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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

De: Fr. Michael Black
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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.Copyright Fr. Michael Black Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
Episodios
  • September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels

    September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels
    Sep 29 2025
    September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels
    Feast; Liturgical Color: White
    Patrons of soldiers (Michael); mailmen (Gabriel); travelers and the blind (Raphael)

    The air between God and man is thick with mystical beings

    It is a principle of Catholic theology that salvation is mediated, that individual man does not go to God alone, and that God does not come to man alone. This means that there are layers of words, symbols, art, priests, nuns, catechists, music, books, churches, shrines, and endless other things and places and people that channel God to us. Even using the name “God” or “Father” or “Jesus Christ” presupposes the mediation of language. So although someone may say they want to “cut out the middleman”of the Church and go directly to God, they can’t. At some point in their youth, they absorbed who God was from others, so even the most basic, apparently innate knowledge we have of God is mediated, if only by nature itself. Today’s feast is about the created spiritual beings known as angels who fill the space between God and man, communicating His message, protecting man from harm, and battling against the armies of Satan. The Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael transmit some of God’s most important messages.

    Michael leads the war cry in a mysterious, metaphysical battle against the Devil and his minions in the Book of Daniel. "There is no one with me who contends against these princes except Michael, your prince” (Dn 10:21), and "At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise” (Dn 12:1). Michael means “Who is like God.”

    Gabriel is an essential figure in the events surrounding the Incarnation. We first meet him in the Jerusalem Temple, announcing the birth of Saint John the Baptist to his father, Zachary: "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news" (Lk 1:19). He later conveys the message of all messages to the Virgin Mary, eliciting her “Yes” to God’s sublime invitation. Gabriel means “the strength of God.”

    Raphael appears in the disguise of a man in the Book of Tobit, guiding the young Tobiah along his journey. "…God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord" (Tb 12:14–15). Raphael means “God heals.”

    The Old Testament description of the angels worshipping before the throne of God is one of fierce power: “...each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Is 6:2–3)

    These beings are far from the pudgy, pillow-soft, fat-cheeked baby angels so often depicted in art. Today’s feast is for the mighty six-winged angels, the deadly serious ministers of God’s messages. These Archangels engage in consequential spiritual battle, know that God and His Word are not frivolous, and carry out their missions as emissaries of the Most-High. We invoke them now just as Saint Patrick did in the fifth century: “I arise today through the strength of the love of cherubim, in the obedience of angels, in the service of archangels, in the hope of resurrection to meet with reward.” Amen.

    Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, we invoke your powerful intercession before the throne of God in heaven. By your spiritual assistance, protect us from harm, heal us of our infirmities, and convey to us God’s will for our lives.
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    5 m
  • September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr

    September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr
    Sep 28 2025
    September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr
    c. 907–929
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

    A young duke is killed by a jealous brother and becomes a Czech icon

    When the famous die young, their unwrinkled faces, dark hair, and youthful vigor are frozen in time, forever vital, forever attractive, forever fresh. Time is not given its chance to run over their skin like water over rocks. No shaping, cracking, molding or shifting of the surfaces. Before the modern cult of celebrity held up athletes, movie stars, and musicians for supreme adulation, most cultures revered their royalty, soldiers, or holy men and women. Kings and princes, bishops and saints, chiefs and warriors served the common good by governing, praying for, and protecting the people. No class of entertainers distracted a populace from the leadership that mattered. Today’s saint, Wenceslaus, Duke of Bohemia, was felled in a fateful encounter with his brother Boleslaus the Cruel. Wenceslaus was already famous when he died young and dramatically. All the ingredients needed to guarantee a lasting legacy were present, and his memory endured. He was recognized by the Church as a martyr, posthumously given the title of King, and quickly became an iconic figure to the Bohemian people such that his Feast Day, September 28, is a national holiday in the modern Czech Republic.

    Wenceslaus lived as Christianity was still dawning in Central Europe. German missionaries had been laboring among pagan tribes for a few generations with success, but the visible layer of a Christian culture rested on a rock-hard pagan substrata. Central and Eastern Europe were passing through the normal stages of evangelization, as an age-old culture with all of its customs and traditions was slowly pushed back by a greater force moving across the landscape like a glacier. Catholicism had moved into Bohemia by the 900s, but the religious environment was not yet monolithic. As our martyr’s death attests, religious and political divisions still ran through the culture.

    The grandfather of Wenceslaus may have been converted by no less than Saints Cyril and Methodius themselves. His grandmother Ludmila was an ardent Catholic and oversaw Wenceslaus’ excellent education in which he learned to read and write both Slavonic and Latin. Wenceslaus’ mother, Drahomira, clung to the old ways, though she was nominally a Christian. When Drahomira thought Ludmila was encouraging Wenceslaus to assume power as a teen, Drahomira had her mother-in-law strangled to death with her own veil. Once he did take power, Wenceslaus banished his own mother, solidified control of Western Bohemia, and became an honorable ruler. He followed the law, favored education, and promoted the form of Christianity practiced in Germany, not in the East. This was a fateful decision. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are Slavic peoples of the Latin Rite, unlike their Byzantine Rite Slavic cousins to the east of the Orthodox curtain. Wenceslaus was pro-Western theologically and liturgically, while retaining his Slavic identity and independence in other essential matters. This double allegiance endures and lends Slavic Catholicism its unique features.

    But for all of Wenceslaus’ brief successes, in the shadows lurked Boleslaus, creating a power center in Eastern Bohemia. When Wenceslaus’ wife gave birth to a son, Boleslaus knew he would not succeed his brother, so he plotted his murder. Boleslaus and his henchman struck down the young Duke Wenceslaus in 929 on the Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian and on the Vigil of Saint Michael the Archangel. “Brother, may God forgive you” were our martyr’s last words.

    Saint Wenceslaus, you were the model of a just ruler in your brief reign. You saw it as your sacred duty to promote the true God and His religion. Help all rulers and leaders to see morality, liturgy, prayer, and catechesis as the bedrock of a just society.
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    6 m
  • September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs

    September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs
    Sep 28 2025
    September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs
    c. 1600–1637
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saints of the Philippines

    A married father remains unbroken under the cruelest torture

    Many lesser-known faces in the deep audience of saints bask in the soft glow of sanctity emanating from the more prominent “marquee” saints standing on stage. In the Church’s calendar of saints, these more obscure observers of the principle action are often classified as “companions.” They can encompass dozens, or even hundreds, of men and women on a given feast day. Today’s saint, Lawrence Ruiz, is commemorated along with fifteen just such “companions,” in this case mostly missionary priests. Interestingly, Saint Lawrence is not the companion to the priests he died with. The priests, instead, are listed as Lawrence’s companions. The married Lawrence is on stage while his companion priest martyrs are in the audience.

    Saint Lawrence was born of a Chinese father and a Philipino mother, both of whom were Catholic. Growing up in the Philippines, he served as an altar boy, was educated by Dominican priests, and belonged to a fraternal society dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Because he was an educated and careful writer in a largely illiterate culture, he became a clerk and a calligrapher. He married a woman named Rosario, and they had three children. He and his family lived an ordinary, secure, peaceful life of faith. As 1636 dawned, there was no reason to guess that Lawrence would continue living anything other than a quiet life focused on home and work. But then everything suddenly and drastically changed.

    Lawrence was implicated, falsely, in the death of a Spaniard. It was a charge so serious he had to flee the Archipelago. Through his friendships with priests, he was invited to board a ship with three Dominicans, a Japanese priest, and a layman. In June of 1636, the small vessel sailed for Japan, a hornet’s nest buzzing with anti-Catholic persecution. The ship intended to land in a peaceful region devoid of persecution, but instead errantly docked in Okinawa at the worst possible moment. Feudal Japanese Shoguns were out for the blood of Catholics, and the missionaries walked right into their tight grip. They spent over a year in prison before, along with still more Catholic prisoners, they were marched to Nagasaki for the inevitable slur against their deepest beliefs.

    The Japanese had devised torture techniques carefully calibrated to elicit maximum agony and the renunciation of the faith. On September 27, 1637, the prisoners had huge amounts of water poured down their throats, were covered with boards, and then stepped on by guards, forcing the water to spurt out of their mouths, noses, and ears. Then they were tightly bound, with one hand free in case they wanted to signal renunciation of the faith, and hung upside down over a pit. Heavy stones were tied to their bodies to draw blood more quickly down into their torsos and skulls. As the red liquid painfully pressurized their cranial sacs, the torturers strategically cut the victim’s heads to release the collected blood. This prevented the loss of consciousness and prolonged the throbbing pain. Amidst this anguish, no one broke. No one renounced their faith. No one cried out for relief. Mental images of mother and father, of smiling wife and children, of home, the fireplace, and warm embraces, did not prevail. It was God or death. Lawrence’s reputed last words were “I am a Catholic and wholeheartedly accept death for God; Had I a thousand lives, all these I would offer to God.”

    As their chest cavities filled with blood, the victims hearts could pump no more. Lawrence suffocated to death within a day or two. Some of the priests did not succumb as quickly and were beheaded. Lawrence’s fifteen companions were Japanese, Spanish, French, and Italian priests; a few consecrated women; and laymen, almost all Dominicans. Their bodies were burned and their ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Lawrence was beatified in 1981 in Manila, the first beatification performed outside the city of Rome. After a Philippina baby with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, was cured through his intercession, Saint Lawrence was canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1987. He is the protomartyr of the only Catholic nation in Asia, the Philippines.

    Saint Lawrence, you were a married father yet forsook return to your earthly home to win a more glorious home in heaven. Help all fathers to be generous in quiet and in tumultuous times, to persevere in small things so they are able to display fortitude in great things.
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    6 m
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I enjoy the episodes… Just wish it was possible to reflect on tomorrow’s episode the evening before…

Fabulous find

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Impressive storytelling. Humanizes the exceptional faithful people who have lived among us. These truly are models for all of us.

Enlightening

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