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…
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…
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,…
St. John Damascene was the great defender of the veneration of images against the iconoclasts, the destroyers of statues and pictures of the saints. He was a learned theologian and carefully gathered together and transmitted to us the teaching of the Greek Fathers and is thus one of the most trustworthy witnesses to oriental tradition.…
A native of Capistrano, St. John became a Franciscan and was one of the great organizers of the struggle against the Mohammedans in the 15th century, when they threatened to overrun the whole of Europe. Mohammed II had taken Constantinople and was already marching against Belgrade, when Pope Callixtus III called St. John Capistran to…
St. Gundleus was the eldest son to the king of the Dimetians in South-Wales. After the death of his father, though the eldest son, he divided the kingdom with his six brothers who nevertheless respected and obeyed him as if he had been their sovereign. He married Gladusa and was father of St. Canoc and…
Born in 525 in Palestine, St. John obtained at a very young age the surname Scholastic. At age sixteen he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him to dedicate himself to God in a religious state. He retired to Mount Sinai which from the time of the disciples of St. Antony and St.…
In a long Christian persecution, King Varanes caused St. Benjamin to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his enlargement on condition he should never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. Benjamin declared that he could not detain the truth in…
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…
