuit Father Jacques de Lamberville, and requested baptism. He guided her through the Catechism. After a few months she told him, “I have deliberated enough. For a long time my decision on what I will do has been made. I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen Him for husband and He alone will take me for wife.” She was baptized in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena on Easter Sunday, 1676.

    Soon after her baptism, encountering some resistance from her fellow Mohawks, Kateri left upstate New York and crossed into present day Canada to live close, but not too close, to the French and their religion, in a village called Kahnawake. This was a traditional Iroquois settlement—it survived on fishing, hunting, and farming—with a twist. Its inhabitants were Iroquois Catholics. They did not allow polygamy, premarital sex, divorce, or abuse of alcohol. The Indians did not want to become French but to merge their traditional way of life with their newfound religion. The Jesuits served these Catholic Iroquois from the nearby mission of Sault Saint-Louis. A Jesuit priest’s letter from 1682 vividly describes life in Kahnawake and specifically mentions, but leaves unnamed, a young female Mohawk convert of extraordinary piety. It was Kateri.

    Kateri and a group of like-minded Mohawk women bonded in a warrior sisterhood that practiced traditional Catholic piety with an indian emphasis on voluntary suffering. These women were as tough as bark. They wanted to emulate the sufferings of Christ, to atone for sins, and to mortify themselves in the tradition of so many great European saints. They wore hair shirts and put on iron belts with small metal spikes. They stood in ice water while praying the rosary. Bearing pain, publicly, was part of their culture and native religion. Catholicism’s traditional theology of atonement and mortification melded perfectly with aspects of the Iroquois’ native religion.

    Kateri was devoted to the Holy Eucharist and Mary. She was reserved and contemplative by nature. She delighted in nature’s beauty—in trees, birds, and wildflowers—and gathered these last to decorate the altar for Mass. Kateri remained a virgin and is called the Lily of the Mohawks for her purity. Her delicate health failed her early and she died with the words “Jesus, Mary, I love you” on her lips. Minutes after her death the people at her bedside noticed something. The scars that incised her cheeks were slowly repaired, and her skin became pure, smooth and beautiful. The faithful maiden of the woods had earned her reward.

    Saint Kateri, we ask your humble and pious intercession to inspire all young people, especially girls, to attain the virtues which came so easily to you—to be uncomplaining, physically tough, contemplative in spirit, chaste in body, pious, and charitable to all.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • July 13: Saint Henry

    July 13: Saint Henry
    Jul 12 2025
    July 13: Saint Henry
    973–1024
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the childless and Benedictine Oblates

    A king walks the tight path of virtue

    Passing through the heroic-sized doors of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the pilgrim walks into a vast interior space, his gaze slowly rising to silently absorb the sublime vaults, criss-crossed by ethereal beams of sunlight. Yet as the pilgrim meanders, head tilted upward, eyes drinking in the beauty, he is actually walking on art too. Near the end of St. Peter’s central nave, embedded in the elaborate marble floor, is a large, deep red disk. It is porphyry, a rich purple granite prized by the emperors and nobles of Rome. This disk, harvested from an Egyptian quarry, was originally placed in a Roman home or public building. But the Emperor Constantine pilfered it. He had the disk transplanted to near the main altar of the fourth-century basilica he built in honor of Saint Peter, and the disk has been preserved, in a different location, in the present sixteenth-century basilica. And on this lush granite disk numerous kings and emperors, including Charlemagne and today’s saint, Henry II, humbly knelt to be crowned by popes. Saint Henry made the long journey from Germany to Rome to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Benedict XIII on February 14, 1014. Not just common men but kings too went on pilgrimage to Rome to seek Saint Peter’s blessing.

    The life of Saint Henry shows that even a king has a King. Even the powerful are under Someone who is more powerful. Good kings know that; bad ones don’t. King Henry lived a life in many ways typical of the royals of his era. He was involved in almost continuous political intrigues and military battles to protect and expand his kingdom. There were fights to attain power and fights to retain power. There were long military campaigns in Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Italy. There was court intrigue, a strategic but childless marriage, the envy of nobles, and all the other ingredients inherent to the struggle for power. But Henry is the only Holy Roman Emperor ever to be canonized a saint for a reason. He had deep faith. He loved the Church. He lived the virtues to a heroic degree. He received the Sacraments. He was devoted to Saint Mary.

    Saint Henry was outstanding in utilizing his wealth and position to advance the apostolates of the institutional Church. He formed a new diocese, endowed others, founded monasteries, donated land, and had close relationships with powerful bishops. Under his care, the church became an arm of the imperial government, with bishops of large dioceses even becoming princes wielding both civil and ecclesiastical power. This blurring of the lines between Church and State in Germany became problematic in later centuries when imperial officials tried to wrest church governance from the pope’s hands and flexed their secular muscle in crushing heretics. But under Saint Henry the mingling of church and state was mutually beneficial. It created a united love of fatherland and religion, of culture and liturgy, of patriotism and faith, which lasted until the early sixteenth century throughout all of Germany and until the Napoleonic era in large swaths of it.

    The rich and powerful are subject to temptations just like the common man, yet their wealth and influence can carve new pathways of sin not open to the common man. So when a king, queen, president, prime minister, multi-millionaire, or movie star walks the straight road and enters through the narrow gate, there is a bit more to celebrate. The sinful road not taken, the evil path that could have been trod but was not, is a cause for rejoicing for every man, but especially for the powerful man. Every soul can indulge in some legitimate Christian pride for what it has not done, for having conquered temptation and sin by strategically avoiding it. Many paths opened up before King Henry during his life. He walked the tight path of virtue and entered heaven by the narrow gate and thus exalted his royal status to one even higher, that of a saint.

    Saint Henry, you were an exceptional benefactor of the Church, living sacrificial generosity to advance her apostolates. May your example help us all to be generous, in every way, when our religion demands a generous response.
    Más Menos
    6 m
Todas las estrellas
Más relevante  
I enjoy the episodes… Just wish it was possible to reflect on tomorrow’s episode the evening before…

Fabulous find

Se ha producido un error. Vuelve a intentarlo dentro de unos minutos.