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[edit] November 1
The festival of All Saints, also sometimes known as All Saints' Day, All Hallows or Hallowmas ("hallows" meaning "saints," and "mas" meaning "Mass"), is a feast celebrated November 1 or the first Sunday after Pentecost in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. Halloween is the day preceding it, and is so named because it is "The Eve of All Hallows". All Saints is also a Christian formula invoking all the faithful saints and martyrs, known or unknown.
In the Christian West, All Saints' Day honours those who have attained the beatific vision in heaven, while the next day, All Souls' Day, commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven.
In the early Church, Christians would celebrate the anniversary of a martyr's death for Christ (known as the saint's "birth day") by serving an All-Night Vigil, and then celebrating the Eucharist over their tomb or place of martyrdom. In the fourth century, neighbouring dioceses began to transfer [hey dude how do u like your slalad hey[relics]], and to celebrate the feast days of specific martyrs in common. Frequently, a number of Christians would suffer martyrdom on the same day, which naturally led to a joint commemoration. In the persecution of Diocletian the number of martyrs became so great that a separate day could not be assigned to each. But the Church, feeling that every martyr should be venerated, appointed a common day for all.
A commemoration of "All Martyrs" began to be celebrated as early as the year 270, although no specific month or date are mentioned in existing records. The first trace of a general celebration on a specific day is attested in Antioch on the Sunday after Pentecost. As early as 411, there is found among the Chaldean Christians a general commemoration of all Confessors (Commemoratio Confessorum), celebrated on the Friday after Easter.
Among the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, All Saints Sunday (Greek: Áγιων Πάντων, Agiōn Pantōn), follows the ancient tradition of commemorating all saints collectively on the first Sunday after Pentecost. This Sunday marks the close of the Paschal season. To the normal Sunday services are added special scriptural readings and hymns to all the saints (known and unknown) from the Pentecostarion.
The Western Christian holiday of All Saints Day (called Festum omnium sanctorum in Latin) falls on November 1, followed by All Souls' Day on November 2, and is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Latin Rite Roman Catholic Church, with a vigil. This feast used to have an octave. The octave was abrogated in 1955 along with other octaves.
The point of the festival of All Saints as celebrated in the West dates to May 13 in 609 or 610 (the day being more important than the year), when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs; the feast of the dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since. The chosen day, May 13, was a pagan observation of great antiquity, the culmination of three days of the Feast of the Lemures, in which were propitiated the malevolent and restless spirits of all the dead. The medieval liturgiologists based the idea that this Lemuria festival was the origin of that of All Saints on identical dates and on the similar theme of all the dead. Instead, the feast of All Saints is now traced to the foundation by Pope Gregory III (731-741) of an oratory in St Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world", with the day moved to November 1.
[edit] November 2
Saint Victorinus of Poetovio (died 303 or 304) was a Catholic ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270, and who was martyred during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. A Bishop of Poetovio (modern Ptuj in Slovenia; German: Pettau) in Pannonia, Victorinus is also known as Victorinus Petavionensis, Poetovionensis or Victorinus of Ptuj or in some old literature Victorinus of Pettau.
Born probably in Greece on the confines of the Eastern and Western Empires or in Poetovio with rather mixed population, due to its military character, Victorinus spoke Greek better than Latin, which explains why, in St. Jerome's opinion, his works written in the latter tongue were more remarkable for their matter than for their style. He was the first theologian to use Latin for his exegesis. Like many of his contemporaries he shared the errors of the Millenarians, and for this reason his works were ranked with the apocrypha in the decree, later attributed to Pope Gelasius I.
According to St. Jerome, who gives him an honourable place in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, Victorinus composed commentaries on various books of Holy Scripture, such as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of Canticles, St. Matthew, and the Apocalypse, besides treatises against the heresies of his time.
All his works have disappeared save his Commentary on Apocalypse and short tract On the construction of the world (De fabrica mundi). It is agreed among scholars, that these texts are really a remnant of his works. The Migne edition, in Patrologia Latina V (1844) 301-44, is considered no more reliable, since the discovery of an important codex by Haussleiter (edition in CSEL 49, 1916), the reference however is to be taken rather from the new critical edition by M. Dulaey in SCh 421 (1997). It is incorrect to regard him as the author of two poems, "De Jesu Christo" and "De Pascha", which are included in the collection of Fabricius.
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[edit] November 3
Saint Martín de Porres (December 9, 1579--November 3, 1639) was a Dominican friar who was beatified in 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized on May 6, 1962 by Pope John XXIII.
Martin was born in Lima, Peru, as the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a young freed slave woman, possibly Afro-Peruvian, born in Panama. He grew up in poverty, and at the age of 11 was taken in by the Dominicans as a servant boy. As his duties grew he was promoted to almoner, and then put in charge of the infirmary. His piety and miraculous cures led his superiors to drop the racial limits on admission to the Order and he was made a full Dominican brother. It is said that when his priory was in debt, he implored them: "I am only a poor mulatto, sell me. I am the property of the order, sell me please!" Martin was deeply attached to the Blessed Sacrament, and according to a biography of him, he was praying in front of it one night when the step of the altar he was kneeling on caught fire. However, the story goes, throughout all the confusion and chaos that followed, he remained where he was, unaware of what was happening around him.
His work on behalf of the poor was tireless: he established an orphanage and a children's hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and forswearing meat. His devotion to prayer was notable even by the pious standards of the age. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and an ability to communicate with animals.
One day an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Saint Martin, seeing the Divine Mendicant in him, took him to his own bed, paying no heed to the fact that he was not perfectly neat and clean. One of his brethren, considering he had gone too far in his charity, reproved him. Saint Martin replied: “Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness. Reflect that with a little soap I can easily clean my bed covers, but even with a torrent of tears I would never wash from my soul the stain that my harshness toward the unfortunate would create.”
Martin was a friend of St. John de Massias and Saint Rose of Lima. He died in Lima in 1639. As his body was displayed to allow the people of the city to pay their respects, each person snipped a tiny piece of his habit to keep as a relic.
Attributes: a dog, a cat, a bird, and a mouse eating together from a same dish; broom, crucifix, rosary
Patronage: diocese of Biloxi, Mississippi, black people, hair stylists, innkeepers, mixed-race people, Peru, poor people, public education, public health, public schools, race relations, social justice, state schools, television
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[edit] November 4
Saint Charles Borromeo (Italian: Carlo Borromeo; Latinized as Carolus Borromeus) (October 2, 1538 – November 3, 1584) was an Italian saint and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
The son of Giberto II Borromeo, conte (count) of Arona, and Margherita de' Medici, Carlo Borromeo was born at the castle of Arona on Lago Maggiore.
When he was about twelve years old, Carlo's uncle, Giulio Cesare Borromeo, resigned to him an abbacy (the office and dignity of an abbot), the revenue of which he applied wholly in charity to the poor. He studied the civil and canon law at Pavia. In 1554 his father died, and although he had an elder brother, Count Federigo, he was requested by the family to take the management of their domestic affairs. After a time, he resumed his studies, and in 1559 he took his doctoral degree. In 1560 his uncle, Cardinal Angelo de' Medici, was raised to the pontificate as Pius IV.
Borromeo was made protonotary apostolic, entrusted with both the public and the privy seal of the ecclesiastical state, and created cardinal with the administration of Romagna and the March of Ancona, and the supervision of the Franciscans, the Carmelites and the Knights of Malta.
He was thus at the age of twenty-two, practically the leading statesman of the papal court. Soon afterwards he was raised to the archbishopric of Milan. In compliance with the pope's desire, he lived in great splendor; yet his own temperance and humility were never brought into question. He established an academy of learned persons and published their memoirs as the Noctes Vaticanae.
Owing to his influence over Pius IV, he facilitated the final deliberations of the Council of Trent, and he took a large share in the drawing up of the Tridentine Catechism (Catechismus Romanus).
On the death of Pius IV (1566), the skill and diligence of Borromeo contributed materially to suppressing the cabals of the conclave. Subsequently he devoted himself wholly to the reformation of his diocese, which had fallen into an unsatisfactory condition owing to the prolonged absences of its previous archbishops. In conformity with the decrees of the Council of Trent, he cleared the cathedral of its ornate tombs, rich ornaments, banners, arms, sparing not even the monuments of his own relatives. He divided the nave of the church into two compartments for the separation of the sexes. He extended his reforms to the collegiate churches (even to the fraternities of penitents and particularly that of St. John the Baptist), and to the monasteries.
Borromeo established seminaries, colleges and communities for the education of candidates for holy orders. The most remarkable, perhaps, of his foundations was the fraternity of the Oblates, a society whose members were pledged to give aid to the church when and where it might be required.
He further paved the way for the Golden (or Borromean) League formed in 1586 by the Swiss Catholic cantons of Switzerland to expel heretics if necessary by armed force.
He was seized with an intermittent fever, and died at Milan on 4 November 1584. He was canonized in 1610, and his feast is celebrated on 4 November.
Attributes: cord, red cardinal robes
Patronage: against ulcers; apple orchards; bishops; catechists; catechumens; colic; intestinal disorders; Lombardy, Italy; Monterey California; seminarians; spiritual directors; spiritual leaders; starch makers; stomach diseases; São Carlos city in Brazil
Prayer: O Saintly reformer, animator of spiritual renewal of priests and religious, you organized true seminaries and wrote a standard catechism. Inspire all religious teachers and authors of catechetical books. Move them to love and transmit only that which can form true followers of the Teacher who was divine. Amen.
[edit] November 5
Saint Elizabeth, also spelled Elisabeth or Elisheva (Hebrew אֱלִישֶׁבַע / אֱלִישָׁבַע "My God is an oath",) was the mother of St. John the Baptist and the wife of St. Zachary/Zacharias, according to the New Testament and the Quran.
In Luke 1:36 Elizabeth is described as a relative of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The mother of Mary is also known from another source, the infancy Gospel of James.
According to the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron the priest (Luke 1:5). She and her husband Zechariah were "righteous before God, living blamelessly" (1:6), but childless. Zechariah was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told him his wife would have a son who "will be great in the sight of the Lord" (1:15).
The pregnant Elizabeth was visited by her relative (1:36), who was pregnant with Jesus:
- And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb.
- And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and she cried out with a loud voice:
- "Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." (1:41-42)
In the Bible, Saint Zechariah (Zachary in the Douay-Rheims Bible, or Zacharias in the King James Version of the Bible), was the father of John the Baptist.
According to the Gospel of Luke, Zechariah was a priest of the line of Abijah, during the reign of King Herod the Great, and husband of Elizabeth, a woman from the priestly family of Aaron. The parentage of John the Baptist is not recorded in the other Gospels. The evangelist states that both the parents were righteous before God, since they were blameless in observing the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. When the events related in Luke commenced, their marriage was still childless, because Elizabeth was barren and, like her husband, was advanced in years (Luke 1:5-7).
The duties at the temple in Jerusalem alternated between each of the families that had descended from those appointed by King David (1 Chronicles 23:1-19). The offering of incense was one of the most solemn parts of the daily worship, and owing to the large number of eligible priests, no priest could hope to perform the task more than once during his lifetime. Luke states that during the week when it was the duty of his family to serve at the temple in Jerusalem, the lot for performing the incense offering had fallen to Zechariah.
The evangelist states that while Zechariah ministered at the golden altar of incense, an angel of God announced to him that his wife would give birth to a son, whom he was to name John, and that this son would be the forerunner of the long-expected Messiah (Luke 1:12-17). On his return home Elizabeth duly conceived. .
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[edit] November 6
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Leonard of Noblac or of Limoges (also known as Lienard, Linhart, Leonhard, Léonard, Leonardo) (died traditionally in 559), according to the romance that accrued to his name recorded in an 11th-century vita, was a Frankish noble in the court of Clovis I. He was converted to Christianity along with the king, at Christmas 496, by Saint Remigius, Bishop of Reims. Leonard asked Clovis to grant him personally the right to liberate prisoners whom he would find worthy of it, at any time.
Leonard secured the release of a number of prisoners, for whom he has become a patron saint, then, declining the offer of a bishopric— a prerogative of Merovingian nobles— he entered the monastery at Micy near Orléans, under the direction of Saint Mesmin and Saint Lie. Then, according to his legend, Leonard became a hermit in the forest of Limousin, where he gathered a number of followers. Through his prayers the queen of the Franks was safely delivered of a male child, and in recompense Leonard was given royal lands at Noblac, 21 km from Limoges, where he founded the abbey of Noblac, around which a village grew, named in his honor Saint-Léonard de Noblac.
According to legend, prisoners who invoked him from their cells saw their chains break before their eyes. Many came to him afterwards, bringing their heavy chains and irons to offer them in homage. A considerable number remained with him, and he often gave them part of his vast forest to clear and make ready for the labors of the fields, that they might have the means to live an honest life.
In the eleventh century, his cult rapidly spread, at first through Frankish lands, following the release of Bohemond I of Antioch in 1103 from a Danishmend prison, where the diplomacy was inspired by Leonard of Noblac. Bohemond, a charismatic leader of the First Crusade, subsequently visited the Abbey of Noblac, where he made an offering in gratitude for his release. Bohemund's example inspired many similar gifts, enabling the Romanesque church and its visible landmark belltower to be constructed. About the same time Noblac was becoming a stage in the pilgrimage route that led towards Santiago de Compostela. Leonard's cult spread through all of Western Europe: in England with its cultural connections to the region, no fewer than 177 churches are dedicated to him. Leonard was venerated in the Low Countries, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, particularly in Bavaria, and also in Bohemia, Poland, and elsewhere. Pilgrims and patronage flowed to Saint-Leonard de Noblac. Leonard or Lienard became one of the most venerated saints of the late Middle Ages. His intercession was credited with miracles for the release of prisoners, women in labor and the diseases of cattle.
Attributes: depicted as an abbot holding chains, fetters or locks, or manacles. Patronage: political prisoners, imprisoned people, prisoners of war, and captives, women in labor, as well as horses
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[edit] November 7
Vicente Liem de la Paz (1732 - November 7, 1773) was a Tonkinese (present day Vietnam) Dominican friar venerated as a saint and martyr by the Roman Catholic Church. He was born at Tra-lu, Tonkin in 1732 to Antonio and Monica Daeon de la Cruz, members of the Tonkinese nobility. When he fell gravely ill several days after his birth, he was baptized by Fr. Chien de Santo Tomas, taking the name of Vicente Liem de la Paz. Since Tra-lu was one of those Tonkinese villages where Dominican friars preached the Catholic faith, Liem grew up to be a Christian. He was later brought by his parents to a missionary center where he learned catechism.
In 1738, King Philip V of Spain opened the Colegio de San Juan de Letran and the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines to Chinese and Tonkinese students, since China and Tonkin did not have Christian educational institutions. The Dominican fathers decided to let Liem with four other Tonkinese (Jose de Santo Tomas, Juan de Sto. Domingo, Pedro Martir and Pedro de San Jacinto) study in the Philippines.
Vicente took the trivium and the quadrivium in Letran, now the equivalent of elementary and secondary education. He finished a degree of lector of humanities at Letran. He would pursue his collegiate education at the University of Santo Tomas while residing at Letran. In September 1753, after completing his studies at UST, he entered the Dominican order, along with his four Tonkinese companions. A year later, they made their solemn professions. On January 28, 1755, he received the tonsure and minor orders at the Church of Sta. Ana. In 1758, de la Paz was ordained priest under the Dominican order. On September of that year, he passed the examinations to hear confessions. On October 3, he started his journey back to Tonkin. He arrived on January 20, 1759.
He spent time at Tonkin on evangelizing the Tonkinese people. However the Tonkinese authorities did not agree with this. On October 2, 1773, he and his two assistants were arrested at Co Dou. He and his assistants were beaten up, after which they traveled on foot to the village of Dou Hoi. There he met another Dominican priest, Jacinto Castaneda. They were presented to the Vice Governor and to the Royal Minister. They were thrown to a cage for a night. The arrival of a High Minister prompted their transfer to Kien Nam, where the King held his court. While under detention, they still managed to preach Catholicism to the people. Later they were taken to Tan Cau, then to the house of Canh Thuy. Finally they were brought to the King where they were tried. Their trial led for the King to be angry and they were thrown to jail. After several days, the King brought down the guilty verdict with the penalty of beheading. The execution occurred on November 7, 1773. After the execution, the Christians who were present at the site carried away the bodies of de la Paz and Castaneda, where they were laid to rest at the town of Tru Linh. Several more Christian missionaries were put to death by the Tonkinese authorities.
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[edit] November 8
Saint Willehad of Bremen (also known as Willehadus or Willihad; c. 735 - November 9 ) was a Christian missionary and the Bishop of Bremen from 787.
Willehad was born in Northumbria and probably received his education at York.
A friend of Alcuin he was ordained after his education and, about the year 766, he went to Frisia, preaching at Dokkum and in Overijssel, to continue the missionary work of St. Boniface who had been martyred by the Frisians in 754. From 780 he preached in the region of the lower Weser River on commission from Charlemagne. He barely escaped with his life when the Frisians wanted to kill him as well and he returned to the area around Utrecht. Once again he and his fellow missionaries barely escaped with their lives when the local pagans wanted to kill them for destroying some temples. Finally, in 780, Charlemagne sent him to evangelize the Saxons. He preached to them for two years but, in 782, the Saxons under Widukind, rebelled against Charlemagne and Willehad was forced to flee to Frisia. He took the opportunity to travel to Rome where he reported to Pope Adrian I on his work. On his return trip he retired to the monastery of Echternach, in present day Luxembourg. He spent two years there reassembling his missionary team. After Charlemagne had once more ruthlessly subjected the Saxons and had Widukind baptized, Willehad returned to his Saxon mission between the Weser and the Elbe rivers. In 787, he was made the bishop of the Saxons with his see at the newly founded city of Bremen. He built numerous churches in his diocese, including the cathedral in Bremen.
He is buried in the city's cathedral, which he consecrated shortly before his death on November 8, 789.
Attributes: bishop overturning idols
Patronage: Saxony
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[edit] November 9
Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (July 18, 1880–November 9, 1906) was a French nun and religious writer. She was born Élisabeth Catez in the military camp of Avor in the district of Farges-en-Septaine (Cher). Her parents were Captain Joseph and Marie (Rolland) Catez. Elizabeth was the first born of her family. She had a terrible temper that could never be controlled very well. When Elizabeth was seven years old, her father died unexpectedly.
After receiving her First Holy Communion in 1891 Elizabeth became more controlled and had a deeper understanding of God and the world. She also gained a profound understanding of the Trinity. Elizabeth visited the sick and sang in the church choir. She taught religion to children who worked in factories. Soon after, Elizabeth began to be interested in entering the Discalced Carmelites, although her mother strongly suggested her not to. Men had asked for Elizabeth's hand in marriage, but she declined, because her dream was to enter the Carmelite convent that was located 200 meters from her home in Dijon.
Elizabeth entered the Dijon Carmel on August 2, 1901. She said, "I find Him everywhere while doing the wash as well as while praying." Her time in the Carmel had some high times as well as some very low times. Today, we know about all that she felt and experienced in her writings. She wrote down when she felt she needed a richer understanding of God’s great love.
At the end of her life, she began to call herself Laudem Gloriæ. Elizabeth had wanted to be called that in Heaven because it means "praise of glory". She said, "I think that in Heaven my mission will be to draw souls by helping them to go out of themselves in order to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence within which will allow God to communicate Himself to them and to transform them into Himself."
Elizabeth died at the age of 26 from Addison's disease, which in the early 20th century had no cure. Even though her death was unbearable, Elizabeth still accepted that God gave her that gift and was grateful. Her last words were, "I am going to Light, to Love, to Life!"
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Patronage: sick people, loss of parents
Prayer: O my God, Trinity whom I adore, let me entirely forget myself that I may abide in you, still and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity; let nothing disturb my peace nor separate me from you, O my unchanging God, but that each moment may take me further into the depths of your mystery ! Pacify my soul! Make it your heaven, your beloved home and place of your repose; let me never leave you there alone, but may I be ever attentive, ever alert in my faith, ever adoring and all given up to your creative action. O my beloved Christ, crucified for love, would that I might be for you a spouse of your heart! I would anoint you with glory, I would love you - even unto death! Yet I sense my frailty and ask you to adorn me with yourself; identify my soul with all the movements of your soul, submerge me, overwhelm. me, substitute yourself in me that my life may become but a reflection of your life. Come into me as Adorer, Redeemer and Saviour. O Eternal Word, Word of my God, would that I might spend my life listening to you, would that I might be fully receptive to learn all from you; in all darkness, all loneliness, all weakness, may I ever keep my eyes fixed on you and abide under your great light; O my Beloved Star, fascinate me so that I may never be able to leave your radiance. O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, descend into my soul and make all in me as an incarnation of the Word, that I may be to him a super-added humanity wherein he renews his mystery; and you O Father, bestow yourself and bend down to your little creature, seeing in her only your beloved Son in whom you are well pleased. O my `Three', my All, my Beatitude, infinite Solitude, Immensity in whom I lose myself, I give myself to you as a prey to be consumed; enclose yourself in me that I may be absorbed in you so as to contemplate in your light the abyss of your Splendour !
[edit] November 10
Saint Andrew (Andrea) Avellino (1521 - November 10, 1608) is an Italian saint. Born at Castronuovo, a small town in Sicily, his baptismal name was Lancelotto, which out of love for the cross he changed into Andrew when he entered the Order of Theatines.
From his early youth he was a great lover of chastity. After receiving his elementary training in the school of Castronuovo, he was sent to Venice to pursue a course in the humanities and in philosophy. Being a handsome youth, his chastity was often exposed to danger from female admirers, and to escape their importunities he took ecclesiastical tonsure.
Hereupon he went to Naples to study canon and civil law, obtained the degree of Doctor of Laws and was ordained priest at the age of twenty-six. For some time he held the office of lawyer at the ecclesiastical court of Naples. One day, while pleading the cause of a friend, a lie escaped his lips in the heat of argument. When, soon afterwards, his eyes fell upon the passage in the Bible, "The mouth that belieth killeth the soul" (Wis. i, 11), he felt deep remorse, renounced his profession as ecclesiastical lawyer and for some time devoted himself entirely to holy meditation and other spiritual exercises.
The Archbishop of Naples now commissioned him to reform a convent at Naples, which by the laxity of its discipline had become a source of great scandal. By his own example and his untiring zeal he restored the religious discipline of the convent but not without many and great difficulties. Certain wicked men who were accustomed to have clandestine meetings with the nuns became exasperated at the saint's interference, and one night he was assaulted and severely wounded. He was brought to the monastery of the Theatines to recuperate. Here, however, he resolved to devote himself entirely to God and he entered the Order of Theatines, which had but recently been founded by St. Cajetan. On the vigil of the Assumption he was invested, being then thirty-five years of age.
After completing his novitiate, he obtained permission to visit the tombs of the Apostles and the Martyrs at Rome, and, upon his return was made master of novices. After holding this office ten years he was elected superior. His holy zeal for strict religious discipline, and for the purity of the clergy, as well as his deep humility and sincere piety induced the General of his Order to entrust him with the foundation of two new Theatine houses, one at Milan, the other at Piacenza. By his efforts many more Theatine houses rose up in various diocese of Italy. As superior of some of these new foundations he was so successful in converting sinners and heretics by his prudence in the direction of souls and by his eloquent preaching, that numerous disciples thronged around him, eager to be under his spiritual guidance. One of the most noteworthy of his disciples was Lorenzo Scupoli, the author of that still popular book The Spiritual Combat. St. Charles Borromeo was an intimate friend of Avellino and sought his advice in the most important affairs of the Church. He also requested Avellino to establish a new Theatine house in Milan.
Through indefatigable in preaching, hearing confessions, and visiting the sick, Avellino still had time to write some ascetical works. His letters were published in 1731, at Naples, in two volumes, and his other ascetical works, three years later in five volumes.
On 10 November, 1608, when beginning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, he was stricken with apoplexy, and after devoutly receiving the Holy Viaticum, died the death of a saint at the age of eighty-eight. In 1624, only sixteen years after his death, he was beatified by Pope Urban VIII, and in 1712 was canonized by Pope Clement XI.
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Patronage: Naples, Sicily; invoked against sudden death
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[edit] November 11
Saint Martin of Tours (Latin: Martinus), (316/317, Savaria, Pannonia – November 11, 397 in Candes) was a bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Roman Catholic saints. Some of the accounts of his travels may have been interpolated into his vita to give credence to early sites of his cult. His life was recorded by a contemporary, the hagiographer Sulpicius Severus. He is the patron saint of France and soldiers.
Martin was named after Mars, god of war. He was born at Savaria, Pannonia (modern Szombathely, Hungary). His father was a senior officer (tribune) in the Imperial Horse Guard, and was later stationed at Ticinum, Cisalpine Gaul (modern Pavia, Italy), where Martin grew up.
At the age of ten, he went to the church against the wishes of his parents and became a catechumen or candidate for baptism. Christianity was still far from accepted amongst the higher echelons of society, and in the army the cult of Mithras would have been stronger. When Martin was fifteen, as the son of a veteran officer, he was required to join a cavalry ala himself and thus, around 334 was stationed at Ambianensium civitas or Samarobriva in Gaul (modern Amiens, France). It is therefore likely that he joined the equites catafractarii Ambianenses, a unit of cataphracti listed in the Notitia Dignitatum.
While Martin was still a soldier at Amiens he experienced the vision that became the most-repeated story about his life. He was at the gates of the city of Amiens with his soldiers when he met a scantily dressed beggar. He impulsively cut his own military cloak in half and shared it with the beggar. That night he dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clad me."
The dream confirmed Martin in his piety and he was baptized at the age of 18.He served in the mili tary for another two years until, just before a battle with the Gauls at Worms in 336, Martin determined that his faith prohibited him from fighting. He was charged with cowardice and jailed, but in response to the charge, he volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the troops. His superiors planned to take him up on the offer, but before they could, the invaders sued for peace, the battle never occurred, and Martin was released from military service.
Martin declared his vocation and made his way to the city of Tours, where he became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers, a chief proponent of Trinitarian Christianity, opposing the Arianism of the Visigothic nobility. When Hilary was forced into exile from Poitiers, Martin returned to Italy, converting an Alpine brigand on the way, according to his biographer Sulpicius Severus, and confronting the Devil himself. Returning from Illyria, he was confronted by the Arian archbishop of Milan Auxentius, who expelled him from the city. According to the early sources, he decided to seek shelter on the island then called Gallinaria, now Isola d'Albenga, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he lived the solitary life of a hermit.
With the return of Hilary to his see in 361, Martin joined him and established a monastery nearby, at the site that developed into the Benedictine Ligugé Abbey, the first in Gaul; it became a center for the evangelization of the country districts. He traveled and preached through Western Gaul: "The memory of these apostolic journeyings survives to our day in the numerous local legends of which Martin is the hero and which indicate roughly the routes that he followed." (Catholic Encyclopedia).
In 371 Martin was acclaimed bishop of Tours, where he impressed the city with his demeanor, and by the enthusiasm with which he had temples demolished or burnt, altars smashed and sculpture defaced. It may indicate the depth of the Druidic folk religion compared to the veneer of Roman classical culture in the area, that "when in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him; and these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down" (Sulpicius, Vita ch. xiii). Sulpicius affirms that he withdrew from the press of attention in the city to live in Marmoutier (Majus Monasterium), the monastery he founded, which faces Tours from the opposite shore of the Loire. Martin introduced a rudimentary parish system.
Attributes: with a beggar, cutting his cloak
Patronage: France, Soldiers
Prayer: Dear well-beloved Saint, you were first a soldier like your father. Converted to the Church, you became a soldier of Christ, a priest and then a Bishop of Tours. Lover of the poor, and model for pagans and Christians alike, protect our soldiers at all times. Make them strong, just, and charitable, always aiming at establishing peace on earth. Amen.
[edit] November 12
Josaphat Kuntsevich (Belarusian: Язафат Кунцэвіч, Jazafat Kuncevič, Polish: Jozafat Kuncewicz, Ukrainian: Йосафат Кунцевич, Josafat Kuntsevych) is a martyr and saint of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, born in the little town of Volodymyr in the region of Volhynia, then part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in 1580 or — according to some writers — 1584; died at Vitebsk in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (now in Belarus), 12 November 1623.
Josaphat's birth occurred in a gloomy period for the then-unified Ruthenian Church. Even as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century the Florentine Union had become a dead-letter; in the case of the Ruthenian Church, complete demoralization followed in the wake of its severance from the Roman see, and the whole body of its clergy has been accused by the Catholic Church of ignorance and viciousness. After the Union of Bierascie in 1596, the Ruthenian Church was divided by schism into two contending parties — the Greek-Catholic party, and those rejecting the Union — each with its own hierarchy. Among the leaders of the antiunion party, Meletius Smotrytsky was conspicuous, and the most celebrated of his opponents was Josaphat, who promoted Catholic unity with Rome.
In 1604, at the age of twenty-four, he entered the Monastery of the Trinity of the Basilian Fathers, at Vilnius. The fame of his religious devotion, charity and sanctity rapidly spread, and distinguished people began to visit him. After a notable life as a layman, Rutski also joined the order. When Josaphat reached the diaconate, regular services and labor for the Church had been already begun; the number of novices steadily increased, and under Rutski — who had meanwhile been ordained priest — there began the regeneration of Eastern Catholic religious life among the Ruthenians (Belarusians and Ukrainians). In 1609, after private study under Fabricius, a Jesuitpriest, Josaphat was ordained priest by a Catholic bishop. He subsequently became Superior in several monasteries, and on 12 November 1617, was reluctantly consecrated Bishop of Vitsebsk, with right of succession to the Archbishopric of Polotsk. He became archbishop in 1618.
Each succeeding year witnessed the steady growth of the conflict with the anti-Union Eastern Orthodox party. Finally on 12 November 1623, an axe-stroke and a bullet fired from an Orthodox mob ended Josaphat's life.
His favourite devotional exercise was to make prostrations in which the head touches the ground, saying: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Never eating meat, he fasted much, wore a hair shirt and an angular chain, slept on the bare floor, and chastised his body until the blood flowed. The Jesuits frequently urged him to set some bounds to his austerities.
Not only in the church did he preach and hear confessions, but likewise in the fields, hospitals, prisons, and even on his personal journeys. This zeal, united with his kindness for the poor, won great numbers of Orthodox Ruthenians for the Catholic faith and Catholic unity. Among his converts were included many important personages such as Ignatius, former Patriarch of Moscow, and Emmanuel Cantacuzenus, who belonged to the imperial family of the Byzantine Emperor Palaeologus.
During the schismatic conflict, he refused to avail himself of the opportunity of flight afforded him. After his death during it, his influence was still greater: conversions to Catholic unity were numerous, and veneration for him continued to extend, also among the Latins.
Attributes:
Patronage: Polish parishes in the United States, most notably among them are the Basilica of St. Josaphat, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and St Josaphat's parish in Chicago, Illinois.
Prayer:
[edit] November 13
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917) known during her life as Mother Cabrini, was the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
She was born Maria Francesca Cabrini in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in Lombardy, the youngest of thirteen children of Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini. Two months premature, she remained in delicate health throughout her 67 years.
At 13, she was sent to Arluno to study under the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, and at 18 she was certified as a teacher. Four years later she contracted smallpox, and because of this, she was refused admission into that order and into the Canossians as well. Finally, she took religious vows in 1877, becoming the Mother Superior of the House of Providence orphanage in Codogno, where she was teaching.
In 1880, the orphanage was closed and she became one of the seven founding members of the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC). Mother Cabrini composed the rules and constitution of the order, and she continued as its superior-general until her death.
The order established seven homes and a free school and nursery in its first five years. Its good works brought Mother Cabrini to the attention of Bishop Giovanni Scalabrini of Piacenza and of Pope Leo XIII.
Although her lifelong dream was to be a missionary in China, the Pope sent her to New York City on March 31, 1889. There, she obtained the permission of Archbishop Michael Corrigan to found an orphanage, which is located in West Park, Ulster County, NY today and is known as Saint Cabrini Home, the first of 67 institutions she founded in New York, Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and in countries throughout South America and Europe. Long after her death, the Missionary Sisters would achieve Mother Cabrini's goal of being a missionary to China. After much social and religious upheaval and only a short time, the sisters left China, and subsequently a Siberian placement.
She was naturalized as an American citizen in 1909.
Mother Cabrini died of complications from malaria at Columbus Hospital in Chicago. Though originally entombed in West Park, NY after her death on December 22, 1917, her remains were exhumed from West Park in 1931 and are now enshrined on display under glass in the church's altar at St. Frances Cabrini Shrine, 701 Fort Washington Avenue, in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hudson Heights. The street to the west of the shrine was renamed Cabrini Boulevard in her honour.
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Patronage: immigrants, hospital administrators
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[edit] November 14
Lorcán Ua Tuathail, also known as St Laurence O'Toole, was born at Castledermot, Kildare, Ireland, 1128, died at Eu, Normandy, France, on November 14, 1180, and was canonized in 1225 by Pope Honorius III.
He was one of four sons of an O'Byrne princess and Murtagh O'Tuathail, King of the Ui Muirdeaigh. The family were of the Ui Dunlaigne sub-sept, the Ui Muirdeaigh, and took their surname from Tuathal mac Augaire, the Ui Muirdeaigh King of Leinster who died in 958. They resided at Maistiu or Mullaghmast in what is now County Kildare.
However by the time of his son's birth Murtagh was subordinate to the new Kings of Leinster, the Ui Cheinnselaigh. The king from 1126 was Diarmait or Dermot McMurrough. At the age of 10 he was sent to Dermot as a hostage for his father. However at one point Murtagh's loyalty to Dermot must have become suspect as Lorcan was imprisoned for some two years in extreme austerity, and barely given enough to live on.
He became Abbot of Glendalough at the age of 26 in 1154. He was well-regarded by both the community in Glendalough and its secular neighbours for sanctity and charity to the poor.
When he was 32 he was elected unanimously Archbishop of Dublin following the death of Archbishop Gregory in 1161. He was the first Irishman to be appointed to the See of this town of Danes and Norwegians; it is notable that his nomination was backed not only by the High King Ruaidri Ua Conchobair, Dermot McMurrough (who was now married to Lorcán's sister, Mor) and the community at Glendalough, but also the clergy and population of Dublin itself. He would later endear himself to the people of Dublin with his exertions during a famine which struck the city. He would also play a prominent part in the Irish Church Reform Movement of the 12th century, as well as rebuilding Christ Church Cathedral, several parish churches and emphasising the use of Gregorian Chant.
In 1166 Dermot was deposed as King of Leinster by an alliance of Irish kings and princes, led by High King Ruaidri mac Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair and King Tighernan Ua Ruairc of Breifne. Exiled and with only a half-hearted promise of help from Henry II, after much wandering in Wales, England and France, he returned to Ireland with a group of penniless and down-on-their-luck Norman, Flemish and Welsh allies to help him regain his kingdom. The expedition succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; Dermot was reinstated as King of Leinster, the Norse towns of Wexford, Waterford and Dublin captured, and the Irish under the High King defeated. To seal the alliance, Dermot offered his daughter, Aoife — who was also Lorcan's niece — in marriage to the leader of the Normans, Strongbow.
Archbishop Lorcán left Ireland in 1179 to attend the Third Council of the Lateran in Rome. From Pope Alexander III he received a Papal Bull, confirming the rights and privileges of the See of Dublin. Alexander also named him as Papal Legate. On his return to Ireland he kept up the pace of reform to such an extent that as many as one hundred and fifty clerics were withdrawn from their offices for various abuses and sent to Rome.
In 1180 he left Ireland for the last time, taking with him a son of Ua Conchobair's as a hostage to Henry. He meant to admonish Henry for incursions against Ua Conchobair, contrary to the Treaty of Windsor. After a stay at the Monastery of Abingdon south of Oxford - necessitated by a closure of the ports - he landed at Le Tréport, Normandy at a cove named after him, Saint-Laurent. He fell ill and was conveyed to St. Victor's Abbey at Seine-Maritime. Mortally ill, it was suggested that he should make his will, to which he replied: "God knows, I have not a penny under the sun to leave anyone."
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[edit] November 15
Albertus Magnus, O.P. (b. 1193/1206 - d. November 15, 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, was a Dominican friar and priest who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He is considered to be the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. He was the first medieval scholar to apply Aristotle's philosophy to Christian thought at the time. Catholicism honors him as a Doctor of the Church, one of only 33 men and women with that honor.
He was born sometime between 1193 and 1206, to the Count of Bollstädt in Lauingen in Bavaria. Contemporaries such as Roger Bacon applied the term "Magnus" to Albertus during his own lifetime, referring to his immense reputation as a scholar and philosopher.
Albertus was educated principally at Padua, where he received instruction in Aristotle's writings. A late account by Rudolph de Novamagia refers to Albertus' encounter with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who convinced him to enter holy orders. In 1223 (or 1221) he became a member of the Dominican Order, against the wishes of his family, and studied theology. Selected to fill the position of lecturer at Cologne, Germany, where the Dominicans had a house, he taught for several years there, at Regensburg, Freiburg, Strasbourg and Hildesheim. In 1245 he went to Paris, received his doctorate and taught for some time as a master of theology with great success. During this time Thomas Aquinas began to study under Albertus.
In 1254 Albertus was made provincial of the Dominican Order, and fulfilled the arduous duties of the office with great care and efficiency. During his tenure he publicly defended the Dominicans against attacks by the secular and regular faculty of the University of Paris, commented on St John, and answered the errors of the Arabian philosopher Averroes.
In 1260 Pope Alexander IV made him Bishop of Regensburg, which office he resigned after three years. After his stint as bishop, he spent the remainder of his life partly in retirement in the various houses of his order, yet often preaching throughout southern Germany. In 1270 he preached the eighth Crusade in Austria. Among the last of his labours was the defence of the orthodoxy of his former pupil, Thomas Aquinas, whose death in 1274 grieved Albertus. After suffering a collapse of health in 1278, he died on November 15, 1280, in Cologne, Germany.
Albertus' writings collected in 1899 went to thirty-eight volumes. These displayed his prolific habits and literally encyclopedic knowledge of topics such as logic, theology, botany, geography, astronomy/astrology, mineralogy, chemistry, zoology, physiology, phrenology and others; all of which were the result of logic and observation. He was perhaps the most widely read author of his time. He digested, interpreted and systematized the whole of Aristotle's works, gleaned from the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, in accordance with church doctrine. He came to be so associated with Aristotle that he was sometimes referred to as "Aristotle's ape". Most modern knowledge of Aristotle was preserved and presented by Albertus.
His principal theological works are a commentary in three volumes on the Books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Magister Sententiarum), and the Summa Theologiae in two volumes. The latter is in substance a more didactic repetition of the former.
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Patronage: Cincinnati, Ohio; medical technicians; natural sciences; philosophers; scientists; students; World Youth Day
Prayer:
[edit] November 16
Saint Margaret (c 1045 – 16 November 1093), was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the short-ruling and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. She married Malcolm III, King of Scots, becoming his Queen consort.
The daughter of the English prince Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside, Margaret was probably born in Hungary. The provenance of her mother Agatha is disputed. According to popular belief, Margaret was a very serious person, so much that no one ever could recall seeing her laugh or smile.
When her uncle, Edward the Confessor, the French-speaking Anglo-Saxon King of England, died in 1066, she was living in England where her brother, Edgar Ætheling, had decided to make a claim to the vacant throne. According to tradition, after the conquest of the Kingdom of England by the Normans the widowed Agatha decided to leave Northumberland with her children and return to the Continent, but a storm drove their ship to Scotland where they sought the protection of King Malcolm III. The spot where she is said to have landed is known today as St Margaret's Hope, near the village of North Queensferry. Malcolm was probably a widower, and was no doubt attracted by the prospect of marrying one of the few remaining members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret soon took place and was followed by several invasions of Northumberland by the Scottish king, probably in support of the claims of his brother-in-law Edgar. These, however, had little result beyond the devastation of the province.
Margaret and Malcolm had eight children, six sons and two daughters.
Her husband, Malcolm III, and their eldest son, Edward, were killed in siege against the English at Alnwick Castle on 13 November 1093. Her son Edmund was left with the task of telling his mother of their deaths. Margaret was ill, and she died on 16 November 1093, three days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son. Her children tried to hide the fact of their father's and brother's deaths, but when Margaret did find out she either died of sadness or a broken heart.
It is notable that while Malcolm's children by his first wife Ingibjörg all bore Gaelic names, those of Margaret all bore non-Gaelic names. Later tradition often has it that Margaret was responsible for starting the demise of Gaelic culture in the lowlands and Scotland in general. The forenames of Margaret's children were probably intended to bear Margaret's claims to the Anglo-Saxon throne in the period before permanent Norman rule was recognized, and so the first group of children were given Anglo-Saxon royal names. In fact, in Gaeldom, she has usually not been considered a saint, but referred to as Mairead/Maighread nam Mallachd: Accursed Margaret.
Moreover, it is unlikely that they were originally seen as successors to the Scottish throne, as Malcolm had other (grown) sons and brothers who were much more likely to succeed him. Furthermore, Margaret freely patronized Gaelic churchmen, and Gaelic remained an expanding language in northern Britain. Nevertheless, these sons regarded their Anglo-Saxon heritage as important, as the latter was one of the main devices for legitimizing the authority of the Scottish kings in English-speaking Lothian and northern England.
Attributes: queen, reading
Patronage Dunfermline; Scotland; Anglo-Scottish relations
Prayer:
[edit] November 17
St. Elisabeth of Hungary (German: St. Elisabeth von Thüringen, Hungarian: Szent Erzsébet, 7 July 1207 – 19 November 1231) spent most of her short life in Germany. She was born in Sárospatak, Kingdom of Hungary on 7 July 1207. At age 4, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary (1175–1235) and Gertrude of Andechs-Merania was brought to the court of the Rulers of Thuringia in Central Germany, to become a future bride in order to reinforce political alliances between the families. Elisabeth was married at the age of 14, widowed at 20, relinquished her wealth to the poor, built hospitals, and became a symbol of Christian charity in Germany and elsewhere after her death at the age of 24.
Her mother sent the infant Elisabeth to Germany to grow up there in order to assure her loyalty and the acceptance by the locals there.
At the age of four, Elisabeth was betrothed to Louis IV of Thuringia, called the Blessed.
In 1221, at the age of 14, Elisabeth married Louis, and the marriage appears to have been happy. In 1223, Franciscan monks arrived, and the teenage Elizabeth not only learned about the ideals of Francis of Assisi, but started to live them. Louis was not upset by his wife's charitable efforts believing that the distribution of his wealth to the poor would bring eternal reward; he is venerated in Thuringia as a saint (without being canonized by the Church, unlike his wife).
It was also about this time that the inquisitor Konrad von Marburg — a harsh man and a true product of his age — gained considerable power over Elizabeth as he became her religious advisor and confessor.
In the spring of 1226, when floods, famine, and plague wrought havoc in Thuringia, Louis, a staunch supporter of the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, represented Frederick II at the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) in Cremona. Elisabeth assumed control of affairs and distributed alms in all parts of their territory, even giving away state robes and ornaments to the poor. Below the Wartburg Castle, she built a hospital with twenty-eight beds and visited the inmates daily to attend to them.
Elisabeth's life changed irrevocably on 11 September 1227 when Louis, en route to join the Sixth Crusade, died of the plague in Otranto, Italy. His remains were buried in 1228.
With Ludwig's death, his brother Heinrich Raspe of Thuringia assumed the regency during the minority of Elisabeth's eldest child, Landgrave Hermann II, Landgraf of Thuringia (1222–1241).
After bitter arguments over the disposal of her dower, in which Konrad had been appointed as her defensor by Pope Gregory IX, Elisabeth left the court at Wartburg and moved to Marburg in Hesse. The popular tradition is that she was cast out by Heinrich, but this does not stand up to critical examination.
Following her husband's death, Elisabeth made solemn vows to Konrad, similar to those of a nun. These vows included celibacy (which prevented her from becoming the wife of Emperor Frederick), as well as obedience to Konrad as her confessor and spiritual advisor. Konrad's treatment of Elisabeth was extremely harsh, and he held her to standards of behaviour which were almost impossible to meet. Among the punishments he is alleged to have ordered were physical beatings and separation from her three children.
After unsuccessful attempts to force her to remarry, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, a lay Franciscan group, and built a hospital at Marburg for the poor and the sick.
In 1231, Elisabeth died in Marburg at only 24 years of age, either from physical exhaustion due to Konrad's treatment, or from disease.
Attributes: Crown, Roses, Tending to Beggers
Patronage: hospitals, nurses, bakers, brides, countesses, , dying children, exiles, homeless people, lacemakers, tertiaries and widows
Prayer:
[edit] November 18
Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne (August 29, 1769 - November 18, 1852), was a Catholic nun and French saint, she was born in Grenoble, France and died in St. Charles, Missouri. She, along with Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart.
Founder in America of the first houses of the Society of the Sacred Heart, she was the daughter of Pierre-Francois Duchesne, an eminent lawyer. Her mother was a Perier, ancestor of Casimir-Perier, President of France in 1894 . She was educated by the Visitation Nuns, entered that order, saw its dispersion during the Reign of Terror, vainly attempted the re-establishment of the convent of Ste-Marie-d'en-Haut, near Grenoble, and finally, in 1804 , accepted the offer of Mother Barat to receive her community into the Society of the Sacred Heart.
From early childhood, the dream of Philippine had been the apostolate of souls: heathen in distant lands, the neglected and poor at home. Nature and grace combined to fit her for this high vocation; education, suffering, above all, the guidance of Mother Barat trained her to become the pioneer of her order in the New world. In 1818 Mother Duchesne set out with four companions for the missions of America. Bishop Dubourg welcomed her to New Orleans, when she sailed up the Mississippi to St. Louis, finally settling her little colony at St. Charles.
"Poverty and Christian heroism are here", she wrote, "and trials are the riches of priests in this land." Cold, hunger, and illness; opposition, ingratitude, and calumny, all that came to try the courage of this missioner, served only to fire her lofty and indomitable spirit with new zeal for the spread of truth. Other foundations followed, at Florissant, Grand Côteau, New Orleans, St. Louis, St. Michael; and the approbation of the society in 1826 by Leo XII recognized the good being done in these parts. She yearned to teach the poor Indians, and old and broken as she was, she went to labour among the Pottowatomies at Sugar Creek, thus realizing the desire of her life. Stirred by the recitals of Father De Smet, S.J., she turned her eyes towards the Rocky Mountain missions; but Providence led her back to St. Charles, where she died.
34 years of mission toil, disappointment, endurance, and self-annihilation sufficed, indeed, to prove the worth of this valiant daughter of Mother Barat. She had opened the road so that others might walk in it; and the success hidden from her eyes was well seen later by the many who rejoiced in the rapid spread of her order over North and South America. Sincere, intense, generous, austere yet affectionate, endowed with large capacity for suffering and work, Mother Duchesne's was a stern character that needed and took the moulding of Mother Barat. She was canonized on July 3, 1988, by Pope John Paul II.
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[edit] November 19
Saint Mechtilde (1240/1241 – 19 November 1298) was a Saxon Christian saint (from what is now Germany) and a Benedictine nun. Her feast day is celebrated as 26 or 27 February. She died in the monastery of Helfta.
Born Matilda von Hackeborn-Wippra, in 1240 or 1241 at the ancestral castle of Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony, she belonged to one of the noblest and most powerful Thuringian families; her sister was the saintly and illustrious Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn. Some writers have considered that Mechtilde von Hackeborn and Mechtilde von Wippra were two distinct persons, but, as the Barons of Hackeborn were also Lords of Wippra, it was customary for members of that family to take their name indifferently from either, or both of these estates. So fragile was she at birth, that the attendants, fearing she might die unbaptized, hurried her off to the priest who was just then preparing to say Mass. He was reported as a person of "great sanctity," and after baptizing the child, is reported to have declared a statement to this effect, judged by some to be prophetic: "What do you fear? This child most certainly will not die, but she will become a saintly religious in whom God will work many wonders, and she will end her days in a good old age."
When Mechtilde was seven years old, having been taken by her mother on a visit to her elder sister Gertrude, at that time a nun in the monastery of Rodardsdorf, she became so enamoured of the cloister that her pious parents yielded to her requests and, acknowledging the workings of grace, allowed her to enter the alumnate. Here, being highly gifted in mind as well as in body, she made remarkable progress in virtue and learning.
Ten years later (1258) she followed her sister, who, now abbess, had transferred the monastery to an estate at Helfta given her by her brothers Louis and Albert. As a nun, Mechtilde was soon distinguished for her humility, her fervour, and that extreme amiability which had characterized her from childhood and which, like piety, seemed almost hereditary in her clan. While still very young, she became a valuable helper to Abbess Gertrude, who entrusted to her direction the alumnate and the choir. Mechtilde was fully equipped for her task when, in 1261, God committed to her prudent care a child of five who was destined to shed glory and fame upon the monastery of Helfta. This was Gertrude who in later generations became known as St. Gertrude the Great.
Gifted with a beautiful voice, Mechtilde also possessed a special talent for rendering the solemn and sacred music over which she presided as domna cantrix. All her life she held this office and trained the choir with indefatigable zeal. Indeed, divine praise was the keynote of her life as it is of her book; in this she never tired, despite her continual and severe physical sufferings, so that in His revelations Christ was wont to call her His "nightingale". Richly endowed, naturally and supernaturally, ever gracious, beloved of all who came within the radius of her saintly and charming personality, there is little wonder that this cloistered virgin should strive to keep hidden her wondrous life. Souls thirsting for consolation or groping for light sought her advice; learned Dominicans consulted her on spiritual matters. At the beginning of her own mystic life it was from St. Mechtilde that St. Gertrude the Great learnt that the marvellous gifts lavished upon her were from God.
Only in her fiftieth year did St. Mechtilde learn that the two nuns in whom she had especially confided had noted down the favours granted her, and, moreover, that St. Gertrude had nearly finished a book on the subject. Much troubled at this, she, as usual, first had recourse to prayer. She had a vision of Christ holding in His hand the book of her revelations, and saying: "All this has been committed to writing by my will and inspiration; and, therefore you have no cause to be troubled about it." He also told her that, as He had been so generous towards her, she must make Him a like return, and that the diffusion of the revelations would cause many to increase in His love; moreover, He wished this book to be called The Book of Special Grace, because it would prove such to many. When the saint understood that the book would tend to God's glory, she ceased to be troubled, and even corrected the manuscript herself. Immediately after her death it was made public, and copies were rapidly multiplied, owing chiefly to the widespread influence of the Friars Preachers.
Attrributes: heart, book and dove
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[edit] November 20
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Edmund the Martyr (841–20 November 869) was a King of East Anglia. He succeeded to the East Anglian throne in 855, while still a boy. The earliest and most reliable accounts represent Edmund as descended from the preceding kings of East Anglia of the Wuffing line. Other accounts state that his father was King Æthelweard and Galfridus de Fontibus recorded that Edmund was the youngest son of Alcmund, a Saxon king. Edmund was said to have been crowned by Bishop Humbert of Elmham on Christmas Day 855. In 869/70 Edmund was defeated in battle by the Great Heathen Army; he was captured, tortured and died the death of a martyr. He is venerated as a saint and a martyr in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion. The king's body was ultimately interred at Beadoriceworth, the modern Bury St Edmunds, where the pilgrimage to his shrine was encouraged by the twelfth-century monks' enlargement of the church. Edmund's popularity among the Anglo-Norman nobility helped justify claims of continuity with pre-Norman traditions; a banner of St. Edmund's arms was carried at the battle of Agincourt.
Edmund the Martyr was a King of East Anglia. According to both Abbo of Fleury followed by John of Worcester, he came "ex antiquorum Saxonum nobili prosapia oriundus," which when translated seems to mean that St Edmund was of foreign origin and that he belonged to the Old Saxons of the continent. The earliest and most reliable accounts represent Edmund as descended from the preceding kings of East Anglia.
Other accounts state that his father was King Æthelweard. What is certain is that the king died in 854, and was succeeded by Edmund when the boy was a fourteen-year-old. Thus, his birthyear is 841. Edmund was said to have been crowned by St Humbert on 25 December 855. Almost nothing is known of the life of Edmund during the next fourteen years. It was recorded that Edmund was a model king who treated all with equal justice and was unbending to flatterers. It was also written that he retired for a year to his royal tower at Hunstanton and learned the whole Psalter, so that he could recite it from memory.
In the year 869, the Danes who had wintered at York, marched through Mercia into East Anglia and took up their quarters at Thetford. Edmund engaged them fiercely in battle, but the Danes under their leaders Ubbe Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless had the victory, killed King Edmund, and remained in possession of the battlefield. The conquerors may have simply killed the king in battle, or shortly after. The more popular version of the story, which makes Edmund die as a martyr to Danish arrows when he had refused to renounce Christ or hold his kingdom as a vassal from heathen overlords, dates from comparatively soon after the event. It is not known which account is correct.
The traditional date of his death, quoted by most reference works, is 870. However recent research has led to the claim that he actually died in 869.
Attributes: crowned and robed as a king; holding a scepter, orb, arrow, or a sword
Patronage: Douai Abbey, kings, pandemics, Roman Catholic diocese of East Anglia, the English County of Suffolk, torture victims, wolves
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[edit] November 21
Pope Gelasius I was the third pope of African origin (more exactly from Kabylie) in Catholic history. Gelasius had been closely employed by his predecessor, Felix III, especially in drafting papal documents.
Gelasius' election, March 1, 492, was a gesture for continuity: Gelasius inherited Felix's struggles with Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I and the patriarch of Constantinople and exacerbated them by insisting on the removal of the name of the late Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, from the diptychs, in spite of every ecumenical gesture by the current, otherwise quite orthodox patriarch Euphemius (q.v. for details of the Acacian schism).
The split with the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople was inevitable, from the western point of view, because they had embraced a view of a single, Divine ('Monophysite') nature of Christ, which the papal party viewed as heresy. Gelasius' book De duabus in Christo naturis ('On the dual nature of Christ') delineated the western view.
Thus Gelasius, for all the conservative Latinity of his writing style stood on the cusp of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
During the Acacian schism, Gelasius went further than his predecessors in asserting the primacy of Rome over the entire Church, East and West, and he presented this doctrine in terms that set the model for subsequent popes asserting the claims of papal supremacy.
In 494, Gelasius wrote a very influential letter, known from its incipit as Duo sunt, to Anastasius. This letter established the dualistic principle that would underlie all Western European political thought for almost a millennium. In the letter Gelasius expressed a distinction between "two powers", which he called the "holy authority of bishops" (auctoritas sacrata pontificum) and the "royal power" (regalis potestas). These two powers, auctoritas lending justification to potestas, and potestas providing the executive strength for auctoritas were, he said, to be considered independent in their own spheres of operation, yet expected to work together in harmony.
Closer to home, Gelasius finally suppressed the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia after a long contest. Gelasius' letter to Andromachus, the senator, covers the main lines of the controversy and incidentally offers some details of this festival combining fertility and purification that might have been lost otherwise. Significantly, this festival of purification, which had given its name— dies februatus, from februare, "to purify"— to the month of February, was replaced with a Christian festival celebrating the purification of the Virgin Mary instead: Candlemas, observed forty days after Christmas, on 2 February.
Gelasius smoked out the closeted Manichaeans, the heretical dualists who considered themselves Christians and certainly passed for such and were suspected to be present in Rome in large numbers. Gelasius decreed that the Eucharist had to be received "under both kinds", with wine as well as bread. As the Manichaeans held wine to be impure and essentially sinful, they would refuse the chalice and thus be recognized. Later, with the Manichaeans suppressed, the old method of receiving communion under one kind - the bread - was restored.
After a brief but dynamic reign, his death occurred on November 19, 496; his interment occurred on November 21.
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[edit] November 22
Saint Cecilia (or Sancta Caecilia in Latin) is the patron saint of musicians and Church music. Her feast day, celebrated both in the Catholic and Orthodox Church, is November 22. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. It was long supposed that she was a noble lady of Rome who, with her husband Valerian(us), his brother Tiburtius, suffered martyrdom, C. 230, under the emperor Alexander Severus.
The researches of Giovanni Battista de Rossi, however[1], go to confirm the statement of Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers (d. 600), that she perished in Sicily under Marcus Aurelius between 176 and 180. A church in her honor exists in Rome from about the 5th century, and was rebuilt with much splendour by Pope Paschal I around the year 820, and again by Cardinal Sfondrati in 1599. It is situated in Trastevere, near the Ripa Grande quay, where in earlier days the Ghetto was located, and is the titulus of a Cardinal Priest, currently Carlo Maria Martini.
The martyrdom of Cecilia is said to have followed that of her husband and brother by the prefect Turcius Almachius. The officers of the prefect then sought to have Cecilia killed as well. She arranged to have her home preserved as church before she was arrested. At that time, the officials attempted to kill her by locking her in an overheated bathhouse. However, the attempt failed, and she was to be beheaded. The executioner attempted to decapitate her three times unsuccessfully, at which time he fled. Cecilia survived another three days before succumbing.
Cecilia, whose musical fame rests on a passing notice in her legend that she praised God, singing to Him, as she lay dying a martyr's death, has inspired many a masterpiece in art, including the The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia by Raphael at Bologna, the Rubens in Berlin, the Domenichino in Paris and at San Luigi dei Francesi, and works by Artemisia Gentileschi, and in literature, where she is commemorated especially by Chaucer's Seconde Nonnes Tale, and by John Dryden's famous ode, set to music by Handel in 1736, and later by Sir Hubert Parry (1889). Other music dedicated to Cecilia includes Benjamin Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia (based on a text by W. H. Auden), A Hymn for St Cecilia by Herbert Howells, a mass by Alessandro Scarlatti, Charles Gounod's Messe Solennelle de Sainte Cécile, Hail, bright Cecilia! by Henry Purcell, and an opera, Cecilia, by Licinio Refice, SJ (1934).
Attributes: flute, organ, roses, violin
Patronage: Church music, musicians, poets; Albi, France; Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska
Prayer: Dear Saint Cecilia, one thing we know for certain about you is that you became a heroic martyr in fidelity to your divine Bridegroom. We do not know that you were a musician but we are told that you heard Angels sing. Inspire musicians to gladden the hearts of people by filling the air with God's gift of music and reminding them of the divine Musician who created all beauty. Amen.
[edit] November 23
Saint Clement I, the Archbishop of Rome from 88 to 99 AD. Also called Clement of Rome and Clemens Romanus, he was the fourth pope, after Anacletus, according to Catholic tradition. However, other sources [citation needed] cite him as the second pope and successor to Peter.
Saint Clement I is also considered one of the Apostolic Fathers, and his name is in the Roman Canon of the Mass. Saint Clement I is commemorated on November 23 as pope and martyr in the Roman Catholic Churchas well as the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran church. The Syriac Orthodox and Malankara Orthodox Church, as well as the Syriac Catholic and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches commemorate St. Clement of Rome (called Mor Clemis) on November 24.
Sacred Tradition identifies him as the Clement mentioned in Philippians 4:3. He may have been a freedman of Titus Flavius Clemens, who was consul with his cousin, the Emperor Domitian. The Shepherd of Hermas (Vision II. 4. 3) mentions a Clement whose office it is to communicate with other churches; this function has been adduced to support Clement's authorship of the letter to the church at Corinth, Greece, ascribed to him: full details are at the entry Epistles of Clement.
Liber Pontificalis documents the fact that Clement of Rome had personally known Saint Peter, and states that he wrote two letters (the second letter, 2 Clement is no longer ascribed to Clement) and that he died in Greece in the third year of Trajan's reign, or 100. Earlier sources say he died a natural death. The Holy See's Annuario Pontificio (2003) cites a reign from 92 to 99.
A 9th-century tradition says that St. Clement was exiled from Rome by the Emperor Trajan to a prison camp in Chersonesus, where he was sentenced to work in a stone quarry. In retaliation for having converted large numbers of the local pagans to Christianity, St. Clement was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown from a boat into the Black Sea in the year 102.
According to tradition, St. Cyril brought relics of St. Clement to Rome in 868 where they are now enshrined at the Basilica di San Clemente. Other relics of St. Clement, including his head, are claimed by the Kiev Monastery of the Caves in the Ukraine.
Attributes: as a pope with anchor or fish, millstone, keys, a fountain or with a book.
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[edit] November 24
The Vietnamese Martyrs also known as the Martyrs of Tonkin, Martyrs of Annam or Martyrs of IndoChina, are saints on the Roman Catholic calendar of saints canonized by Pope John Paul II. Their feast day is 24 November although several of these saints have another memorial day as they were beatified and on the calendar prior to the canonization of the group.
The earliest martyrs, mentioned in written sources are the Spanish Dominicans Francisco Gil de Federich and Alonzo Lenziana, who arrived to the country about 1580. In 1773 two more Dominicans were beheaded, Hyacinth Casteneda, a Spaniard who had evangelised in the Philippines and China for several years before being deported to Vietnam, where he was imprisoned for three years. There he was joined by Vincent Liêm, the first Indo-Chinese Dominican to be martyred, who had ministered to his countrymen for fourteen years before being beheaded. The first Vietnamese diocesan priests, John Dat and Emmanuel Triêu, also suffered martyrdom in 1798.
It is not known precisely how many Catholics died for their faith between 1516 when the first Portuguese missionaries arrived in what is now Vietnam and the twentieth century (about 130,000 to 300,000 Vietnamese martyrs were killed); however, John Paul II decided to canonize those whose names are known and unknown, giving them a single feast day. Principally, the Vietnamese Martyrs fall into several groupings, those of the Portuguese missionary era (16th Century), the Dominican and Jesuit missionary era of the (17th Century), the politically inspired persecutions of the 19th Century, and the Communist purges of the 20th Century. A representative sample of only 117 martyrs -including 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spanish Dominicans, and 10 French members of the Paris Society for Foreign Missions (Missions Etrangères de Paris) (MEP)— were beatified on four separate occasions: 64 by Pope Leo XIII on May 27, 1900, 8 by Pope Pius X on May 20, 1906, 20 by Pope Pius X on May 2, 1909, 25 by Pope Pius XII on April 29, 1951. All these 117 Vietnamese Martyrs were canonized on June 19, 1988 and a young Vietnamese Martyr, Andrew Phú Yên was beatified in March, 2000 by Pope John Paul II.
The tortures these individuals underwent were among the worst in the history of Christian martyrdom. The means included cutting off limbs joint by joint, ripping living bodies with red hot tongs, and use of drugs to enslave the minds of the victims. Christians at the time were branded on the face with the words "ta dao" and families and villages which subscribed to Christianity were obliterated.
Those whose name is known are: Agnes Le Thi Thanh, the mother of six, Andrew Dung-Lac An Tran, Andrew Thong Kim Nguyen, Andrew Trong Van Tram, Andrew Tuong, Anthony Dich Nguyen, Anthony Quynh Nam, Augustine Huy Viet Phan, Augustine Moi Van Nguyen, Augustine Schoffler, Bernard Due Van Vo, Dominic Hanh Van Nguyen, Dominic Henares, a Dominican bishop from Spain, Dominic Nicholas Dat Dinh, Dominic Trach Doai, Dominic Uy Van Bui, Dominic Xuyen Van Nguyen, Dominic Kham Viet Pham, Dominic Ninh, Dominic Cam, Dominic Huyen, Dominic Toai, Dominic Mau, Dominic Nhi, Dominic Nguyen, Dominic Mao, Emmanuel Trieu Van Nguyen, Francis Chieu Van Do, Francis Gil de Frederich, Francis Isidore Gagelin, Francis Jaccard, Francis Trung Von Tran, Francis Xavier Can Nguyen, Ignatius Delgado y Cebrián, Jacinto (Hyacinth) Casteñeda, a Dominican from Spain, James Nam, Jerome Hermosilla, John Baptist Con, John Charles Cornay, John Dat, John Hoan Trinh Doan, John Louis Bonnard, John Thanh Van Dinh, José María Díaz Sanjurjo, Joseph Canh Luang Hoang, Joseph Fernandez, Joseph Hien Quang Do, Joseph Khang Duy Nguyen, Joseph Luu Van Nguyen, Joseph Marchand, Joseph Nghi Kim, Joseph Thi Dang Le, Joseph Uyen Dinh Nguyen, Joseph Vien Dinh Dang, Joseph Khang, a local doctor, Joseph Tuc, Joseph Tuan Van Tran, Lawrence Ngon, Lawrence Huong Van Nguyen, Luke Loan Ba Vu, Luke Thin Viet Pham, Martin Tho, Martin Tinh Duc Ta, Matthew Alonzo Leziniana, Matthew Dac Phuong Nguyen, Matthew Gam Van Le, Melchor Garcia Sampedro, Michael HyDinh-Ho, Michael My Huy Nguyen, Nicholas Thé Duc Bui, Paul Hanh, Paul Khoan Khan Pham, Paul Loc Van Le, Paul Tinh Boa Le, Paul Tong Buong, Paul Duong, Peter Tuan, Peter Dung Van Dinh, Peter Da, Peter Duong Van Troung, Peter Francis Néron, Peter Hieu Van Nguyen, Peter Quy Cong Doan, Peter Thi Van Truong Pham, Peter Tuan Ba Nguyen, a fisherman, Peter Tuy Le, Peter Van Van Doan, Philip Minh Van Doan, Simon Hoa Dac Phan, Stephen Theodore Cuenot, a bishop from France, Stephen Vinh, Théophane Venard, from France, Thomas De Van Nguyen, Thomas Du Viet Dinh, Thomas Thien Tran, Thomas Toan, Thomas Khuong, Valentine Berriochoa, Vincent Liem the Nguyen, Vincent Duong, Vincent Tuong, a local judge, Vincent Yen Do
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[edit] November 25
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine (Greek ἡ Ἁγία Αἰκατερίνη ἡ Μεγαλομάρτυς) is a Christian saint and martyr claimed to have been a noted scholar in the early 4th century. She was one of the saints to speak to Saint Joan of Arc. The Orthodox Churches venerate her as a "great martyr," and in the Roman Catholic Church, she is traditionally revered as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
St. Catherine's life is mostly composed of legends which have many different variations. The most popular version is as follows. Legend states that Catherine was the daughter of Constus, governor of Alexandria in Egypt. She is said to have received a "most splendid education." She declared to her parents that she would only enter into marriage with someone who surpassed her in reputation, wealth, beauty and wisdom. Catherine's mother was secretly a Christian, and sent her to a hermit who told her of a youth who surpassed her in everything, such that "His beauty was more radiant than the shining of the sun, His wisdom governed all creation, His riches were spread throughout all the world."[2]
Having received a vision that urged her baptism, she became a Christian and was transported to heaven in vision and betrothed to Christ by the Virgin Mary (this ancient theme of a mystical marriage to a deity is familiar in the ecstatic mythology of the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia).
Catherine's story goes on to relate how she is said to have visited the current Roman Emperor Maxentius and to have attempted to convince him of the error of his ways in persecuting Christians. Her legend states that Catherine succeeded in converting his wife, the Empress, and also many pagan wise men sent to dispute with her by the Emperor, all of whom were subsequently martyred. Upon the failure of the Emperor to woo Catherine, he ordered Catherine into prison, and when the people who visited her converted, she was condemned to death on the breaking wheel (an instrument of torture). The wheel itself broke when she touched it, so she was beheaded.
In an elaboration of the legend, angels carried her body to Mount Sinai, where in the 6th century AD, the Eastern Emperor Justinian established Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, the church being built between 548 and 565. Saint Catherine's Monastery survives, a famous repository of early Christian art, architecture and illuminated manuscripts.
Her principal symbol is the spiked wheel, which has become known as the Catherine wheel, and her feast day is celebrated on 25 November in most Christian churches. However, her feast is celebrated on 24 November in the Russian Orthodox Church because Empress Catherine the Great did not wish to share her patronal feast with the Leavetaking of the feast of the Presentation of the Theotokos.
Attributes: the "breaking wheel"; sword; with a crown at her feet; hailstones; bridal veil and ring; dove; scourge; book; woman arguing with pagan philosophers
Patronage: apologists, craftsmen who work with a wheel (potters, spinners, etc.), archivists, dying people, educators, girls, jurists, knife sharpeners, lawyers, librarians, libraries, Balliol College, maidens, mechanics, millers, nurses, philosophers, preachers, scholars, schoolchildren, scribes, secretaries, spinsters, stenographers, students, tanners, teachers, theologians, University of Paris, unmarried girls, haberdashers, wheelwrights, Żejtun, Żurrieq
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[edit] November 26
Saint John Berchmans (March 13, 1599 - August 13, 1621) was a Jesuit seminarian and is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church . He is the patron saint of altar servers.
He was born at Diest in Brabant. He was naturally kind, gentle, and affectionate towards them, a favorite with his playmates, brave and open, attractive in manner, and with a bright, joyful disposition. Yet he was also, by natural disposition, impetuous and fickle. Later, when he lived with some other boys at M. Emmerick's house, he would undertake more than his share of the domestic work, selecting by preference the more difficult occupations. When he was hardly seven years old, he was accustomed to rise early and serve two or three Masses with the greatest fervour. He attended religious instructions and listened to Sunday sermons with the deepest recollection, and made pilgrimages to the sanctuary of Montaigu, a few miles from Diest, reciting the rosary as he went, or absorbed in meditation. As soon as he entered the Jesuit college at Mechlin, he was enrolled in the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, and made a resolution to recite her Office daily. He would, moreover, ask the director of the sodality every month to prescribe for him some special acts of devotion to Mary.
Towards the end of his rhetoric course, he felt a distinct call to the Society of Jesus. His family was decidedly opposed to this, and on 24 September, 1616, he was received into the novitiate at Mechelen. After two years passed in Mechelen he made his simple vows, and was sent to Antwerp to begin the study of philosophy. Remaining there only a few weeks, he set out for Rome, where he was to continue the same study. After the journeying three hundred leagues on foot, carrying a wallet on his back, he arrived at the Roman College, he studied for two years and passed on to the third year class in philosophy in the year 1621. One day early in August of that same year he was selected by the prefect of studies to take part in a philosophical disputation at the Greek College, at that time under the charge of the Dominicans. He opened the discussion with great perspicuity and erudition, but, on returning to his own college, he was seized with a violent fever of which he died at the age of twenty-two years and five months.
During the second part of his life, John offered the type of the saint who performs ordinary actions with extraordinary perfection. In his purity, obedience, and admirable charity he resembled many religious, but he surpassed them all by his intense love for the rules of his order. The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus lead those who observe them exactly to the highest degree of sanctity, as has been declared by Pope Julius III and his successors. The attainment of that ideal was what John proposed to himself. "If I do not become a saint when I am young", he used to say "I shall never become one". That is why he displayed such wisdom in conforming his will to that of his superiors and to the rules. He would have preferred death to the violation of the least of the rules of his order. "My penance", he would say, "is to live the common life... I will pay the greatest attention to the least inspiration of God." He observed this fidelity in the performance of all his duties till the last day of his life, as is attested by Fathers Bauters, Cepari, Ceccoti, Massucci, and Piccolomini, his spiritual directors. When he died, a large multitude crowded for several days to see him before his burial in Sant'Ignazio, and to invoke his intercession. The same year, Phillip, Duke of Aerschot, had a petition presented to Pope Gregory XV for the taking of information with a view to his beatification .
Attributes: Often depicted with hands clasped, holding his crucifix, his book of rules, and his rosary.
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[edit] November 27
Vergilius of Salzburg (also Virgilius) (born c. 700 in Ireland; died 27 November 784 in Salzburg) was an early astronomer and bishop of the Diocese Salzburg.
He originated from a noble family of Ireland, where his name was Feirgil, and was educated in the Iona monastery. It is controversial whether he is identical to Abbot Feirgil of Aghaboe Abbey in County Laois. He is said to have been a descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages. In the "Annals of the Four Masters" and the "Annals of Ulster" he is mentioned as Abbot of Aghaboe, in County Laois.
Around 743 he left Ireland, intending to visit the Holy land, but, like many of his countrymen, who seemed to have adopted this practice as a work of piety, he settled down in France, where he was received with great favour by Pippin the Younger of Franconia. After spending two years at Cressy, near Compiegne, he went to Bavaria, at the invitation of Duke Odilo, and within a year or two was made Abbot of St. Peter's at Salzburg. Out of humility, he "concealed his orders", and had a bishop named Dobdagrecus, a fellow countryman, appointed to perform his episcopal functions for him.
It was while Abbot of St. Peter's that he came into collision with Saint Boniface. A priest having, through ignorance, conferred the Sacrament of Baptism using, in place of the correct formula, the words Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et spiritu sancta, Vergilius held that the sacrament had been validly conferred, but Boniface complained to Pope Zachary. The latter, however, decided in favour of Vergilius. Later on, Boniface accused Vergilius of spreading discord between himself and Duke Odilo of Bavaria and of teaching a doctrine in regard to the rotundity of the earth, which was "contrary to the Scriptures". Pope Zachary's decision in this case was that "if it shall be clearly established that he professes belief in another world and other people existing beneath the earth, or in [another] sun and moon there, thou art to hold a council, and deprive him of his sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the church. Unfortunately we no longer possess the treatise in which Vergilius expounded his doctrine. Two things, however, are certain: first, that there was involved the problem of original sin and the universality of redemption; secondly, that Vergilius succeeded in freeing himself from the charge of teaching a doctrine contrary to Scripture. It is likely that Boniface, already biased against Vergilius because of the preceding case, misunderstood him, taking it for granted, perhaps, that if there are antipodes, the "other race of men" are not descendants of Adam and were not redeemed by Christ.
After the martyrdom of Boniface, Vergilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 766 or 767 and laboured successfully for the upbuilding of his diocese as well as for the spread of Christianity in neighbouring heathen countries, especially in Carinthia. He died at Salzburg, 27 November, 789. In 1233 he was canonized by Gregory IX.
His doctrine that the earth is a sphere was derived from the teaching of ancient geographers, and his belief in the existence of the antipodes was probably influenced by the accounts which the ancient Irish voyagers gave of their journeys.
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[edit] November 28
Saint Catherine Laboure (May 2, 1806 – December 31, 1876) was a Marian visionary who claimed to have relayed the request from the Blessed Virgin Mary to create the Miraculous Medal worn by millions of Catholics and even non-Catholics today.
She was born at Fain-lès-Moutiers, Burgundy, France, to the farmer Pierre Labouré, the ninth of 11 living children. When Catherine was nine years old, her mother died on October 9, 1815. Pierre's sister suggested that she care for his two youngest children, Catherine and Tonine, and after he agreed, the sisters moved to their aunt's house at Saint-Rémy, a village nine kilometers from their home.
As a young woman she became a member of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, a nursing order founded by Saint Vincent de Paul. She was extremely devout, of a somewhat romantic nature, given to visions and intuitive insights (she'd chosen the Daughters of Charity after a dream about St. Vincent). Having lost her mother at an early age she was very fond of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Catherine stated that on the night of July 19, 1830, the Feast Day of Saint Vincent de Paul, she woke up after hearing the voice of a child calling her to the chapel, where she heard the Virgin Mary say to her, "God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world."
On November 27, 1830, Catherine reported that the Blessed Mother returned during evening meditations. She displayed herself inside an oval frame, standing upon a globe, wearing many rings of different colours, most of which shone rays of light over the globe. Around the margin of the frame appeared the words "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." As Catherine watched, the frame seemed to rotate, showing a circle of twelve stars, a large letter M surmounted by a cross, and the stylized Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary underneath. Asked why some of her rings did not shed light, Mary reportedly replied "Those are the graces for which people forget to ask." Catherine then heard Mary ask her to take these images to her father confessor, telling him that they should be put on medallions. "All who wear them will receive great graces."
Catherine did so, and after two years' worth of investigation and observation of Catherine's normal daily behavior, the priest took the information to his archbishop without revealing Catherine's identity. The request was approved and medallions began to be produced. They proved to be exceedingly popular. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception wasn't official yet, but the medal with its "conceived without sin" slogan was probably influential in popular approval of the idea.
St. Catherine Labouré foretold many great events correctly, but failed on others.
Catherine lived her remaining years as an ordinary nursing sister. She was pleasant and well-liked by patients and her fellow nuns. Catherine never told anyone but her confessor about her visions. So, even at her death in 1876, no one knew that Catherine was the one who brought the Miraculous Medal to the world. Exhumed in 1933, her body was found incorrupt, and it now lies in a glass coffin at the side altar of 140 Rue du Bac, Paris, one of the spots where the Blessed Mother appeared to her.
Attributes: Miraculous Medal
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[edit] November 29
Saint Saturnin of Toulouse (in Latin, Saturninus; Sernin in Modern French; in Galicia, Sadurniño; in Navarra, Cernin; and, in Spain, Saturnino or Serenín), with a feast day entered for November 29, was one of the "apostles to the Gauls" sent out (probably under the direction of Pope Fabian, 236 - 250) during the consulate of Decius and Gratus (250-251) to Christianize Gaul after the persecutions under Emperor Decius had all but dissolved the small Christian communities. Fabian sent out seven bishops from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturnin to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Martial to Limoges.
Saturnin is styled the first bishop of Tolosa (Toulouse). The lost Acts of Saturninus were employed as historical sources by the chronicler Gregory of Tours. The martyrology gave a genealogy for Saturnin: the son of Aegeus, King of Achaea, by his wife Cassandra, who, herself, was the daughter of Ptolemy, King of the Ninevites. The Acts placed Saturninus in the 1st century, made him one of the 72 disciples of Christ, placed him at the Last Supper. The detail from the Acts that is selected for remembering today describes his martyrdom: to reach the Christian church Saturninus had to pass before the capitol (still the Capitole de Toulouse), where there was an altar, and according to the Acts, the pagan priests ascribed the silence of their oracles to the frequent presence of Saturninus. One day they seized him and on his unshakeable refusal to sacrifice to the images they condemned him to be tied by the feet to a bull which dragged him about the town until the rope broke. (Tellingly, the identical fate was ascribed to his pupil Saint Fermin whose site of martyrdom is at Pamplona.)
The bull, it is said, finished at the place since named Matabiau (that is, matar ("the killing") and biau or bœuf ("bull"). An inversion of this martyrdom, the tauroctony, the "killing of the bull," is precisely the central rite of Mithraism, the most important icon in the mithraeum, a depiction of Mithras in the act of killing a bull. The tauroctony was either painted or depicted in a sculptural relief, sometimes on the altar. Two Christian women (puellae remembered as "les Puelles") piously gathered up the remains and buried them in a "deep ditch", that they might not be profaned by the pagans. It is not beyond possibility, in this part of Gaul, where even today the greatest bell among many in Toulouse is honored with the name "Le Grand Taur," that the deep ditch was in fact a mithraeum.
The site, said to be "where the bull stopped" is on the rue du Taur ("Street of the Bull"). The street with the Mithraic name is one of the original Roman cross streets running straight from the Capitole now to the Romanesque basilica honoring St. Saturnin ("St Sernin").
Attributes: A bishop's mitre, a bishop being dragged by a bull, a bull
Patronage: Toulouse, France
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[edit] November 30
Saint Andrew (Greek: Ανδρέας, Andreas), called in the Orthodox tradition Protocletos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the elder brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" (from Greek : ανδρεία, manhood, or valour), like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the second or third century B.C. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him.
The Bible records that St Andrew was a son of Jonah, or John, (Matthew 16:17; John 1:42). He was born in Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44). Both he and his brother Peter were fishermen by trade, hence the tradition that Jesus called them to be his disciples by saying that He will make them "fishers of men" (Greek: ἁλιείς ἀνθρώπων, halieis anthropon). [3] At the beginning of Jesus' public life they occupied the same house at Capernaum (Mark 1:21, 29).
From the Gospel of John we learn that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him and John the Evangelist to follow Jesus (John 1:35-40). Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and hastened to introduce Him to his brother(John 1:41). Thenceforth the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, and then they left all things to follow Jesus (Luke 5:11; Matthew 4:19-20; Mark 1:17-18).
In the gospels he is referred to as being present on some important occasions as one of the disciples more closely attached to Jesus (Mark 13:3; John 6:8, 12:22); but in Acts there is only a bare mention of him (1:13).
Eusebius quotes Origen as saying Andrew preached in Asia Minor and in Scythia, along the Black Sea as far as the Volga and Kiev. Hence he became a patron saint of Romania and Russia. According to tradition, he founded the See of Byzantium in AD 38, installing Stachys as bishop (the only bishopric in that neighbourhood before that time had been established at Heraclea). This See would later develop into the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Andrew is recognized as its Patron Saint.
He is said to have been martyred by crucifixion at Patras (Patrae) in Achaea, on a cross of the form called Crux decussata (X-shaped cross) and commonly known as "St. Andrew's cross", at his own request, as he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross on which Christ was crucified.
Attributes: Old man with long (in the East often untidy) white hair and beard, holding the Gospel in right hand, sometimes leaning on a saltire cross
Patronage: Scotland, Russia, Sicily, Greece, Romania, Amalfi, Luqa (Malta) and Prussia; Army Rangers, mariners, fishermen, fishmongers, rope-makers, singers and performers
Prayer:
