The sinner who St. Luke tells us was delivered from seven devils, Mary Magdalen ever remains for the Church the penitent who was transformed by repentance and love of Christ. She formed part of the group of holy women who followed Jesus until the end of His life and she was the first to whom…
Ravenna venerates its first bishop in St. Apollinaris who died a martyr for his Church. St. Apollinaris was a disciple of St. Peter who also named him bishop of Ravenna. According to St. Peter Chrysologus, he was a martyr by the torments he endured for Christ, which he survived at least some days. It is…
She suffered many torments and a cruel death for the faith in the persecution of Diocletian about 307, at Tyro, a city, which stood formerly in an island in the lake of Bolsero in Tuscany, but has been long since swallowed up by water. Her relics are now at Palermo in Sicily. She is much…
Known as the Greater in order to distinguish him from the other Apostle St. James, St. James is our Lord’s cousin and St. John’s brother. With Peter and John he was one of the witnesses of the Transfiguration as later he was also of the agony in the garden. He was beheaded in Jerusalem in…
Devotion of the faithful to St. Anne is founded on the bond which unites her to Mary, whose mother she is. The association of Christian Mothers has chosen her as patron saint. Veneration of St. Anne originated in the East and was propagated in the West at the time of the crusades. This feast was…
He was physician to the emperor Galerius Maximianus and a Christian but by an impious, idolatrous court was deceived. He often heard the false maxims of the world applauded and was unhappily seduced into an apostasy. A zealous Christian called Hermolaus awakened his conscience to a sense of his guilt and brought him again into…
Today’s feast commemorates together several saints, who lived at different times and in different countries. Saints Nazarius and Celsus were first century martyrs, whose bodies were found by St. Ambrose in 395. The town of St. Nazaire in France is named after Nazarius. St. Victory I was pope from 189 to 198; he regulated the…
Jesus liked to stay at the house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, his friends at Bethany when He was in Judea. In one of these visits with which Jesus honored them, St. Luke tells us that St. Martha showed great solicitude to entertain and serve Him. She forgot the privilege of her rank and riches…
They were Persians, but coming to Rome, courageously confessed the faith of Christ in the persecution of Decius in 250. The Christians at Rome did not treat them as strangers but as brethren united to them in the hope of the same blessed country; and after their death carefully deposited their bodies in the house…
Born at Loyola in the Spanish Basque country in 1491, St. Ignatius was of a somewhat fiery and warlike nature so that it was not surprising that he adopted a military career; on being wounded in the leg at the siege of Pampeluna he was obliged to undergo a long convalescence during which the grace…
