They were eunuchs and retainers to St. Eugenia. Saints Protus and Hyacinthus are honored in the sacramentary of St. Gregory in the ancient Martyrology. The ancient calendar, drawn up in the pontificate of Liberius mentions their festival on September 11. Pope Damasus, in 366, removed the earth which hid their tomb, and during his pontificate…
In accordance with Jewish custom our Lady’s parents named her eight days after her birth, and were inspired to call her Mary. The feast of the Holy Name of Mary therefore follows that of her Birthday, as the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus follows Christmas. This feast originated in Spain and was approved…
In the fifth century, leaving a large estate and a tender mother at Milan in order to serve God in holy retirement, St. Maurilius addressed himself to St. Martin of Tours by whom he was directed in the narrow path of Christian perfection. He founded a monastery on a hill called Prisciac, near the village…
Originally this feast was celebrated solely to honor the anniversary of the discovery of the Holy Cross by St. Helena and the dedication of the Basilicas consecrated at Jerusalem on September 14, 335, on the very site of the Holy Sepulcher and of Calvary. But today’s feast is also the commemoration of another event—the return…
This feast of our Lady’s Sorrows has its origin in Christian devotion which finds it fitting to associate her with the Passion of her Son. In the eleventh century the sorrows of our Lady were the object of private devotion. In the fourteenth century the moving Stabat Mater was written by blessed Jacopone da Todi.…
Pope Cornelius, a Roman, died in exile at Civitavecchia on September 14, 253, after a pontificate of two years troubled by the schism of the first antipope, Novatian. St. Cyprian, a former lawyer, was converted to Catholicism and became bishop of Carthage; he was one of the great leaders of the third century African church,…
Two years before his death St. Francis retired to Mount Alverno where he began a forty days’ fast in honor of St. Michael the Archangel. There, while in a state of continual prayer and unceasing watching, he saw in a vision a seraph with burning, dazzling wings whose feet and hands were nailed to a…
St. Joseph of Cupertino is one of the most extraordinary saints of the Franciscan Order. Born in 1603 at Cupertino in the old kingdom of Naples, he appeared to be lacking in even the minimum of those intellectual qualities necessary for a candidate to the religious life. Nevertheless he was accepted by the Conventual Franciscans…
St. Januarius was bishop of Benevento when the persecution of Diocletian broke out. Moved by the capture of his good friend Sosius and others (Proculus, Eutychus and Acutius), St. Januarius determined to visit them in order to comfort and encourage them. His visit was noticed by the prison keepers who reported that an eminent person…
St. Eustace was a nobleman who suffered martyrdom at Rome, together with his wife Theopista, and two sons Agapius and Theopistus, about the reign of Adrian. The ancient sacramentaries mention his profuse charity to the poor on whom he bestowed all his large possessions some time before he laid down his life for his faith.…
