Catholic Saints & Feasts

De: Fr. Michael Black
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  • Resumen

  • "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.
    Copyright Fr. Michael Black
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Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
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Episodios
  • May 1: Saint Joseph the Worker

    May 1: Saint Joseph the Worker
    Apr 30 2024
    May 1: Saint Joseph the Worker
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of workers

    God wanted a working man to father Jesus

    Besides the Virgin Mary, there are just two saints who have more than one feast day dedicated to their honor on the Church’s universal calendar: Saint John the Baptist and Saint Joseph. Pope Pius XII instituted today’s feast in 1955 in direct response to the surge of atheistic communism in the decades after World War II. Communism at that time was not so clearly understood as the dehumanizing, anti-man, politically corrupt, and economically anemic system that it later revealed itself to be. Communism, after all, had helped defeat fascism in Germany and Italy, so it was understood as a liberating force, not an oppressive one, in some countries. May 1, or May Day, was the day of the worker in communist lands: a day of rest, of triumphant militaristic parades, and of pride in all that communism had accomplished, supposedly, for the proletariat.

    Keen observers, including many Catholic intellectuals, Pope Pius XII, and one future Pope then serving as a priest in Poland, knew better. They had already, intellectually, torn the mask from the true face of communism. Part of the Church’s response to the communist appeal to workers was to exalt Saint Joseph the Worker on May 1 as a Catholic alternative to May Day. Not only was Saint Joseph to be understood, then, as the husband of Mary and the foster father of Jesus, but also as the patron of labor. He was the carpenter, the working man, who taught his God-Son how to swing a hammer and run a planer over a rugged plank.

    Pius XII’s exaltation of Saint Joseph the Worker was an attractive idea. Saint Joseph was a true icon of human labor in contrast to the rough factory worker in an industrial plant in Leningrad or the tanned farm hand threshing hay under the Ukrainian sun. Saint Joseph did not have his fist raised in anger at the capitalist oppressors of Nazareth. He was not leading a mob to burn down his boss’s house. Saint Joseph worked like a normal person worked. He was quiet about it. He did his duty. He provided his family with food and shelter. He didn’t see injustice lurking behind every corner. He most likely made excellent furniture and received a fair wage for his handiwork.

    Work, from a Catholic perspective, is a source of dignity. It has to be done. A life of pure leisure is no life at all. Work and want and trying times are required ingredients in the recipe for a mature, responsible adult. No work, no adult. Work itself is not pure punishment. The onerous nature of work is one of the effects of original sin, though it was not so in the beginning. Work became a burden due to the sin of our first parents. What is the theology behind this? God the Father worked and God the Son worked. When man works, then, he is participating in God’s own work. Subduing the earth is one of God’s original commandments to man. And subduing the earth cannot come about except through work of one kind or another.

    It has been observed that the dash (–) on a tombstone is far more important than the years that are on each side of it. What happened in the time of that dash is more important than one’s date of birth or death. For most people that dash denotes work. Mankind works. All the time. And the will of God for us cannot be found outside of what we spend most of our life doing. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have much of a religion. God is found in our work. So if we do it well, we give him glory, and if we do it poorly, we offer him a shoddy sacrifice. The earth becomes our altar when our daily work is our daily offering. Constant, daily work was good enough for Saint Joseph and for the Son of God. So it is good enough for all of God’s children as well. Work is a pathway to holiness, and Saint Joseph the Worker stands by our side to encourage us toward the reward that our daily sweat and labor will earn.

    Saint Joseph the Worker, inspire all laborers of mind or body to work for their daily bread as much as for your glorification. May we work well to both perfect us and to make us participants in completing the creation begun in Genesis
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    6 m
  • April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope

    April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope
    Apr 30 2024
    April 30: Saint Pius V, Pope 1504–1572 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith One Shepherd, one flock, one Lord, one Church Saint Pius V is buried in the Sistine Chapel, but not “that” Sistine Chapel. His body lies in a glass coffin in the stunning, baroque Sistine Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. He is not far from other luminaries: the master artist Gianlorenzo Bernini is buried unassumingly in the floor nearby, and Saint Jerome’s remains can be found in a porphyry tomb under the main altar. Saint Pius V was not born a pope, of course. He was from a poor but noble family in Northern Italy and baptized Antonio Ghislieri. He entered the Dominican Order as a teenager and quickly rose to positions of authority and responsibility due to his intelligence, discipline, unassailable purity of life, and defense of the Church. He was elected Pope in 1566. The Council of Trent had just concluded. The Counter-Reformation was so new it did not even have a name. The Muslim Turks were invading Europe from the East. Protestants occupied chunks of Northern Europe and were cracking the unity of the Church in France. In a truncated papacy of six years and four months, Saint Pius V rose to all of these challenges and more, leaving an enduring legacy disproportionate to his brief reign. Our saint marshalled the coalition of Catholic princes and monarchs who defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. A loss would have opened the front door of Europe for Muslims to walk right in and make it their home. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and schism, called her a pretender to the throne, and forbade Catholics to obey her. This led the Queen to seek the blood of English Catholics for treason. As momentous as these events were, and they each cast long and dark historical shadows, it was specifically as a churchman that Saint Pius V did his best work. He personally lived the reforms he expected of the Church as a whole, and he implemented those reforms first in the city of Rome itself, among his own ecclesial court and among his own people. A fire place sitting in front of a fireplaceThe Council of Trent met intermittently between 1545–1563. It was arguably the most successful Council in the history of the Church. Trent introduced numerous reforms that have long since been accepted as normative Church practice: a bishop must live in his diocese, priestly formation must occur in a seminary, the Mass must be said using a uniform language and ritual, a catechism must be published and its teachings learned by all, and religious and priests cannot easily skip from one diocese to another. The Council also clarified technical, and not so technical, questions of Catholic theology in the face of Protestant challenges. The Council’s documents were not put on a shelf to gather dust. Trent’s immense treasure house of doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary reforms were implemented, fully and forcefully, over many succeeding decades. This was due to the perseverance and vision of many Counter-Reformation bishops, priests, nuns, and scholars, beginning with Pope Saint Pius V himself. Pope Saint Pius V is viewed historically as a true icon of orthodoxy (correct doctrine) and also of orthopraxy (correct practice). It is an unfortunate truism of modernity that religious faith, submission to religious truth, or trust in a prior intellectual inheritance (as opposed to personal discovery of “truth”) are limiting forces which stunt personal growth, shield the believer from reality, or block more daring inquiry. A more honest perspective disproves these snide conclusions. Doubt, refusal, or negation are not necessarily open-minded pathways to discovery. It is acceptance, affirmation, and faith that open the mind to the widest horizons. It is “Yes,” not “No,” that leads to more complex and demanding relationships, including with God Himself. The orthodox believer makes no a priori decision to shut his eyes to the fullness of reality, in contrast to the atheist. The believer is open, truly open, to diverse arguments and to diverse experiences. Defenders of orthodoxy, like Saint Pius V, have far more complex understandings of human anthropology and religion than commonly acknowledged. Conservatives are more intuitive anthropologists than liberals. They know how fragile truth can be when under pressure, and they take their job to protect it with utmost seriousness. Saint Pius V was the Pope, or Father, of a universal family. He protected the family’s unity with all his considerable skills and virtues, and left a highly united, disciplined Church as his legacy. Saint Pius V, your dedication to the truth showed itself in your pristine holiness, unity of life, and defense of doctrine. From your home in heaven, assist all theologians and leaders of the Church to be as concerned as you were for ...
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    7 m
  • April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor

    April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor
    Apr 29 2025
    April 29: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin & Doctor
    1347–1380
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Italy, Europe, and fire prevention

    Her frightening intensity prayed the popes back to Rome

    Saint Peter was not martyred in Frankfurt, Germany; Alexandria, Egypt; or Jerusalem. He could have been. God, in His Providence, wanted Saint Peter’s blood to spill on Roman soil, so that His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church would drive its roots into the ground of the then capital of the world. This does not mean that Catholicism is bound to St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome in the same way that Judaism was bound to the temple and Jerusalem. Rome does not have the same theological significance for Catholics as Jerusalem does for Jews, nor is Rome the successor of Jerusalem. Rome is not a holy city like Mecca is for the Muslims. The primacy of the Pope over the universal Church is based on his being the successor of Saint Peter. This is an indisputable historical fact. However, the Petrine ministry is one thing, and where it is exercised is another. The location of the Petrine ministry has never had the same theological weight as the ministry itself. Peter, yes. Always. Rome, yes. So far. Mostly.

    Today’s saint was a Third Order Dominican, a mystic, a contemplative, and an ascetic who used secretaries to compose her letters, because she could not read or write until the last few years of her life. Yet for all of her interior distance from the world and its concerns, Saint Catherine of Siena threw herself at the feet of the Pope, then reigning in Avignon, and begged him to return to Rome. The “Babylonian Captivity” of the papacy in Avignon had gone on for almost seven decades and caused grave scandal. The move to Avignon was not due to an irreversible cultural shift such as a Muslim conquest or a decimating plague. The popes did not abandon Rome because it was a carcass. The transfer of the papal court to Avignon, a city within the Papal States, was the result of politics.

    It is not often that a single person can effect the course of history as much as a battle, a treaty, or a Council does. Incredibly, though, Saint Catherine of Siena’s efforts to return the papacy to Rome were successful. She wrote so powerfully, spoke so passionately, and exuded such intense holiness that the Pope was overwhelmed. She also seemed to have prophetic powers, even knowing what the Pope was thinking or had previously thought. She was frighteningly intense and could not be ignored. Thus, sixty-seven years of seven French Popes ruling far from Rome ended. In 1376, Pope Gregory XI finally abandoned Avignon and followed in the footsteps of so many medievals—he went on pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter. And he stayed. The eternal city was a widow no longer.

    Saint Catherine was born the twenty-fourth of twenty-five children in a pious family imbued with the love of God. She eagerly drank in all that her parents poured out. She went for true “gold” early in life. She practiced extreme penances, eating only bread and raw vegetables and drinking only water for her entire adult life. She conversed with God, experienced ecstasies and visions, and dictated hundreds of letters, books and reflections filled with the most profound spiritual and theological insights. In 1970 she was the first layperson, and first woman, to be made a Doctor of the Church, in recognition of her profound mystical theology. Catherine died at the age of thirty-three, worn out by penances, travel, and the burden of her involvement in so many pressing ecclesial affairs. She was canonized in 1461. Her body lies under the main altar of the Dominican Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Her mummified head is found in her native Siena.

    Saint Catherine of Siena, your love of God was expressed in so many vibrant ways and in a fervent love of His Church. We seek your powerful intercession from your exalted place in heaven to make all Catholics more ardent in their love of the Trinity, of the Passion, and of the Papacy.
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    6 m
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Fabulous find

I enjoy the episodes… Just wish it was possible to reflect on tomorrow’s episode the evening before…

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