Reflecting on the Saints

  The Saints / Liturgical Feast Days celebrated this week include: Sept 8 th  –  Birth of the B.V. Mary Sept 9 th  –  St. Peter Claver Sept 13 th  –  St. John Chrysostom Sept 14 th  –  Exultation of the Cross Sept 15 th  –  Our Lady of Sorrows   Though the Feast, for us, the Solemnity  Our Lady of Sorrows  is the Principal Patronal Feast of my religious order, the  Servants of Mary   [US]   [Int’l] , for a reflection here I believe that both of the Saints remembered this week,  St. Peter Claver  and  St. John Chrysostom  offer better opportunities to do so here. Then since I have spent a fair amount of time recently writing about saints from the Early Church / Patristic Era –  St. Pontian and Hippolytus (Aug. 13th) ,  St. Monica (Aug. 27 th )  and  St. Gregory the Great (Sept 3 rd )   – I’ve decided to devote my time here to  St. Peter Claver . But first...

This week the General Calendar of Saints is rather empty.  The main person on it, about whom I will write below is: St. Gregory the Great (Sept 3 rd ) Additionally, there are two blesseds remembered in my religious order.  They are: Bl. Maria Magdalena Starace, OSM (Sept 5 th ), foundress of the Servite Compassionist Sisters in Castell’al Mare, outside of Naples.  In many ways, she’s like so many other foundresses – Mother Cabrini , Mother McAuley -- across the world of apostolic congregations in the 19 th century, serving orphans and the poor.  She serves as my Order’s equivalent.  Bl. Bonaventure of Forli, OSM (Sept 6 th )  who lived in the 1400s, and like many saints and blessed of his time, , was known for his preaching.  Perhaps he could be thought of as a (today) somewhat less renowned Servite contemporary to the still very much famous Franciscan preacher St. Bernardine of Siena, OFM (May 20) . But we’ll focus on St. Gregory the Gre...

  Of the three Saints recalled this week, Aug 27 - Saint Monica Aug 28 – Saint Augustine Aug 29 – St. John the Baptist (passion of) I’ve decided to write about St. Monica , who was St. Augustine’s mother. She’s a reminder to us that everyone, including people like St. Augustine about whom entire library shelves of books have been written over the centuries, had a mother. And indeed, as a mother, St. Monica did not disappoint.  Born in the 300s in North Africa, by tradition she was thought to be a Berber , a Saharan ethnicity that has existed from Roman times until today.  Her biography on an Augustinian website says that she was born into an already Christian family of some means.  For reasons unclear, she was married then to a local Roman landowner named Patricius. St. Monica came to be revered as an exemplary Christian woman in both her devotion and almsgiving even if she lived in somewhat challenging domestic circumstances. Her husband is remembered as havin...

Of the various liturgical feasts and memorials  celebrated this week (a list is given at the end of this article), I’ve decided to devote this post to: Aug 22 nd  -- the  Coronation of the B.V. Mary as Queen of Heaven The  Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary , rounds out an octave of celebration and reflection on Mary, the mother of Jesus, which begins with the  Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary  celebrated on August 15 th . Many / most Catholics will also know well that the  Coronation of the B.V. Mary  constitutes the  final Mystery  of the  Dominican   Rosary . But what are we celebrating in this Feast Day? Well, in the final chapter of   The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church , the  Second Vatican Council , delineated the role of Mary in both the Mystery of Christ, and in the Mystery of the Church. In the first case, in the Mystery of Christ, Mary is revered as the human person, who said “Yes” to God’s...

 Once again this week has been filled with a wide number of very interesting saints: Aug 11 th – St Clare of Assisi , foundress of the Poor Clares or the feminine expression of the Franciscan Order .    Though once she entered into the convent, she became a cloistered nun, she seemed to communicate with everyone, from popes to kindred spirits across the alps and a few more mountain ranges in Prague .     Thus she has come to be taken as the “Patron Saint of Telecommunication,” and even served as the inspiration to Mother Angelica’s founding of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) , which in its origins operated out of the mother house of Mother Angelica’s community, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration .   Aug 12 th – St Jane Frances Chantal was a noble woman then widow who lived in the 16 th -17 th century in France who became then a nun and founded a religious order, the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary for women whom other religio...

 This week is another fairly busy one in terms of special feast days or commemorations. On August 5 th , we celebrate the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major , one of the four major basilicas of Rome, the others being St. Peter’s , St. Paul’s Outside the Walls , and St. John Lateran , all associated with Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome . On August 6 th , we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord .  This is a feast which along with the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary (celebrated on Oct 7 th ) entered into the Liturgical Calendar somewhat oddly in commemoration of a couple of (at the time) significant Christian military victories against the (Muslim) Turks in the 15 th -16 th centuries – the Hungarian lifting of the Turkish Siege of Belgrade (1456) in the first case and victory in the Naval Battle of Lepanto (1571) a century later in the second.   Over the course of the centuries, memory of the martial origins of the...

This week has been a busy one with regards to the Saints. On July 29, we remembered St. Martha , to whom in recent years, the Church also added her sister Mary and brother Lazarus.  Poor "busy bee" St. Martha, she's never gotten the respect that she really deserves ;-).  On July 30th, we remembered St. Peter Chrysologus , a Church father who lived in the 5th Century, a time of a good deal of confusion with the first and then repeated sacking of Rome.  He functioned as the Bishop of Ravenna which became the capital of the region for a time. On July 31st, we remembered St. Ignatius of Loyola , a favorite saint of mine, the founder of the Jesuits, a religious congregation that became famous for its learning, missionary work and spiritual direction all finding root in a man, the future St. Ignatius, who began life hoping to find "glory on the battlefield" as a soldier.  An excellent recent movie about him was Ignatio de Loyola (produced in English by the Jesuits of...