Saint of the day and Feast days - Part 2

[odhiambo]

Saint Hilary of Arles,
pray for us!

[Poche]

St Evodius;
According to Catholic Culture very little is known of the life of St. Evodius. However, he was a pagan who converted to Christianity due to the apostolic work of Saint Peter. In the Book of Acts, one of the first communities to receive evangelism were the Jews and pagans of Antioch. The city was opulent and cosmopolitan, and there were both Hellenized Jews and pagans influenced by monotheism. The term "Christian" was coined for these Gentile (mainly Syrian and Greek) converts, and St. Peter became the bishop of Antioch and led the church there. Evodius succeeded Peter the Apostle as bishop of Antioch when Peter left Antioch for Rome.

St. Evodius was bishop of Antioch until 69 AD, and was succeeded by St. Ignatius of Antioch. It is more likely that St. Evodius died of natural causes, in office, than that he was martyred. As one of the first pagans to come to the new church, he is venerated in both the Roman Catholic Church of the east and Orthodox Churches of the East as a saint. His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is May 6 and in the Orthodox Church it is September 7.

[odhiambo]

I have never heard of Saint Evodius! Thanks Poche for this glimpse of him.
Saint Evodius,
Pray for us!

[James - a humble servant]

Same here. Thanks Poche for sharing this Saint with us.

[James - a humble servant]

Sts. Marian and James 
(d. 259)

Often, it’s hard to find much detail from the lives of saints of the early Church. What we know about the third-century martyrs we honor today is likewise minimal. But we do know that they lived and died for the faith. Almost 2,000 years later, that is enough reason to honor them.
Born in North Africa, Marian was a lector or reader; James was a deacon. For their devotion to the faith they suffered during the persecution of Valerian.

Prior to their persecution, Marian and James were visited by two bishops who encouraged them in the faith not long before they themselves were martyred. A short time later, Marian and James were arrested and interrogated. The two readily confessed their faith and, for that, were tortured. While in prison they are said to have experienced visions, including one of the two bishops who had visited them earlier.

On the last day of their lives, Marian and James joined other Christians facing martyrdom. They were blindfolded and then put to death. Their bodies were thrown into the water. The year was 259.

[Shin]

All ye holy saints pray for us! 

[James - a humble servant]

St. Rose Venerini
(1656 - 1728)

Rose was born at Viterbo in Italy, the daughter of a doctor. Following the death of her fiancé she entered a convent, but soon returned home to care for her newly widowed mother. Meanwhile, Rose invited the women of the neighborhood to recite the rosary in her home, forming a sort of sodality with them.
As she looked to her future, Rose, under the spiritual guidance of a Jesuit priest, became convinced that she was called to become a teacher in the world rather than a contemplative nun in a convent. Clearly, she made the right choice: She was a born teacher, and the free school for girls she opened in 1685 was well received.

Soon the cardinal invited her to oversee the training of teachers and the administration of schools in his Diocese of Montefiascone. As Rose's reputation grew, she was called upon to organize schools in many parts of Italy, including Rome. Her disposition was right for the task as well, for Rose often met considerable opposition but was never deterred.

She died in Rome in 1728, where a number of miracles were attributed to her. She was beatified in 1952 and canonized in 2006. The sodality, or group of women she had invited to prayer, was ultimately given the rank of a religious congregation. Today, the so-called Venerini Sisters can be found in the United States and elsewhere, working among Italian immigrants.

[James - a humble servant]

Bl. Albert of Bergamo
(Lay Dominican & Husband) [Mem]


 Blessed Albert was born in Valle d’Ogna near
 Bergamo in 1214. As a married man he was known
 for his generosity to the poor, a virtue for which his
 wife reproached him. Upon the death of his wife,
 being childless, he left his father’s farm and went to
 Cremona where he lived in poverty. His poverty
 was a witness to a group of heretics there who
 boasted of their own poverty. Attracted by the life
 of Saint Dominic he joined the Brothers of Penance,
 which later became the Order of Penance of St.
 Dominic, and lived at the Dominican priory. He
 died on May 7, 1279.

[James - a humble servant]

St. Peter of Tarentaise
(c.1102 - 1174)

There are two men named St. Peter of Tarentaise who lived one century apart. The man we honor today is the younger Peter, born in France in the early part of the 12th century. (The other man with the same name became Pope Innocent the Fifth.)
The Peter we’re focusing on became a Cistercian monk and eventually served as abbot. In 1142, he was named archbishop of Tarentaise, replacing a bishop who had been deposed because of corruption. Peter tackled his new assignment with vigor. He brought reform into his diocese, replaced lax clergy and reached out to the poor. He visited all parts of his mountainous diocese on a regular basis.

After about a decade as bishop Peter “disappeared” for a year and lived quietly as a lay brother at an abbey in Switzerland. When he was “found out,” the reluctant bishop was persuaded to return to his post. He again focused many of his energies on the poor.

Peter died in 1175 on his way home from an unsuccessful papal assignment to reconcile the kings of France and England.

[Poche]

Today we get two for the price of one.
St. Gregory Nazianzen
Gregory, surnamed the "Theologian" by the Greeks, was born at Nazianz in Cappadocia in 329. He was one of the "Three Lights of the Church from Cappadocia." To his mother, St. Nonna, is due the foundation for his saintly life as an adult. He was educated at the most famous schools of his time — Caesarea, Alexandria, Athens. At Athens he formed that storied bond of friendship with St. Basil which was still flaming with all the fervor of youthful enthusiasm when he delivered the funeral oration at the grave of his friend in 381.

Gregory was baptized in 360, and for a while lived the quiet life of a hermit. In 372 he was consecrated bishop by St. Basil. In 381 he accepted the see of Constantinople, but grieved by the constant controversies retired again to the quiet life he cherished so highly and dedicated himself entirely to contemplation.

During his life span the pendulum was continually swinging back and forth between contemplation and the active ministry. He longed for solitude, but the exigencies of the times called him repeatedly to do pastoral work and to participate in the ecclesiastical movements of the day. He was unquestionably one of the greatest orators of Christian antiquity; his many and great accomplishments were due in great measure to his exceptional eloquence. His writings have merited for him the title of "Doctor of the Church."

St. Pachomius
St. Pachomius can justifiably be called the founder of cenobitic monasticism (monks who live in community). Even though St. Antony the Great was the first to go into the desert to live a life of seclusion pursuing evangelical perfection, he lived an eremitic life, that is, a primarily solitary life.

Pachomius first started out as a hermit in the desert like many of the other men and women in the third and fourth centuries who sought the most radical expression of Christian life and he developed a very strong bond of friendship with the hermit Palemon. One day he had a vision during prayer in which he was called to build a monastery, and was told in the vision that many people who are eager to live an ascetic life in the desert, but are not inclined to the solitude of the hermit, will come and join him. His hermit friend Palemon helped him to build the monastery and Pachomius insisted that his cenobites were to aspire to the austerity of the hermits.

However, he knew that his idea was a radical one, in that most of the men who came to live in his monastery had only ever conceived of the eremitic lifestyle; his great accomplishment was to reconcile this desire for austere perfection with an openness to fulfilling the mundane requirements of community life as an expression of Christian love and service. He spent most of his first years as a cenobitic doing all the menial work on his own, knowing that his brother monks needed to be gently inducted into serving their brothers in the same manner. He therefore allowed them to devote all their time to spiritual exercises in those first years. At his death, there were eleven Pachomian monasteries, nine for men and two for women.

The rule that Pachomius drew up was said to have been dictated to him by an angel, and it is this rule that both St. Benedict in the west and St. Basil in the east drew upon to develop their better known rules of cenobitic life.

[James - a humble servant]

St. John of Avila
(1500-1569)

Born in the Castile region of Spain, John was sent at the age of 14 to the University of Salamanca to study law. He later moved to Alcala, where he studied philosophy and theology before his ordination as a diocesan priest. 
     After John’s parents died and left him as their sole heir to a considerable fortune, he distributed his money to the poor. In 1527, he traveled to Seville, hoping to become a missionary in Mexico. The archbishop of that city persuaded him to stay and spread the faith in Andalusia (southwestern Spain). During nine years of work there, he developed a reputation as an engaging preacher, a perceptive spiritual director and a wise confessor. 
     Because John was not afraid to denounce vice in high places, he was investigated by the Inquisition but was cleared in 1533. He later worked in Cordoba and then in Granada, where he organized the University of Baeza, the first of several colleges run by diocesan priests who dedicated themselves to teaching and giving spiritual direction to young people. 
     He was friends with Sts. Francis Borgia, Ignatius of Loyola, John of God, John of the Cross, Peter of Alcantara, and Teresa of Avila. John of Avila worked closely with members of the Society of Jesus and helped their growth within Spain and its colonies. John’s mystical writings have been translated into several languages. 
     He was beatified in 1894, canonized in 1970, and declared a doctor of the Church on October 7, 2012. 

QUOTE:
At the Mass after John of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen were declared Doctors of the Church, Pope Benedict XVI described him as “a profound expert on the sacred Scripture . . . gifted with an ardent missionary spirit.” The pope continued: “He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for humanity. A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action. He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a view to a fruitful reform of the Church.”

[James - a humble servant]

St. Damien de Veuster of Moloka'i
(1840 - 1889)

When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy (Hansen's disease). By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease.
Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary six years later, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii.

In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government's leper colony on the island of Molokai, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people's physical, medical and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support.

Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Cope (January 23), to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa.

Damien contracted Hansen's disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien's body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995.

Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.

When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

[James - a humble servant]

St. Antoninus of Florence
(Dominican Order, Friar & Bishop)

Antonino Fierozzi was born in Florence in 1389
and in 1405 received into the Order “for the future
priory of Fiesole” by Bl. John Dominic, who at that
time was reforming the Dominican priories of the
area according to the wishes of Bl. Raymond of
Capua. He served the friars in various priories in
Italy, often as local superior, and became a distinguished
master of canon law. In 1436 he founded
the priory of San Marco in Florence and under his
leadership Fra Angelico decorated the priory and an
out?standing library was collected. His wisdom and
pastoral zeal made him a natural choice for Archbishop
of Florence in 1446. He was noted for his
service to the poor and established a society under
the patronage of Saint Martin to assist him in this
work. Among his writings the best known is his
Summa moralis. His whole life was mirrored in his
last words, “to serve God is to reign.” He died on
May 2, 1459.

[Shin]

I remember having a quite old copy of a biography of Fr. Damien as one of the earliest books I read about a saint.

I was quite impressed by the descriptions of the horrible effects of leprosy, which can have folks look like their limbs have been gnawn away.

[James - a humble servant]

St. Ignatius of Laconi 
(1701-1781)

He was the second of seven children of peasant parents in Sardinia. His path to the Franciscans was unusual. During a serious illness, Ignatius vowed to become a Capuchin if he recovered. He regained his health but ignored the promise. A riding accident prompted him to renew the pledge, which he acted on the second time; he was 20 then. Ignatius’s reputation for self-denial and charity led to his appointment as the official beggar for the friars in Cagliari. He fulfilled that task for 40 years; he was blind the last two years.

While on his rounds, Ignatius would instruct the children, visit the sick and urge sinners to repent. The people of Cagliari were inspired by his kindness and his faithfulness to his work. He was canonized in 1951.

[odhiambo]

St. Ignatius of Laconi ,
Pray for the abducted Nigerian school girls
and pray for us!