Catholic Saints & Feasts

De: Fr. Michael Black
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  • Resumen

  • "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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Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
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Episodios
  • April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope

    April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope
    Apr 30 2024
    April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope 1504–1572 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith One Shepherd, one flock, one Lord, one Church Saint Pius V is buried in the Sistine Chapel, but not “that” Sistine Chapel. His body lies in a glass coffin in the stunning, baroque Sistine Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. He is not far from other luminaries: the master artist Gianlorenzo Bernini is buried unassumingly in the floor nearby, and Saint Jerome’s remains can be found in a porphyry tomb under the main altar. Saint Pius V was not born a pope, of course. He was from a poor but noble family in Northern Italy and baptized Antonio Ghislieri. He entered the Dominican Order as a teenager and quickly rose to positions of authority and responsibility due to his intelligence, discipline, unassailable purity of life, and defense of the Church. He was elected Pope in 1566. The Council of Trent had just concluded. The Counter-Reformation was so new it did not even have a name. The Muslim Turks were invading Europe from the East. Protestants occupied chunks of Northern Europe and were cracking the unity of the Church in France. In a truncated papacy of six years and four months, Saint Pius V rose to all of these challenges and more, leaving an enduring legacy disproportionate to his brief reign. Our saint marshalled the coalition of Catholic princes and monarchs who defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. A loss would have opened the front door of Europe for Muslims to walk right in and make it their home. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and schism, called her a pretender to the throne, and forbade Catholics to obey her. This led the Queen to seek the blood of English Catholics for treason. As momentous as these events were, and they each cast long and dark historical shadows, it was specifically as a churchman that Saint Pius V did his best work. He personally lived the reforms he expected of the Church as a whole, and he implemented those reforms first in the city of Rome itself, among his own ecclesial court and among his own people. A fire place sitting in front of a fireplaceThe Council of Trent met intermittently between 1545–1563. It was arguably the most successful Council in the history of the Church. Trent introduced numerous reforms that have long since been accepted as normative Church practice: a bishop must live in his diocese, priestly formation must occur in a seminary, the Mass must be said using a uniform language and ritual, a catechism must be published and its teachings learned by all, and religious and priests cannot easily skip from one diocese to another. The Council also clarified technical, and not so technical, questions of Catholic theology in the face of Protestant challenges. The Council’s documents were not put on a shelf to gather dust. Trent’s immense treasure house of doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary reforms were implemented, fully and forcefully, over many succeeding decades. This was due to the perseverance and vision of many Counter-Reformation bishops, priests, nuns, and scholars, beginning with Pope Saint Pius V himself. Pope Saint Pius V is viewed historically as a true icon of orthodoxy (correct doctrine) and also of orthopraxy (correct practice). It is an unfortunate truism of modernity that religious faith, submission to religious truth, or trust in a prior intellectual inheritance (as opposed to personal discovery of “truth”) are limiting forces which stunt personal growth, shield the believer from reality, or block more daring inquiry. A more honest perspective disproves these snide conclusions. Doubt, refusal, or negation are not necessarily open-minded pathways to discovery. It is acceptance, affirmation, and faith that open the mind to the widest horizons. It is “Yes,” not “No,” that leads to more complex and demanding relationships, including with God Himself. The orthodox believer makes no a priori decision to shut his eyes to the fullness of reality, in contrast to the atheist. The believer is open, truly open, to diverse arguments and to diverse experiences. Defenders of orthodoxy, like Saint Pius V, have far more complex understandings of human anthropology and religion than commonly acknowledged. Conservatives are more intuitive anthropologists than liberals. They know how fragile truth can be when under pressure, and they take their job to protect it with utmost seriousness. Saint Pius V was the Pope, or Father, of a universal family. He protected the family’s unity with all his considerable skills and virtues, and left a highly united, disciplined Church as his legacy. Saint Pius V, your dedication to the truth showed itself in your pristine holiness, unity of life, and defense of doctrine. From your home in heaven, assist all theologians and leaders of the Church to be as concerned as you were for ...
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    7 m
  • April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor

    April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor
    Apr 29 2025
    April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin & Doctor
    1347–1380
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Italy, Europe, and fire prevention

    Her frightening intensity prayed the popes back to Rome

    Saint Peter was not martyred in Frankfurt, Germany; Alexandria, Egypt; or Jerusalem. He could have been. God, in His Providence, wanted Saint Peter’s blood to spill on Roman soil, so that His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church would drive its roots into the ground of the then capital of the world. This does not mean that Catholicism is bound to St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome in the same way that Judaism was bound to the temple and Jerusalem. Rome does not have the same theological significance for Catholics as Jerusalem does for Jews, nor is Rome the successor of Jerusalem. Rome is not a holy city like Mecca is for the Muslims. The primacy of the Pope over the universal Church is based on his being the successor of Saint Peter. This is an indisputable historical fact. However, the Petrine ministry is one thing, and where it is exercised is another. The location of the Petrine ministry has never had the same theological weight as the ministry itself. Peter, yes. Always. Rome, yes. So far. Mostly.

    Today’s saint was a Third Order Dominican, a mystic, a contemplative, and an ascetic who used secretaries to compose her letters, because she could not read or write until the last few years of her life. Yet for all of her interior distance from the world and its concerns, Saint Catherine of Siena threw herself at the feet of the Pope, then reigning in Avignon, and begged him to return to Rome. The “Babylonian Captivity” of the papacy in Avignon had gone on for almost seven decades and caused grave scandal. The move to Avignon was not due to an irreversible cultural shift such as a Muslim conquest or a decimating plague. The popes did not abandon Rome because it was a carcass. The transfer of the papal court to Avignon, a city within the Papal States, was the result of politics.

    It is not often that a single person can effect the course of history as much as a battle, a treaty, or a Council does. Incredibly, though, Saint Catherine of Siena’s efforts to return the papacy to Rome were successful. She wrote so powerfully, spoke so passionately, and exuded such intense holiness that the Pope was overwhelmed. She also seemed to have prophetic powers, even knowing what the Pope was thinking or had previously thought. She was frighteningly intense and could not be ignored. Thus, sixty-seven years of seven French Popes ruling far from Rome ended. In 1376, Pope Gregory XI finally abandoned Avignon and followed in the footsteps of so many medievals—he went on pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter. And he stayed. The eternal city was a widow no longer.

    Saint Catherine was born the twenty-fourth of twenty-five children in a pious family imbued with the love of God. She eagerly drank in all that her parents poured out. She went for true “gold” early in life. She practiced extreme penances, eating only bread and raw vegetables and drinking only water for her entire adult life. She conversed with God, experienced ecstasies and visions, and dictated hundreds of letters, books and reflections filled with the most profound spiritual and theological insights. In 1970 she was the first layperson, and first woman, to be made a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of her profound mystical theology. Catherine died at the age of thirty-three, worn out by penances, travel, and the burden of her involvement in so many pressing ecclesial affairs. She was canonized in 1461. Her body lies under the main altar of the Dominican Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Her mummified head is found in her native Siena.

    Saint Catherine of Siena, your love of God was expressed in so many vibrant ways and in a fervent love of His Church. We seek your powerful intercession from your exalted place in heaven to make all Catholics more ardent in their love of the Trinity, of the Passion, and of the Papacy.
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    6 m
  • April 28: Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, Priest

    April 28: Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, Priest
    Apr 26 2024
    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 m
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Fabulous find

I enjoy the episodes… Just wish it was possible to reflect on tomorrow’s episode the evening before…

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