Catholic Saints & Feasts

Fr. Michael Black
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"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black. These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.

  1. 1d ago

    Georgia Martyrs: Beatification October 31, 2026

    Georgia Martyrs   Beatification: October 31, 2026    St. Francis Would Be Proud  Polyandry, or a woman taking multiple husbands, is an obscure marital custom. In the few remote Himalayan villages where it may be practiced, brothers marry the same woman to protect rights to family property. Polygamy, or a man taking multiple wives, has always been, and is still, found globally, typically in higher social strata. Only high-status men of exalted power and wealth can take more than one wife. In a harem culture, more low-status women have access to more high-status men precisely because those men are not monogamous.  This sometimes leaves low status men with fewer options for marriage among their own, leading to male-on-male class resentment or to low status men coalescing around a chief or cacique.    Men's natural tendency towards polygamy in pagan cultures had to be bucked like a bronco before a tamer Christian culture flourish. And it was Catholic missionaries who did the taming. It was hard won and took centuries, but the teaching of priests and nuns and the witness of Christian couples eventually prevailed. At times, though, the price was paid in warm blood. Today's martyrs, all celibate Franciscan priests and brothers, spilled their blood in the soil of Georgia for marriage, for monogamy.  Such sacrifice is a golden thread in the tapestry of the saints. Herod Antipas beheaded St. John the Baptist for criticizing Herod's marriage to Herodias while his first wife was still alive. St. Thomas More was decapitated for, among a related web of issues, refusing to endorse the polygamy of his lusty King.  St. Charles Lawanga and Companions were burned alive after refusing the disordered advances of their king, who counted more than a dozen wives. Even Kolbe sacrificed his life for a marriage.    An Indian sub-chief named Juanillo plotted the bloody end of today's martyrs. Juanillo is a diminutive of Juan, so he could be called Little John. Juanillo was a baptized convert from the Guale tribe in modern day coastal Georgia. He had a wife but wanted another one. Juanillo was a high-status male in a traditional indigenous culture accepting of polygamy. No shortage of women thirsted to be a wife of a chief. Juanillo could have as many wives as he wanted. And no priest, especially a white European priest, would deny him what nature commanded.   The Spanish Conquistador Ponce De Leon christened as "La Isla de Pascua Florida" the modern state of Florida when he and his countrymen first spied it in 1513. They thought it was an island. The name can be translated as "The Island of Easter Flowers," reflecting the ships' arrival during Holy Week. Eventually "La Florida" came to mean virtually the entire southeastern United States, as Spanish, French, and English adventurers pushed deeper into the immense continent of which Florida was just a modest protrusion.   The struggle to evangelize the native tribes of Florida throughout the 1500s was one battle after another. Hurricanes roiled the sea. Ships sank. Men drowned. Provisions were lost. The soil was thin. Nothing grew. Colonists starved. Priests were slaughtered by natives to pay long standing debts incurred by colonists' offenses. No miraculous tilma ever appeared to dazzle the neophytes. No demon-topped temples were razed or hulking colonial churches built over them. Florida was nothing like Mexico. The 1500s was a lost century, a long trail of tears, for the Spanish in Florida.  In the 1590s, Franciscan friars disembarked on coastal Georgia to once again try to establish missions among the Indigenous tribes of that region, among them the Guale people. The Franciscans did not build cities on a hill. They lived among the people in primitive lodgings, ate what the natives ate, and learned their tongue. They preached, administered the sacraments, and taught the basic Christian message, which conflicted with indigenous customs in some areas.  And thus it came to pass that the path of the Indian and the path of Christ crossed. Father Pedro de Corpa insisted that Juanillo, a baptized Catholic, be permanently faithful to his one wife, none other and none else. Fr. Corpa was killed on September 14, 1597 and his severed head placed on a stake. Juanillo and his band of frenzied young men then went on a hunt for more prey. Over the next four days they knifed, decapitated, and slaughtered Fathers Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añon, and Francisco de Veráscola, and Brother Antonio de Badajóz in missions along the Georgia coast and its Sea Islands.    The Catholic Church has determined that the five Franciscans were murdered in "odium fidei" - “out of hatred for the faith.” They were not killed primarily because they were Spanish or because they were colonists but because of the faith they preached and witnessed to.  Today's martyrs did not find the fountain of youth in greater Florida but the fountain of eternal life. Their holy images now rest on our noble altars, where the faithful can leave flowers, light candles, and bend knees and heads as we whisper our prayers, assured of the powerful intercession of these generous martyrs.  Martyrs of Georgia, before the last threads of your lives were cut, you had given yourselves to Christ by abandoning country, family, language, and home. You prepared for death by dying in small ways a thousand times before. Hear our prayers. Grant our petitions. Amen.

    Georgia Martyrs: Beatification October 31, 2026

  2. 5d ago

    October 28: Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

    October 28: Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles First Century Feast; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saints of hopeless causes (Jude) and tanners (Simon) The Apostles laid the foundation for the household of faith There is often a crosshatch of bloody scratches on the right cheek of statues of the suffering Christ in Latin America. It’s called the “Judas Kiss,” a reminder of Judas Iscariot’s act of both affectionately greeting Christ and betraying Him in one sinister gesture. No one kneels before a statue of Judas Iscariot in a Catholic church. No one lights a candle to Judas asking that he restore their lost sight or heal their child’s cancer. But Judas Iscariot wasn’t the only Judas among the Twelve Apostles. Today’s Saint Jude (or Judas) was often confused with his evil contemporary. Since Judas Iscariot was so despised and ignored, and since he shared a name with the good Jude, a tradition gathered over the centuries of petitioning today’s saint only when all other saints had failed to answer one’s prayers. Saint Jude became the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, then, probably because of the faithful’s reluctance to seek the intercession of one whose misfortune it was to share a name with Christ’s betrayer. Out of confusion or an abundance of caution, Saint Jude thus became a saint of last resort. When the dam was barely holding, when a pulse could no longer be felt, when the rains wouldn’t come, a candle was lit to Saint Jude, hoping against hope, that he would respond. Saint Simon the Apostle is called the “Zealot” in Saint Luke’s Gospel. This may describe his zeal for the house of the Lord or denote his membership in a radical Jewish sect. Zeal is, in any case, a virtue. It must be joined with prudence to ensure that it does not offend for the sake of offending. A zealous soul will, however, lovingly provoke others to consider the things of God through his words, actions, and appropriate silences. Zeal for the house of the Lord has migrated to other concerns in many parts of today’s world. While religious zeal has unfortunately come to be understood as a negative virtue, zeal for planet earth and various other more “acceptable” causes are now seen as positive. The intentional disciple, however, understands zeal in its historical sense as a burning concern for perennial truths, not mere fads, and as a proactive form of love for all those things that lead mankind to God. God is a person, after all, and depends on His friends to defend Him. Saints Simon and Jude disappear from the pages of the Gospels after the brief mentions of their names. Nothing is known of either of them with any certainty, not even where they evangelized or where they met death. As Apostles, however, we know with certainty that they were key actors in laying the deep foundations of the Church in the rock-solid substrata of the Middle Eastern culture in which they lived. The Catholic Church is the household of faith. An earthly family is united by blood, while the theological family of the Church is united by the Sacraments and the Creed. But it is not sufficient for a family to be united by biological or theological DNA. A family is little if it is not a household. A household works together, prays together, and eats together. A household is where a family feels like a family. A boy may know who his father is, but if he doesn’t share everyday life with that father, their family relationship means little. It is in the household that life happens all over the globe. Mom and dad, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in the kitchen, around the table, in the garden, at Mass, a band united in both mundane and sacred duties. The Church is the household of faith where God’s family gathers week in and week out, century after century. Christians must not only be united intellectually, but must live united, and feel that unity in their bones. Today’s saints worked long ago to build the household we now enjoy. They dug the well so that we could pull up the water and drink. They planted so that we could reap. They lit the fire so that we could warm ourselves close to the flames, one universal family living in one universal household we call the Church. Saints Simon and Jude, we ask for your intercession in heaven as members of the Twelve Apostles. Approach the Lord Jesus with our needs in your hands. Answer the prayers we present. Fulfill the petitions we seek.

    October 28: Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

  3. Oct 24

    October 24: Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop

    October 24: Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop 1807–1870 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of textile merchants, the Catholic press, and vocational educators A tireless bishop founds an Order and moves mountains Today’s saint was a finely tuned, high-octane engine of evangelization. Anthony Claret was from Catalonia, the region around Barcelona, Spain. He studied for the priesthood in Rome, was ordained in 1835, and then returned to Spain to spend ten years giving missions. In 1849 he founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, more commonly known as the Claretians in honor of their founder. The Order was particularly focused on publishing works of devotion and piety, books offering spiritual advice, and numerous pamphlets of basic catechesis. The Claretians filled a need and, as publishers, enjoyed enormous success. They published millions and millions of books and pamphlets. And all of this was spearheaded by Anthony, who not only generated doctrinal content but who also mastered the technical details of printing, learned the business side of the industry, and edited the published works himself. In 1851, when Anthony was appointed the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, the full array of his talents were put on display. He added the name “Mary” at his episcopal consecration and began a remarkably fruitful seven years as Archbishop. He traveled incessantly throughout his territory, restored the seminary, established hospitals and dozens of new parishes, and personally visited the sick and dying. He was ever present and provocative in his pastoral outreach, so much so that attempts were made on his life by the apathetic offended by his success. He was severely injured in one of these attempts but survived. Bishop Anthony was a true man of action. Creative ideas on how to spread the Gospel flowed constantly from his mind. Every tribulation and hardship was, for him, just an invitation to deeper commitment. It was nothing for Anthony to expend all of his energy one day and to wake up and do the same the next day. He was replenished by exhausting himself. In 1857 he resigned as Archbishop when he was recalled to Spain to become the personal chaplain to the Queen. This sedentary life was a cross for Anthony, who was a born missionary. But he continued to dedicate himself to apostolic activity as much as his court obligations allowed. At the Royal Monastery outside of Madrid where he was assigned, he set up a science library, a school for music and languages, a museum of natural history, and a fraternity composed of cultural leaders and intellectuals that grew to national prominence. Anthony was such a motor of evangelization and cultural advancement that he earned powerful enemies who feared his success. They eventually drove him from Spain to France, where he died in 1870. Like so many saints, Anthony Mary Claret was a double or triple threat. He was so multi-faceted, so skilled in so many diverse fields, that it is hard to believe that one man accomplished so much. He worked well, and he worked quickly. Like many other saints, behind Anthony’s labors was a regimented life of prayer, daily Mass, the rosary, fasting, spiritual reading, self-discipline and moral strictness. He was perpetually in the presence of God, and in his later years experienced spiritual ecstasies and performed miraculous healings. This incredible man of action and prayer was canonized in 1950. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, you outdid all your peers in dedication to Christ, Mary, and the Church. We pray that you intercede in heaven to give all bishops the graces and the skills to lead their flocks in prayer, education, and devotion as you did.

    October 24: Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop

  4. Oct 23

    October 23: Saint John of Capistrano, Priest

    October 23: Saint John of Capistrano, Priest 1386–1456 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of military chaplains and jurists A worldly man becomes a Franciscan and a great preacher Today’s saint, like Saints Francis of Assisi, Maximilian Kolbe, Jerome Emiliani and many other male saints, was a prisoner of war. And just like all the others, imprisonment changed John of Capistrano forever. Being confined to the four walls of a prison made him realize how precious was the life that God had given him and how sad it was to waste it on frivolities. John had studied law before he was captured in battle and had even become the mayor of the major Italian city of Perugia. He was bright, energetic, and successful. Life was his oyster. John’s mature decision to enter religious life was not, then, an escape hatch from real life or the last exit on a dead-end road. He had silver in his hands but dropped it to stretch for the gold. In a shocking display of humility after giving his life to Christ, John mounted a donkey backwards and rode through the streets of his town wearing only a list of his worst sins. People ridiculed him and pelted him with mud and dung. In this forlorn state, he presented himself at the door of a Franciscan monastery to seek admission. He was immediately accepted. After studies, he was ordained a priest in 1421. John’s well of humility had no bottom, and his physical austerities never ceased. He continually mortified himself. He fasted, went barefoot, and slept little throughout his life. He was a protégé of the great Saint Bernardino of Siena, a fellow Franciscan. Like Bernardino, John became a renowned preacher and traveled throughout Central and Northern Europe drawing vast crowds. John lived poverty so totally that he, along with other reforming Franciscans of his generation, made it appear as if they were the measure for Christ’s poverty, instead of Christ being the example and inspiration for Franciscan poverty. John’s radical poverty and other reforming efforts were also the beginning of the divisions that would eventually cleave the body Franciscan into three distinct Orders. Already famous in his mid-sixties as a theologian, preacher, and inquisitor, John was appointed by the Pope to lead a team of Franciscan missionaries to Hungary and the Bohemian peoples of Central Europe. John Hus, a Bohemian priest, had been burned at the stake by the Church for heresy in 1415. This searing event had caused his followers, known as Hussites, to increasingly separate themselves from the Church. Hussite theology was a precursor to the Protestant movement that engulfed Northern Europe one hundred years after Hus’ death. The Pope wanted John of Capistrano to either convert the Hussites or to subjugate them. John’s mission to Hungary and Central Europe produced mixed results. He was an effective crusher of heretics, but his techniques did not always display the tact such a delicate mission required. After the shocking fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, John led a preaching crusade to unify a Christian response to the threat of impending Muslim expansion. At the age of seventy, Saint John personally led troops in a successful battle to defend Belgrade from the Turks, but he died soon afterward. Over two centuries after his death, John and his melodic last name of Capistrano were immortalized by his Franciscan brothers when they named a large mission in Southern California in his honor. The Mission of San Juan Capistrano, although ruined by earthquakes, is a much visited stop on the famous chain of missions that wind up and down the spine of California. This soldier-priest and tireless reformer and preacher was canonized in 1724. Saint John of Capistrano, we ask your intercession to embolden all preachers to present the truths of Catholicism in all their fullness and vigor, and to buttress that preaching by an impeccable life of virtue and apostolic activity.

    October 23: Saint John of Capistrano, Priest

  5. Oct 22

    October 22: Saint John Paul II, Pope

    October 22: Saint John Paul II, Pope 1920–2005 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of World Youth Day Fully prepared, possessing every skill, a pope for the ages makes maximum impact Thirty-three years after the dark cloud of communism had settled over Eastern Europe, on a crisp autumn night, heavy bells across Poland began to sway and toll in their high towers. Their clangs peeled down the valleys, thundered through the town squares, and reverberated off every city street. Men and women spilled like water into the streets. Songs. Candles. Prayers. Flowers. Tears. Flags. Embraces. Champagne. Could it be true? A son of Poland had been elected Pope! The impossible had become possible! In the town of Wadowice, Father Edward Zacher was paralyzed by emotion. He could not summon a single word for the faithful who crammed the church in thanksgiving. Late that night, he slowly opened the sacramental register of the parish. He leafed through the yellowed pages back to May 1920. Carolus Joseph Wojtyła. Father Zacher had taught him catechism as a boy. The register duly noted, in Latin, Karol’s dates of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, Priestly and Episcopal Ordination, and consecration as Cardinal. In a margin at the bottom of the page, the old priest’s hand trembled as he made a new entry: “Die 16 X 1978 in Summum Pontificem electus et sibi nomen Ioannem Paulum II imposuit.” Pope Saint John Paul II was a titan. He was as prepared as any man before him to be pope. He was all things—a highly educated European intellectual, a philosophy professor with two Doctorates, a mystic of intense spirituality, a working bishop of a large and dynamic Archdiocese behind the iron curtain, a Cardinal whose counsel was valued by the Pope, an active contributor at the Second Vatican Council, a polyglot, and a world traveler. Adding to this embarrassment of riches, he was an athlete and outdoorsman, had palpable charisma, an open personality, a manly presence, vast circles of lay friends, a resonant voice, and he was just 58 years old when elected! Never had a conclave of Cardinals made a bolder, wiser choice. That John Paul II was the first Slavic pope, and the first non-Italian in centuries, was also interesting and became more significant as his papacy unfolded. The times and the man were a match. He was simply the perfect man for the hour and his long papacy disappointed in almost nothing. The catalogue of accomplishments of John Paul II, both before and after his papal election, is long. He was a tornado of activity and displayed a physical stamina which might have buried a man half his age. He wrote profoundly on every subject: Saint Mary, the Trinity, the Church’ social teachings, suffering, Christ, work, moral theology, philosophy, and on and on. Every subject found ample space to grow in his capacious mind. His personal narrative was also compelling. He had personally experienced the effects of the twentieth century’s twin horrors, Nazism and Communism, both efforts to create a perfect society without regard for God or man’s dignity. He knew what it was to be personally degraded, to come close to death, to go into hiding. He had seen his entire nation brought to its knees in humiliation. He understood, at the deepest level, what the Church meant to the world. The papacy of our Saint built on the international Petrine ministry first initiated, in small steps, by Pope Saint Paul VI. John Paul II made this universal ministry an enduring part of every pope’s profile. He said Mass on the altar of the world, where humanity itself was his congregation. He had the piety of a humble Mexican peasant and the sophistication of an erudite German professor. No one, and no type, was a stranger to him. An assassin’s bullet almost killed him on May 13, 1981, but he survived, barely. The physical effects of his injuries, and other illnesses, laid bare his sufferings for all to see. On the night of April 2, 2005, this giant, this father to the world, this Moses to the Slavs, died as tens of thousands gathered in prayerful vigil outside his window in Saint Peter’s Square. His funeral Mass was timeless and supernatural in a manner felt by all, but difficult to capture in words. He was canonized in 2014 and is buried in a side nave of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Saint Pope John Paul II, you laid your superabundant gifts on God’s altar as a teen, and God used them to the fullest extent until your death. Help all Christians to put their talents at God’s service to help lead others to Christ and to His Church.

    October 22: Saint John Paul II, Pope

  6. Oct 20

    October 20: Saint Paul of the Cross, Priest (U.S.A.)

    October 20: Saint Paul of the Cross, Priest (U.S.A.) 1694–1775 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of Ovada, Italy, and founder of the Passionists He was a marathoner whose “runner’s high” lasted a lifetime After unsuccessfully living the life of a soldier, today’s saint left the military to live a secluded life of prayer for over five years. But then in 1720, he received a vision instructing him to found a Congregation devoted to Christ’s passion. In 1727 he was ordained a priest by the pope, along with his brother, and novices began to come to his new Congregation in greater numbers. Paul was not a frivolous man, though, and the Congregation’s Rule was grueling. He and his brethren lived strict austerity, and their ministry focused on preaching the passion to the poor. The new priests did not socialize with people of means and lived as desperately poor as those they served. The effects of poverty encompass more than economic deprivation. Poverty means lack of privacy, bed bugs, rotten teeth, soft apples, little rest, flea-infested clothes, open wounds, infection, putrid water, cold nights, going to bed hungry, violent fights over a handful of coins, lack of hope, and bitterness at one’s own miserable plight. The deep resentment poverty can engender powers the poor man’s emotions over the cliffs of envy and hate. Living radical poverty, and experiencing life among the poor and their emotional plight, was too much for some of Father Paul’s novices. Rigors such as this were for the few, and many novices abandoned ship. But enough hardy and faithful men remained to enable the new Congregation to succeed. Provisional church approval came in the 1740s on the condition that the Congregation ameliorate its tough-as-nails Rule. Full papal approval for the Congregation came slowly, in 1769. The Congregation’s members were known as the Discalced Clerks of the Most Holy Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They were more simply known as Passionists. All Passionists took a special fourth vow to preach Christ’s passion so that it never faded from the faithful’s memory. The Passionists’ black habits bore the distinctive badge of their brotherhood—a heart emblazoned with the words JESU XPI PASSIO mounted by a white cross with instruments of Christ’s crucifixion displayed below. Saint Paul of the Cross was so united to the passion that it was said that his heart pulsated more quickly on Fridays. He was a powerful preacher, and both he and the Passionist fathers in general became known as expert retreat masters, confessors, and directors of parish missions. Paul’s heart melted with love for Christ his entire life. He spent hours in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, never failed to subjugate his body with mortifications and austerities, and was insistent about living radical poverty. Paul seemed to experience a type of spiritual “runner’s high,” something common to many saints known more for their ardor than their originality. As Paul fasted and prayed and lived poverty, it became easier and more joyful for him to fast and pray and live poverty. His virtues gained steam as he rolled through life and as his body sunk deeper and deeper into the person of Christ. Paul also founded a Congregation of contemplative nuns devoted to the passion. The Passionists remained a relatively small order until they spread beyond Italy in the mid-1800s, including to England, a country which Paul always intended to bring back to the Church. Providentially, it was a Passionist priest, Blessed Dominic Barberi, who received the great Englishman Saint John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church. Saint Paul of the Cross’ legacy is his Congregation more than his few published works. He even developed a reputation as a miracle worker and healer in his old age. He was raised to the altars in 1867. Saint Paul of the Cross, you lived an exemplary life of poverty, obedience, prayer, and mortification throughout your span of many years. May your followers remain faithful to your charism, and may all priests see in you an example of holiness.

    October 20: Saint Paul of the Cross, Priest (U.S.A.)

  7. Oct 19

    October 19: Saints Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and their Companions, Martyrs (U.S.A.)

    October 19: Saints Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and their Companions, Martyrs (U.S.A.) Saint Jean: 1593–1649; Saint Isaac Jogues 1607–1646; Frs. Gabriel Lalemant, Noel Chabanel, Charles Garnier, Anthony Daniel; and laymen René Goupil and Jean de Lalande Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saints of North America, co-patrons of Canada French priests and laity leave hearth and home to be slaughtered on the edge of nowhere Deep in the dense and endless forests of Iroquois nation, Jean de Brébeuf, bound tightly to a post, slowly stretched his neck and head toward the canopy high above, and prayed. An Iroquois war party had attacked his Huron mission the day before. He had a chance to escape but he chose to stay. The baptized and neophytes looked to him, needed him, and were captured with him. Saint Jean had long before witnessed, and chronicled, the Iroquois’ depraved treatment of their Indian enemies. Now he was the captive and now he would be the victim. The painted braves prepared their instruments of torture and the ritual butchery commenced. The Iroquis peeled Jean’s lips from his face and cut off his nose and ears. Saint Jean was as silent as a rock. They poured boiling water over his head in a mock baptism and pressed hatchets, glowing red hot, against his open wounds. A hard blow to the face split his jaw in two. This was pain beyond pain, a living holocaust. When the saint tried to encourage his fellow captives with holy words, the Indians cut out his tongue. Near the end, they cut out his heart and ate it. Raw. Then they drank his warm blood. They wanted the blood of this lion to course in their own veins. Eye witnesses to Saint Jean’s torture and death, which took place alongside that of Father Gabriel Lalemant, escaped captivity and gave detailed accounts of what they had seen. Fellow Jesuits recovered the two bodies days later and verified their wounds. Brébeuf’s skull was placed in a reliquary in a convent in Quebec City. It is still there today. Saint Jean de Brébeuf was born in Bayeux, France. Bayeux is a comfortable town with low, sturdy buildings and a handsome Cathedral. It’s the kind of town people want to move to. But Saint Jean went in the opposite direction. He left Bayeux to become a Jesuit priest. When he was chosen to become a missionary, he crossed an ocean to New France (Canada). He was well educated and was the first European to master the Huron language, to study their customs, and to write a Huron-French dictionary. He was a mystic who had an intimate relationship with Our Lord and a vivid spirituality full of saints and angels. He took a vow of personal perfection, striving to rid himself of every sin, no matter how small. He canoed thousands of miles over open waters, and trekked and portaged vast expanses of prairie and woods in search of a congregation for the Truth. In a frontier culture of trappers, loggers, and ruffians, he held his own. The Indians called him “Echon”—one who carries his own weight. His oar was always in the water. For all this missionary labor, there was some success. But there was more disappointment. Some of his assassins were Huron apostates. A heroic death is not the fruit of a lukewarm life. Saint Jean was prepared for his gruesome martyrdom by many years of struggling to breathe inside of smoke-filled cabins, by suffering the bites of swarms of mosquitoes all night long, by shivering through cold nights, by eating disgusting food without complaint, and by trekking rugged terrain while poorly shod. Once, he fell on the ice and broke his collarbone, making it impossible for him to navigate jagged terrain upright. He crawled thirty-six miles on his hands and knees back to his mission. Saint Jean also prepared himself for death through disciplined prayer and meditation. He prepared himself out of a profound acceptance of God’s will. Our faith teaches that grace builds on nature. This just means that a plant grows in the ground. Bad soil; sick plant. Rich soil; healthy plant. The seed of faith planted in Saint Jean by his parents and priests was dropped into rich, black, human soil. God’s grace grew in him. God’s grace thrived in him. God’s grace never died in him. And that same powerful grace comes to us today through the intercession of this mighty oak of a man. Saint Isaac Jogues came as near to martyrdom as any man who ever lived to tell about it. Jogues was a professor in France who crossed the ocean to work among the Huron. For six years he labored as far west as Lake Superior, one of the first French men to see that lake of lakes. He was kidnapped by Mohawks in 1642 and held captive for thirteen months, during which time he witnessed, and suffered from, an orgy of barbarity similar to that later suffered by Brébeuf: torture by fire, removal of fingernails, gnawing away of fingers, whippings with thorn bush branches, cuttings, etc. Jogues’ companion, Jesuit lay brother René Goupil, a trained medic, was tomahawked to death for making the sign of the cross on the forehead of a Mohawk boy. Incredibly, just when Jogues was about to be burned alive he was rescued by Dutch traders. Jogues returned to France half a man; skeletal, lame, and with stumps where some fingers had been chewed down to their knuckles. On home soil again, he went to the local Jesuit house, where the porter assumed he was an indigent beggar. Jogues specifically requested to return to Canada, and crossed the Atlantic one last time in 1644. He was assigned to Montreal, where he crossed paths with Jean de Brébeuf, who thought Jogues was a living saint. When Jogues asked permission from his superiors to again evangelize among the Mohawks, he told a friend “Ibo, sed non redibo.” “I will go, but I will not return.” He was a prophet. He and layman Jean Lalande were captured and tomahawked to death on October 18, 1646. Their severed heads were placed as trophies on pikes. The North American martyrs were canonized in 1930. Saints Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, and companions, you died far from the comforts of home and family. You accepted sufferings you did not deserve for the greater glory of God. Grant us patience when we are impetuous, endurance when tempted to quit, humility when confronted with ignorance, and physical toughness when the comforts of life are not to be found.

    October 19: Saints Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and their Companions, Martyrs (U.S.A.)

  8. Oct 17

    October 18: Saint Luke, Evangelist

    October 18: Saint Luke, Evangelist First Century Feast; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saint of artists, physicians, and surgeons A disciple of Christ gives the Church two foundational works Saint Luke was one of the four Evangelists but not one of the Twelve Apostles. Like Saint Mark, Luke was not among that select group who walked step by step alongside Jesus as he journeyed through Palestine. Luke was more likely a disciple of Saint Paul, who mentions a Luke who accompanies him on his missionary journeys. Little is known with certainty of Luke’s life. What is known is that he wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles—over a quarter of the New Testament. The two volumes of Luke and Acts are foundational works for knowing Jesus Christ and the early Church. The third Gospel does not name its author and does not even claim to be an eye-witness account. But the earliest known manuscripts of the third Gospel are attributed to Luke, and even Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, writing in the late second century, names Luke as its author. Every one of the four Gospels has a unique perspective, is written for a specific audience, and relates certain details and stories the other Gospels do not. Saint Luke likely wrote for a non-Jewish crowd. He translates into the Greek language words that the other Gospels leave in their original language, a hint that Luke’s readers were non-Jews who could not read Hebrew and Aramaic. Luke alone tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man who repents of having ignored him. To Luke alone do we owe our knowledge of the Incarnation. It is as if he is just behind the young Mary in the room when the Archangel Gabriel announces that she will be the Mother of God. Only Luke writes down the Virgin’s Magnificat and gives us the scriptural basis for the "Hail Mary.” Yet in all of this, Luke himself does not appear. He must have been humble, because he recedes into the crowd while the whole cast of the Gospel climbs on stage. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is a diary of the very early Church. Acts is often told from a first-person perspective with the use of the word “we.” Without this journal there would be yawning gaps in our knowledge of the nascent Church. It is to Luke, especially, that we are indebted for our knowledge of Pentecost and the workings of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. Luke is clearly on Saint Paul’s missionary team and remains at the great evangelist’s side until the bitter end. When Paul is imprisoned in Rome, with his beheading just over the horizon, he is abandoned by all his coworkers save one. From his prison cell, Paul writes "Only Luke is with me" (2 Tm 4:11). Saint Augustine writes in the Confessions that the present tense of past things is called memory. The past is not really the past, then, if we remember it accurately. Memory can be ill-used when it carries a grudge and blocks forgiveness, or when it doesn’t let the past recede but allows it to invade the present so forcefully that no one is allowed to grow beyond their worst five minutes. Understood in a healthy way, memory makes the good past live again. When committed to writing, memory makes the past forever present for posterity. The written Gospels make Christ come alive. Their pages are not Christ in full, as no one can be reduced to just their documentary trace. But the Word made flesh, the Word alive today in heaven, was captured at a certain moment in time by the words of Saint Luke. Christians believe that the Gospels capture the essentials of the life of Jesus Christ which God desires the faithful to know. And when these Gospels are read in the light of the living Gospel of the Church and supplemented by the grace of the Sacraments, the witness of the saints, the governance of the hierarchy, and the teachings of the Catechism, we have all that we need to achieve heaven. The Evangelists make the original events of the life of Christ present today. Without these inspired records, God would not cease to be God, but He would certainly be less vivid to us living so many centuries after His Son became man. Saint Luke, your words preserving the life of Christ make Him knowable and lovable to the world today. Through your intercession in heaven, we ask that the riches of your Gospel, especially your words about the Blessed Mother, may inspire us to be more faithful disciples.

    October 18: Saint Luke, Evangelist
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About

"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black. These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.

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  • Creator
    Fr. Michael Black
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    267
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Fr. Michael Black
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    Catholic Saints & Feasts

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