St. Tiburtius is a Roman martyr (286) and subdeacon who was betrayed to the persecutors, condemned by Fabian to many torments and at length beheaded on the Lavican road, three miles from Rome, where a church was afterward built. St. Susanna, a Roman virgin, is said to have been niece to Pope Cajus. Having made…
St. Clare of Assisi was the first woman to practice the life of entire poverty as taught by St. Francis. Placed by him at the head of a few companions in the small convent of San Damiano, she governed her community for forty-two years thus founding at the gates of Assisi the Order of Poor…
One of the most illustrious martyrs who suffered in the reign of Gallus was St. Hippolytus, one of the twenty-five priests of Rome who had the misfortune for some time to have been deceived by the hypocrisy of Novatian and Novatus and to have been engaged in their schism; but this fault he expiated by…
The Assumption is the most important of our Lady’s feasts; the Church prepares us for it by a vigil. On November 1, 1950, Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption. Thus he solemnly proclaimed that the belief whereby the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the close of her earthly career, was taken up, body and…
“Blessed among women” by reason of her divine maternity, Our Lady, the Immaculate Virgin, who from the moment of her conception was privileged to escape original sin, could not know the corruption of the tomb. The Mass for the feast brings out clearly both the Assumption itself and its theological congruity. It sees Mary glorified…
Desiring to associate St. Joachim with the triumph of his blessed daughter, the Church transferred his feast from March 20 to August 16, the day after the Assumption. Leo XIII whose baptismal name was Joachim, raised this feast and that of St. Anne to the rite of double of the second class. The name of…
A canon of Breslau, St. Hyacinth joined the Dominican Order in Rome during the lifetime of the founder, in about the year 1217. He returned to Cracow with the first band of Dominican missionaries. The newcomers spread over all the northern countries into Russia, the Balkans, Prussia and Lithuania. St. Hyacinth preached the crusade against…
Saint Agapitus was a martyr of Praeneste (Palestrina) not far from Rome. He suffered in his youth about the year 275. His cultus, which is very ancient, was particularly popular in the eternal city where Felix III (492) caused a church to be built in his honor. Ancient inscriptions show clearly the great confidence placed…
Born at Ry (Orne) in France, St. John Eudes founded a society of priests known as the Eudists and a congregation of nuns, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. He rendered immense services to the Church by the seminaries that he founded and by the missions that he preached in almost all the provinces…
It is an especial joy to celebrate the feast of St. Bernard soon after the Assumption for one of his titles to fame is due to the tenderness and piety with which he hymned the glories of Mary in his prayers, sermons and writings. Born in 1090 of a noble Burgundian family, at the age…
