Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster-father of Jesus Christ, St. Joseph faithfully and humbly carried out the difficult and glorious mission entrusted to him by God and thus became the model of domestic virtues and humble daily toil, the guardian of chaste souls and the protector of Christian homes. Veneration of St. Joseph…
His mother was St. Bethildes and he spent many years in the court to King Clotaire III. He bestowed his estate of Maurilly on the abbey of Fontenelle in Normandy. He was consecrated archbishop of Sens in 682 but later resigned his bishopric and after a retreat at Fontenelle entered Friesland as a poor missionary…
At turning points of history God raises up great saints to ensure the fulfillment of the Church’s divine mission for the souls of men. St Benedict was born at Nursia in Umbria in 480 and was sent to Rome to be educated, but soon left the world to live a solitary life at Subiaco. After…
She was a rich Roman lady, who, after the death of her husband, mortified her flesh by wearing rough sackcloth and passed whole nights in prayer, and by humility seemed every one’s menial servant. She died in 384 and is honored on this day in the Roman Martyrology.
In 480, Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals in Africa began a grievous persecution of the clergy and holy virgins which in 484 became general and occasioned vast numbers of Catholics to be put to death. Victorian was the wealthiest subject the king who had placed great confidence in him. After the king published…
St. Gabriel was chosen by God to announce to mankind the mystery of the Incarnation. He had been sent to Daniel to tell him of the time of Christ’s coming, and to Zachary, when he was offering incense in the Temple, to foretell the birth of John the Baptist, Christ’s precursor. And it was he…
Out of filial devotion, on Friday during Passiontide the Church in her celebration of the mystery of Redemption associates the remembrance of our Lady’s sufferings with those of our Savior. “There stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister Mary of Cleophas, and Salome, and Mary Magdalen. Woman, behold they son,…
Today we celebrate the feast of her in whom the Word was made flesh, in whom the Son of God united Himself for ever to our humanity in order to enable us to share in His Divinity. Through the mystery of the Incarnation Mary obtained her most wondrous title of the Mother of God. Through…
Trained from his boyhood and ordained a priest by St. Adrian, St. Monan was sent to preach the gospel in the isle of May. He exterminated superstition and many other crimes and abuses and having settled the churches of that island in good order, passed in to the county of Fife and was there martyred…
In 497 St. Simplicius was raised by God to the papacy to comfort and support his church amidst the greatest storms. All the provinces of the Western empire were fallen into the hands of barbarians, infected for the greatest part with idolatry or Arianism. Pope Simplicius was wholly taken up in comforting and relieving the…
