Saint of the day and Feast days.

[odhiambo]

"If there be here any hidden Roman Catholics, let them pray for me but the prayers of heretics I will not have."

St. John Ogilve

A memorable quote!

"He worked as an underground missionary in Edinburgh and Glasgow, dodging the Queen‘s priest-hunters, disguised as a soldier named Watson. After 11 months in the field (and on the run), John was betrayed by a phony Catholic, imprisoned, interrogated, then tortured for the names of active Catholics. He gave no information. “Your threats cheer me; I mind them no more than the cackling of geese,” he told his captors. Asked if he feared to die Father John replied, “No more than you do to dine.”"

You are as busy as the proverbial bee Shin  God Bless you for all your hard work. Your reward is piling up in Heaven. 

[Patricia]

“Your threats cheer me; I mind them no more than the cackling of geese,” he told his captors. Asked if he feared to die Father John replied, “No more than you do to dine.”"

 

[Bailey2]

These are quite inspiring.  I hope to read more.  Thank you odiambo!  (and glad to see you here)

"Are you crying because you want to do God's will or because you want God to do your will?"

This is the wisest thing I've ever read from a spiritual director.  St. Frances of Rome wanted a good thing (a religious vocation) and she was meant to be a wife and mother.  Without being the second, she would have never been an adequate tool for God to use for His purposes.  I think that is a lesson for all of us.  We aspire but God has His plans for us and often they are not what we want or have planned.

[odhiambo]

These are quite inspiring.  I hope to read more.  Thank you odiambo!  (and glad to see you here)

"Are you crying because you want to do God's will or because you want God to do your will?"

This is the wisest thing I've ever read from a spiritual director.  St. Frances of Rome wanted a good thing (a religious vocation) and she was meant to be a wife and mother.  Without being the second, she would have never been an adequate tool for God to use for His purposes.  I think that is a lesson for all of us.  We aspire but God has His plans for us and often they are not what we want or have planned.

Thank you Bailey. I am very glad to be here.
I agree with your comment on the advise given to Saint Frances by her spiritual adviser. We tend to pray to God for want we want, completely forgetting it may not be what He wants for us! I guess we should, like Jesus did, always add, "But Your Will, not mine" at the end of each request we make of God.

[odhiambo]

12 March

Today is the Feast day of
Blessed Angela (Aniela) Salawa
One,among many others.

Blessed Angela (Aniela) Salawa.

Angela was born on September 9, 1881 at Siepraw , Krakow in Poland. She was the eleventh of twelve children of Bartholomew and Salawa Ewa Bochenek. She was baptised Angela (Aniela). Her father was a blacksmith and her mother was a housewife, devoted to her many children and to her house. She taught her children piety, modesty and hard work. This was the home environment under which Angela grew up. Her mother, also prepared her for her First Communion at twelve years, according to the custom of the time.
When Angela was 15 years old, she worked for a family in Siepraw. Her work consisted of grazing cows, cutting grass, and entertaining the children.
When she returned home, her father wanted her to marry. She was now 16 years old.
Angela rejected this call to marriage. She instead moved to Krakow where her older sister Therese lived.

Angela worked for some families in Krakow. She knew loss and sorrow as she lost her sister Theresa, then her mother. With this loss came the need for more closeness to God. She responded by extending her time for prayer in church and at home and in meditation. With the assistance of her spiritual director, the Jesuit Father Stanislaus Mieloch, she gave herself to God with the vow of perpetual chastity, a vow already pronounced in early youth.

In 1900 she enrolled in the Association of St. Zita, promoting care for the household, so she could exercise in a more organized fashion, a fruitful apostolate in her work, becoming a guide and a model of Christian life.
Angela joined the Third Order of St. Francis, on May 15, 1912, in the church of the Conventual Franciscans.
During the First World War, she helped with her little savings, prisoners of war, without distinction of nationality, voluntarily undertook to love the wounded and sick in hospitals in Cracow, where she was respectfully called “the holy lady”.

In 1916, Angela was accused of loving her master, a lawyer named Fischer. She was dismissed from the house where she had worked since 1905. Then followed some years of neglect, without work and with her health failing. She retreated into a small room in an attic. Here, she began the last period of her life, five years of suffering in union with God, who gratified her with visions, especially of Jesus with a crown of thorns and suffering. Her confessor bore her daily Communion. It is said that Angela , in her love for Jesus, begged to take upon herself the disease of others, her suffering was multiplied, while those for whom it was offered healed.

At the end she agreed to leave her small room in the attic and was hospitalized at St. Zita’s Hospital in Krakow, where after receiving the sacraments, she died on March 12, 1922 in extreme poverty with a reputation for holiness.
On May 13, 1949, Angela’s body was transferred from the cemetery to the Basilica of St. Francis of Krakow.
Pope John Paul II proclaimed her Blessed August 13, 1991 in Krakow, during his apostolic visit to Poland.

Blessed Angela
Pray for us!

[odhiambo]

She retreated into a small room in an attic. Here, she began the last period of her life, five years of suffering in union with God, who gratified her with visions, especially of Jesus with a crown of thorns and suffering. Her confessor bore her daily Communion. It is said that Angela , in her love for Jesus, begged to take upon herself the disease of others, her suffering was multiplied, while those for whom it was offered healed.

I really marvelled at this. Many of us pray for God to heal us of our ailments. Saint Angela "in her love for Jesus, begged to take upon herself the disease of others, her suffering was multiplied, while those for whom it was offered healed"
Saint Angela
Pray for us, that we too may have such love for Jesus!

[Shin]

To take others' sufferings and punishments on, and make them your own instead, to heal, and to atone...

[Patricia]

That,  I think is the perfection of love for ones neighbour.

[Patricia]

We see the cross constantly in Blessed Angela's life, with which she grew in sanctity rather than wallow in bitterness. Praise God!

[odhiambo]

13 March
Today is the Feast day of
Saint Leander of Seville
Among, other saints.

Saint Leander of Seville
Bishop

Leander was born at Cartagena, Spain, about the year 534. His parents were Romans established in that city. The father was named Severianus (. Severian) and his mother was named Theodora.The family emigrated from Carthage about 554 and went to Seville.
Severian had three sons, Leander, Isidore, and Fulgentius and one daughter, Florentina. St. Leander and St. Isidore both became bishops of Seville; St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Carthagena, and St. Florentina, a nun. Leander became a Benedictine monk initially , and then in 579 Bishop of Seville. In the meantime be founded a celebrated school, which soon became a centre of learning and orthodoxy.
Saint Leander fought Aryanism while undergoing many trials but finally converted many heretics.
Among those he converted from the Arian heresy were the Visigoths who were at the time the overlords of most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Leander presided at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, where Visigothic Spain abjured Arianism. It was Leander who delivered the closing sermon.

On his return from this council, Leander convened another important synod in his metropolitan city of Seville in 590, and never afterwords ceased his efforts to consolidate the work, in which his brother and successor St. Isidore was to follow him.
Saint Leander also composed an influential Rule for nuns and was the first to introduce the Nicene Creed at Mass. He was a friend of Pope Saint Gregory the Great.

Worn out by his many activities in the cause of Christ, Leander died around 600 and was succeeded in the See of Seville by his brother Isidore. The Spanish Church honors Leander as the Doctor of the Faith.

Saint Leander
Pray for us!

[odhiambo]

14 March

Today is the Feast day of
Saint Maximilian
Among many other saints.

[odhiambo]

Saint Maximilian.
Also known as
St. Maximilian of Theveste.
Maximilian of Tebessa
Marmilian or Mamilian
Martyr.
Maximilian was born in AD 274. His father, Fabius Victor was a soldier in the Roman army, and because of this, Maximilian too, was expected to join the army at the age of 21, but this was not to be.
About the year 295, the proconsul of Numidia( Algeria) Cassius Dion, went to Theveste to recruit soldiers for the
third Augustan legion stationed there. At this time the Roman army was mainly
volunteers, but sons of veterans were obliged to serve. Maximilian, the
21-year-old son of the Roman army veteran Fabius Victor, was presented to
the recruiting agent. The advocatus Pompeianus, seeing that Maximilian would
make an excellent recruit, asked for him to be measured: he was 5'10" tall. The
ensuing dialogue between the proconsul Dion and Maximilian has been preserved to
this day.
When asked his name, Maximilian replied, "Why do you wish to know my name? I
cannot serve because I am a Christian." Nevertheless, orders were given for
him to be given the military seal. He answered, "I cannot do it: I cannot be a
soldier." When told he must serve or die, he said, "You may cut off my head,
but I will not serve. My army is the army of God, and I cannot fight for this
world,"
It was pointed out to him that there were Christians serving as
bodyguards for the emperors Diocletian and Maximian. To this he replied,
"That is their business. I am a Christian, too, and I cannot serve."
Dion then told Victor to correct his son. Victor, who had become a Christian like his son,
said, "He knows what he believes, and he won't change his mind."
Dion insisted, "Agree to serve and receive the military seal." "I already
have the seal of Christ, my God . . . I will not accept the seal of this world; if
you give it to me, I will break it for it is worthless. I cannot wear a piece of
lead around my neck after I have received the saving sign of Jesus Christ, my
Lord, the son of the living God. You do not know Him; yet He suffered for our
salvation: God delivered Him up for our sins. He is the one whom all
Christians serve; we follow Him as the Prince of Life and Author of Salvation."
Again Dion stated that there are other Christians who are soldiers.
Maximilian answered, "They know what is best for them. I am a Christian and I cannot do what is wrong." Dion continued, "What wrong do those commit who serve in the
army?" Maximilian answered, "You know very well what they do."

Threatened with death if he remained obstinate, Maximilian answered, "This
is the greatest thing that I desire. Dispatch me quickly. Therein lies my
glory."
Then he added, "I shall not die. When I leave this earth, I shall live with
Christ, my Lord." He was sentenced accordingly: "Whereas Maximilian has
disloyally refused the military oath, he is sentenced to die by the sword." That is by beheading.

Just before his execution, Maximilian encouraged his companions to persevere
and asked his father to give his new clothes to the executioner. We are told
that Fabius Victor "went home happily, thanking God for having allowed him to
send such a gift to heaven."

The place of Maximilian's death is given as Theveste (Tebessa) in Numidia,
but it may have been nearer Carthage, where his body was taken for burial by a
devout woman named Pompeiana. It was buried close to the relics of Saint
Cyprian.

Saint Maximilian
Pray for us!

[Patricia]

I don't understand. How can I refuse to serve my country by being a soldier if my country requires me to? 

[Patricia]

Not that I can imagine myself as a soldier. Heh heh    My family would laugh if they ever thought of me as  a soldier.

[Shin]

There must have been something particularly immoral about the matter at the time, I would think, or dangerous for his soul.

[Shin]

Not that I can imagine myself as a soldier. Heh heh    My family would laugh if they ever thought of me as  a soldier.