Episodes

  • April 2: Saint Francis of Paola, Hermit

    April 2: Saint Francis of Paola, Hermit
    Apr 1 2024
    April 2: Saint Francis of Paola, Hermit
    1416–1507
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Calabria, mariners, and naval officers

    He lived a perpetual Lent

    The first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi were known as the “Mendicants from Assisi.” Yet as the group attracted men and women from all over Italy and beyond, a new name, not specific to Assisi, was needed. Saint Francis named his brotherhood the Ordo Fratrum Minorum (O.F.M.). This is typically translated from the Latin as the Order of Friars Minor, implying that there is an Order of Friars Major. A better translation might be the Order of Lesser Brothers. Saint Francis wanted himself, and all of his brothers, to be less in everything—less prideful, less well known, less wealthy, and less well nourished than anyone else.

    Today’s saint, the Padre Pio of his era, was a holy priest from the town of Paola in Southern Italy. He was baptized as Francis by his parents when, after several years of going childless, they made a vow to name any son that might be born to them in the great saint’s honor. Francis of Paola was worthy of his namesake from a young age. His parents took special care with his religious upbringing and brought him to live for a year in a Franciscan monastery when Francis was just twelve. The young Francis developed a reputation for holiness even when just a teen. By the age of twenty, he was living as a hermit in a cave near Paola when local men began to gather around him. The fledgling group adopted the name “the Hermits of Brother Francis of Assisi,” a name later changed to the “Friars Minims,” or just “Minims,” meaning  “less” or “least,” in the spirit of the “Lesser Brothers” that Saint Francis of Assisi had founded centuries before.

    Francis of Paola desired humility, nothingness, and total self-abnegation. He and his followers lived a perpetual Lent. All Minims took the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But they also took a special fourth vow to abstain, all year long and all life long, from meat, eggs, butter, cheese, milk, and all dairy products. The fast never ended. This was mortification on a heroic scale. Vegetarianism, much less veganism, was a step beyond what Saint Francis of Assisi himself had lived. Saint Francis of Assisi ate what was set before him, including meat. He even criticized vegetarian brothers who refused meat, saying such an attitude questioned God’s providence and presumed the future, when a brother should instead gratefully accept whatever dish was placed on the table before him.

    Francis of Paola’s veganism was united to a strict moral code, a community life built around the Sacraments, and a deep spirituality centered on Jesus Christ. To be “one with nature” does not mean to be morally ambiguous or to break with religious traditions. A diet should not be a creed. Saint Francis was organic in that he lived one with God, with nature, with his religious brothers, and with the Church. Francis was perennially concerned with the moral laxity of the Church of his era, and purposefully fasted and did penance in reparation for its sins. While Francis of Assisi lived austerely and suffered debilitating illnesses, he was nevertheless cheerful and animated in his dealings with others. No one ever accused Francis of Paola of being ebullient. He was a fully armed spiritual warrior of the most serious kind. He went barefoot. He slept on a board. He was a desert father without the sand.

    After a very long life of fasting, prayer, miracle working, and wide fame for his holiness even outside of Italy, Saint Francis of Paola died in France. His order had by then spread throughout Europe. His reputation for sanctity was such that he was canonized in 1519, only twelve years after his death. In 1562 Protestant Calvinists in France unsealed his tomb and found his body incorrupt. They then desecrated the saint, scattering his remains. Saint Francis of Paola, after sacrificing everything in life, was not allowed to rest in peace. He was strewn about like trash, ensuring that only trace relics of him remained. Saint Francis wanted to be treated as the least of all. His desire was fulfilled both in life and in death.

    Saint Francis of Paola, you lived an integrated life deeply united to God, nature, and your fellow man. Intercede before the Trinity in heaven on our behalf, assisting us to grow closer to God through death to self, through prayer, and through a deep attachment to Christ.
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    6 mins
  • March 25: Annunciation of the Lord

    March 25: Annunciation of the Lord
    Mar 24 2025
    March 25: Annunciation of the Lord
    Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White

    The flutter of a wing, a rustling in the air, a voice, and the future began to begin

    The Feast of the Annunciation is the reason why we celebrate Christmas on December 25. Christmas comes exactly nine months after the Archangel Gabriel invited the Virgin Mary to be the Mother of God, an event we commemorate on March 25. The dating of these Feast Days, although interesting, is of minor importance compared to their theological significance. It is fruitful to reflect upon the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary as the antecedent to the explosion of joy, caroling, gift giving, eating, drinking, love and family unity that surrounds the birth of the Savior. Perhaps Mary had a sort of private and internal Christmas at the moment of the Annunciation. Maybe she felt the fullness of the world’s Christmas joy inside of her own heart when she realized she had been chosen to be the Mother of God.

    God could have become man in any number of creative ways. He could have incarnated Himself just as Adam was in the book of Genesis, by being formed from the clay and having the divine breath blown into his nostrils. Or God could have slowly backed down to earth on a tall golden ladder as a twenty-five-year-old man, ready to walk the highways and byways of Palestine. Or maybe God could have taken flesh in an unknown way and just been found, like Moses, floating in a basket by a childless young couple from Nazareth as they enjoyed a Sunday picnic along the Jordan River.

    The Second Person of the Trinity chose, however, to become man like we all become man. In the same way that He would exit the world through the door of death before His Resurrection, as we all have to do, He also entered the world through the door of human birth. In the words of the early Church, Christ could not redeem what He did not assume. He redeemed everything because He took on human nature in all of its breadth, depth, complexity and mystery. He was like us in all things save sin.

    The incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity was a self-emptying. It was God becoming small. Imagine a man becoming an ant while retaining his human mind and will. The man-turned-ant would appear to be like all the ants around him, and would participate in all of their ant activities, yet still think at a level far above them. There was no other way to do it. The man had to learn through becoming, not because insect life was superior to his own, but because it was inferior. Only through descending, only through experience, could the man learn what was below him. All analogies limp, but, in a similar way, the Second Person of the Trinity retained His infused divine knowledge while reducing Himself to a man and learning man life, doing man work, and dying a man death. By such a self-emptying, He dignified all men and opened to them the possibility of entering into His higher life in Heaven.

    The Church’s tradition speculates that one reason the bad angels may have rebelled against God was the besetting sin of envy. They may have discovered that God chose to become man instead of the higher form of an angel. This envy would have been directed at the Virgin Mary as well, that Vessel of Honor and Ark of the Covenant who bore the divine choice. God not only became man, we must remember, but did so through a human being, one prepared from her conception to be perfect. March 25 is one of only two days of the year when we kneel at the recitation of the Creed at Mass. At the words “...by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man” all heads bow and all knees bend at the wonder of it. If the story of Christ is the greatest story ever told, today is its first page.

    O Holy Virgin Mary, we ask your intercession to make us as generous as you in accepting the will of God in our lives, especially when that will is expressed in mysterious ways. May you be our example of a generous response to what God desires of us.
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    6 mins
  • March 23: Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, Bishop

    March 23: Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, Bishop
    Mar 21 2025
    March 23: Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, Bishop 1538–1606 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Violet (Lenten Weekday) Patron Saint of Latin American Bishops and native people’s rights He died in the field six thousand miles from home Today’s saint was the second Archbishop of the second most important city in Spain’s Latin American empire in the 1500s. Lima, Peru, stood only behind Mexico City in importance to the Spanish Crown during the pinnacle of its colonial ambitions. So when Lima’s first Archbishop died in 1575, the King of Spain, not the Pope, searched for a suitable candidate to send over sea and land to replace him. The King found his man close at hand, and he was more than suitable to the task. Turibius of Mogrovejo was a learned scholar of the law who held teaching and other posts in Spain’s complex of Church and civil courts. Yet for all his learning, piety, faith, and energy, there was one huge obstacle to him being a bishop. Turibius was not a priest. He was not even a deacon. He was a very good, albeit unmarried, layman. The arrangement for centuries between Spain and the Holy See was that the Spanish Crown chose bishops while the Pope approved, or rejected, them. So after the Pope approved the appointment, over the candidate’s fierce objections, Turibius received the four minor orders on four successive weeks, was ordained a deacon and then ordained a priest. He said his first Mass when he was over forty years old. About two years later, Turibius was consecrated as the new archbishop, and then sailed the ocean blue, arriving in Lima in May 1581. Archbishop Turibius was extraordinarily dedicated to his episcopal responsibilities. He exhausted himself on years-long visits to the parishes of his vast territory, which included present day Peru and beyond. He acquainted himself with the priests and people under his care. He convoked synods (large Church meetings) to standardize sacramental, pastoral, and liturgical practice. He produced an important trilingual catechism in Spanish and two native dialects, learned to preach in these indigenous dialects himself, and encouraged his priests to be able to hear confessions and preach in them as well. Archbishop Turibius’ life also providentially intersected with the lives of other saints active in Peru at the same time, including Martin de Porres, Francisco Solano, and Isabel Flores de Oliva, to whom Turibius gave the name Rose when he confirmed her. She was later canonized as Saint Rose of Lima, the first saint born in the New World. Saints know saints. Archbishop Turibius was a fine example of a counter-reformation bishop, except that he did not serve in a counter-reformation place. That is, Peru was not split by the Catholic versus Protestant theological divisions wreaking such havoc in the Europe of that era. Saint Turibius implemented the reforms of the Council of Trent, not to combat heretics, but to simply make the Church healthier and holier, Protestants or no Protestants. From this perspective, the reforms of Trent were not a cure but an antidote. If Turibius’ energy and holiness were motivated by any one thing besides evangelical fervor, it was his desire to make the Spanish colonists of Peru recover the integrity of their own baptisms. The indigenous population needed authentic examples of Christian living to respect and emulate, and few Spanish colonialists provided such models of right living. Saint Turibius’ greatest enemy, then, was simply original sin, which returns to the battlefield every time a baby is born. After exhausting himself through total dedication to his responsibilities, Saint Turibius fell ill on the road and died at age sixty-seven in a small town far from home. His twenty-four years as Archbishop were a trial of strength. He had baptized and confirmed half a million souls, had trekked thousands of miles on narrow paths made for goats, had never neglected to say Mass, and did not accept any gifts in return for what he gave. Turibius was canonized in 1726 and named the Patron Saint of Latin American Bishops by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1983. Perhaps his unforeseen ordination explains his sustained fervor and drive. What came late was valued for having come at all. He bloomed late and bloomed beautifully, becoming the Spanish equivalent of his great contemporary, the Italian Saint Charles Borromeo. If a visitor searches for the tomb of the saintly Archbishop in the Cathedral of Lima today, he will not find it. There are only fragments of bones in a reliquary. His reputation for holiness was immediate and his relics were distributed far and wide after his death. He is in death as widely shared as he was in life, all the faithful wanting just a piece of the great man. In January 2018, Pope Francis prayed before the relics of Saint Turibius in Lima and invoked his memory in a talk to Peru’s bishops. Saint Turibius did not, Pope Francis said, shepherd his diocese from behind a desk but was “a ...
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    7 mins
  • March 19: Saint Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    March 19: Saint Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Mar 19 2025
    March 19: Saint Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    First Century
    Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the Universal Church, fathers, and a happy death

    Jesus and Mary lived under his gentle, fatherly authority

    The husband of Mary had a perfect spouse, untouched by original sin. He was also the foster father to a boy who was the Son of God and the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Yet Saint Joseph, the least perfect member of his household, was still the head of the family. Authority does not always flow from moral or intellectual superiority. Authority in the Church, in particular, is God given. Because God chooses a certain person to fulfill a task in His household of faith, that person acts with a divine mandate to teach, sanctify, and govern the people and things entrusted to him. Saint Joseph is a model for how God uses imperfect instruments to exercise His perfect will. God does not want robots, machines, or zombies to mindlessly implement His plan for mankind. The history of the Church is replete with imperfect tools who have caused scandal and division. Wayward leaders have cost the Church entire countries. Yet despite all these unworthy instruments in the hands of the Divine Master, truth and shelter and grace continue to be provided to those baptised into the Church, the Master’s family.

    God wants personality. God wants us to have character. God’s angels, created spirits, lack the restrictions imposed by a human body. But in not having a body, the angels also lack what makes us unique. They lack the spit, vinegar, and spark that make a man a man. Every man is an enfleshed soul, the coming together of a body and a spirit. This coming together is not half soul and half body, like the mythical centaur with the body of a horse but the torso and head of a man. When copper and zinc are welded together, they are superficially united into one larger piece of metal. But the union is not total and does not create something new. The copper is still copper, and the zinc is still zinc. But when copper and zinc are each melted down and then mixed together, they form brass. Brass is not just the joining of copper to zinc but an entirely new material with unique properties. In a similar way, the union of a body and a soul together composes a human person with unique properties, a child of God unlike any other. The saints, in particular, were unique people often possessing hot tempers, forceful personalities, and unbending wills. They placed their uniqueness at the service of God and His Church and helped to change the world. God did not make, and does not want, just vanilla ice cream. Everyone likes vanilla. But no one likes only vanilla. God wants flavor.

    Saint Joseph was, like all the saints, unique. He probably had personal traits which were less than perfect. These imperfections were absolutely no obstacle to Mary and Jesus obeying him, loving him, and ceding to his authority in the Holy Family of Nazareth. Mary and Jesus would have happily bent to the will of their God-given guide, despite their metaphysical, moral, spiritual, and intellectual superiority.

    Ancient traditions hold that Saint Joseph was considerably older than the Virgin Mary. Other traditions tell that he was married previously and that the “brothers” of Jesus were half-brothers from Saint Joseph’s previous marriage. Scripture tells us Jesus was a carpenter and was known as the “carpenter’s son” (Mt 13:55). Joseph may have been more precisely a builder who worked with the native stone so common to Palestinian construction. A Jewish ritual bath made of stone discovered beneath the church of Saint Joseph in Nazareth, a church which long tradition says was built over the Holy Family’s home, may be Joseph’s very own handiwork. A firm tradition teaches that Saint Joseph died long before his Son’s death. This is based not on biblical evidence but on the lack of it. It can be reasonably presumed that Saint Joseph would have been present at his Son’s crucifixion, as was Mary. Yet no mention is made of him being there. From this absence, biblical scholars have, from the beginning of the Church, surmised that Saint Joseph was by then dead. Thus, Saint Joseph is the Patron Saint of a Happy Death, because he presumably died with Jesus and the Virgin Mary at his side. This is how all of us want to die, with Christ holding our hand on one side of the bed and the Virgin Mary seated beside us on the other side. Saint Joseph died in the best of company. May we do so as well.

    Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, guide all those under the care of their pastors to see not their imperfections but their God-given obligation to fulfill God’s plan. May your humble and faithful service inspire all fathers to lead their flocks with tenderness, wisdom, and strength.
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    6 mins
  • March 18: Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor

    March 18: Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor
    Mar 18 2025
    March 18: Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor
    c. 315–386
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Violet (Lenten Weekday)

    A wise and persevering bishop teaches his flock

    It is the Christ-given obligation of every Catholic bishop, and the priests and deacons who share in his ministry, to teach, sanctify, and govern all people under their spiritual care. Regarding teaching, the letters of Saint Paul, as well as the writings of early Christian theologians, abundantly attest to the duty of the Apostles and their appointed successors to ensure that false doctrine never infects their flocks. The episcopal duty to teach was not a charism or gift of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues, performing miracles, or healing the infirm. Teaching correct doctrine might be aided by the Holy Spirit, but it was first a mandate from the Lord Himself. To not teach, to teach incompletely, or to teach falsely, was for the shepherd to ignore, neglect, or scatter the sheep entrusted to his care and protection.

    Today’s saint, Cyril, the Bishop of Jerusalem in the late fourth century, was a model teacher of right doctrine. He did not just teach teachers what to teach. He did not deputize or delegate others to teach on his behalf. He was the local Father, and, concerned for Christian formation in the household of faith, he personally taught the faith. How do we know this? Two reasons: First, because a holy woman named Egeria went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the 380s. She documented her travels in a journal identifying the bishop, known to be Cyril, as the catechist in the domed mausoleum covering the tomb of Christ (part of today’s church of the Holy Sepulchre). Second, we know of Bishop Cyril’s talks because many of them were dutifully recorded and preserved, presumably because of their high caliber. The talks are rich, early testimony to the perennial, consistent doctrines of the Catholic Church.

    Egeria states that the bishop of Jerusalem taught about Lent and Easter to catechumens and neophytes (the newly baptized) by going through the entire Bible and the Creed, article by article. He taught for three hours each day, every one of the forty days of Lent and during Easter week. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul wrote, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Rm 10:14). Bishop Cyril admirably fulfilled his apostolic duty to teach and to proclaim so that others would know the Lord.

    Among the profound teachings of Saint Cyril on the Mass, Baptism, and the Sacraments are his extended reflections on the nature of the Holy Eucharist. He is explicit: "Since He Himself has declared and said of the bread: This is My Body, who shall dare to doubt any more? And when He asserts and says: This is My Blood, who shall ever hesitate and say it is not His Blood?...Do not think it mere bread and wine, for it is the Body and Blood of Christ, according to the Lord's declaration" (St. Cyril Catechetical Lecture XXII). Cyril notes that if Christ could change water into wine, why could He not change wine into His own Blood? Reading these words of Cyril, it is perplexing that any modern Christian could doubt the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. As Saint John Henry Newman wrote: “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant” (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Introduction, Ch. 5).

    Bishop Cyril was deeply involved in various consequential theological controversies of his day, was banished from Jerusalem, and participated in the First Council of Constantinople. He lived a long, complicated, and impactful life in the heart of the Church. He is in many ways a model to all bishops for his zealous yet tender care of souls, especially those preparing to be washed in the saving waters of baptism at Easter. Saint Cyril fortified the content of the Church’s teaching with his personal presence, and by extension, the presence of the Sacrament of Holy Orders in his very person. He is a bishop remote in time, yet near in doctrine. Far removed from us historically, he is still close at our side when we stand to recite the same Creed he recited at every Sunday Mass.

    Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, through your generous dedication to teaching the faith, come to the assistance of all catechists, ordained and lay, to be equally committed to teaching those under their care, in season and out of season, knowing that fidelity to the Lord and His Church is what counts the most.
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    6 mins
  • March 17: Saint Patrick, Bishop

    March 17: Saint Patrick, Bishop
    Mar 11 2025
    March 17: Saint Patrick, Bishop
    Fifth Century
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Violet (Lenten Weekday)
    Patron Saint of Ireland

    The black arts of pagandom bowed to this one-man fortress

    Today’s saint, the Patron of Ireland, was English. He was born in an unknown year to Catholic parents in an educated home in Roman Britain. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a married priest. When he first went to Ireland, he did not go willingly. He was kidnapped by pirates at the age of sixteen and enslaved. He went from the warm embrace of his home to herding pigs, exposed to sleet and cold, starving on the rain-soaked coast of rural Ireland. Times of great danger and deprivation are often times of great grace. In young Patrick’s years of isolation, cold, hunger, and loss, prayer was his only nourishment and comfort. His captivity turned a boy into a man and transformed a tepid Christian into an ardent soul burning with love for the Holy Trinity.

    After six years of torturous enslavement, Patrick escaped his captors and made the difficult voyage back to his own nation, family, and language. But the Irish were never far from his mind. One night, he had a dream. Patrick sees a man he knew in Ireland named Victoricus approaching from the west. Victoricus holds countless letters and hands one to Patrick. It is titled “The Voice of the Irish.” As he begins to read the letter, Patrick hears a multitude of voices rising, as if one, from a forest near the Western Sea: “We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.” Patrick is deeply moved. Unable to read any more, he wakes up.

    Patrick decides to be a slave of Christ and to return as a missionary to Ireland. Feeling himself unprepared, he first studies for many years at monasteries in France. After receiving an excellent education in the faith, he receives priestly and episcopal ordination. He then embarks as a fully equipped missionary for his adopted homeland. There he finds a rustic people steeped in paganism. It is not today’s paganism—well read, superior, and too sophisticated to believe in religious “mythology.” Real paganism, the paganism of remote Ireland, called upon dark forces to conquer the white spirits and angels of God. Real paganism casts spells, calls down lightning from the night sky, mixes potions to poison its enemies, and forms flames into swords for battle. Real paganism invokes the devil because it knows Satan keeps his appointments. This is the dark paganism Patrick finds lurking in the foggy hills and bogs of his new land. Fifth-century Ireland had a deeply entrenched, richly layered culture of pagan worship. And Bishop Patrick used his crozier, like a dagger, to stab it right in the heart.

    Saint Patrick converted the Irish, one tribe after another. He matched the tribes’ preternatural forces with supernatural powers. There are numerous anecdotes, of dubious historicity, describing how Patrick turned an enemy into a fox, converted his walking staff into a tree, or drove all the snakes out of Ireland. These tales illustrate a deeper point—Saint Patrick had command over creation itself and used that power to communicate the truth of the Christian God who created creation. There is no doubt that Saint Patrick harvested an immense number of souls.

    For the Church to send a bishop to Ireland in the fifth century was to land a man on the moon. Beyond Ireland there was no one and nothing. Patrick evangelized a rugged, clever people in a rugged, clever way. He conquered their witches, wizards, and warlocks with the Holy Spirit. He vanquished their incantations, potions, demons, and sorcery with a powerful brew, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Son of God in the Mystery of the Altar we call the Blessed Sacrament. He overcame the “black laws of pagandom” with a protecting God who walks always and lovingly at our side. Many centuries of saints, abbots, missionaries, scholars, and monks set sail from tiny Ireland to traverse the globe in service of the Gospel. They owe the rich Catholic culture of their homeland to that mighty pillar of faith known as Saint Patrick.

    Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, assist us through your intercession to trust in the raw power of God to conquer evil. Give us confidence to confront evil spirits, however they may show themselves, so that the peace of true religion may reign where it does not reign now.
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    6 mins
  • March 9: Saint Frances of Rome, Religious

    March 9: Saint Frances of Rome, Religious
    Mar 9 2025
    March 9: Saint Frances of Rome, Religious
    1384–1440
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet when Lenten Weekday)
    Patron Saint of motorists and widows

    Just to be near her was thought a blessing

    Today’s saint, born into a wealthy noble family in the Eternal City, was married to a man from a similarly privileged family when she was just thirteen. Saint Frances earnestly sought to do the will of God in serving her husband, her children, and her home while also attempting to live a high level of holiness modeled on the life of a nun. She had desired to enter religious life from a young age, but her father refused to break his promise to give Frances in marriage to a fellow nobleman. Frances struggled with an internal conflict between her married state and the religious state to which she had originally felt called. This was not a choice between a good and a bad option. It was a natural tension in the soul of a holy woman who saw two paths open before her, both of which led to God. After her husband died and her children were grown, Saint Frances did live the ordered life of a religious, albeit outside of a convent.

    The divine pull that Saint Frances felt in the direction of two callings was not unusual. Other saints before her had been wives and mothers before becoming religious. The theology of the Church in the twentieth century, ratified by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, now offers a vision of holiness which resolves much of this tension in trying to discern a vocation. The primary calling of all Christians is imparted through Baptism, fortified in Confirmation, and nourished in reception of Holy Communion. These Sacraments are sufficient armor to fit one for holiness in any and all circumstances. The married life and its natural domestic concerns are, then, as much a theater for holiness as a cloister.

    The Church wants all Catholics to understand daily life as its own drama in fulfilling, or rejecting, God’s will. It is not that one is distracted with the details of work, family, domestic chores, and children while the real action takes place in the parish, the monastery, the retreat center, or the convent. The real action is at home, in the domestic church. It is precisely at home where Christians spend most of their time, raise their children, engage with their spouses, and accomplish the multitude of tasks that make life happen. Home and work are not spheres of life. They are life. And it would be absurd to argue that the will of God lies outside of life itself. To say that holiness is for everyone is to say that all of creation is a forum to pursue it, and that no vocation limits the opportunity to accomplish God’s will.

    Saint Frances of Rome was a model wife and mother for forty years, often in violent and difficult circumstances provoked by skirmishes related to the Western Schism, the era of more than one pope which divided Rome’s elites into warring factions. Frances’ husband loved and revered her, her servants admired her, and her children adored her. In addition to performing her domestic duties so faithfully, Frances also fasted, prayed, had a vibrant mystical spirituality, and was generous with the poor. Her charity toward the destitute was not the modern charity of making charitable donations. She did the work, not someone else. She herself made personal contact with the homeless, the hungry, and beggars. Her sterling example of piety and service led her to found a group of like-minded women who lived in the world but who bound themselves to a life of prayer and service. The group was later recognized as an Order in the Church under the title the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome. So, in addition to fulfilling her own duties, Frances also helped similarly high-placed women to avoid lives of frivolousness and mundanity.

    Saint Frances of Rome was generous in all things, saw her guardian angel at her side for many years, ate little more than dry bread, and had a provable gift of healing. As her reputation for holiness spread in her later years, to be in her mere presence was considered a blessing by the people of Rome. As wife, mother, and later Oblate, she stretched herself to the limit in seeking out and doing God’s will, precisely as that will was transmitted to her by the Church she loved with such fervor.

    Saint Frances of Rome, through your intercession, aid all wives and mothers to live lives of generous service to their families. Help them to serve the domestic Church by creating, and fortifying, that cradle of holiness and culture the Church so needs to flourish.
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    6 mins
  • March 8: Saint John of God, Religious

    March 8: Saint John of God, Religious
    Mar 8 2025
    March 8: Saint John of God, Religious
    1495–1550
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet when Lenten Weekday)
    Patron Saint of hospitals, printers, the sick, and alcoholics

    He walked the fine line between madness and holiness

    There are many “Johns” who are saints, beginning with those found in Scripture itself: Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint John of the Cross, Saint John Fisher, etc. The name John has also been taken by many popes. Today’s John has the title “of God.” It is a simple and direct title. The word “God” conveys everything under God and everything that is God, without distinctions such as “of the Cross,” “of the Holy Name,” or “of the Infant Jesus.” Neither does it carry any hint of a homeland such as “of Assisi,” “of Calcutta,” or “of Padua.” All saints are “of God,” of course, but the plain title “of God” fits the personality, outlook, education, and simplicity of today’s John very well. The name was not given to him posthumously. John said that the Infant Jesus gave him the name in a dream. A Spanish Bishop who personally knew John and his work ordered him to bear this appellation once he knew its divine origins.

    Saint John of God did not have the advantage of an excellent education. But what his mind lacked his heart supplied. He left his Portuguese home as a child in the care of a priest and went to neighboring Spain. From there he lived an itinerant life as a farmer, shepherd, adventurer, and then soldier. He travelled the length and breadth of Europe fighting in the service of kings and princes, mostly against Muslim Turks. Many years later he found his way back home and went to see if his parents were still alive. But he had been gone so long, and had left so young, that he could not even remember their names. An uncle told him that they had died. At this point, the wandering John decided to ransom his own freedom to North African Muslims in exchange for Christian hostages. The plan came to nothing and he returned to Southern Spain.

    At this, the lowest point of his aimless life, John had a breakthrough, or perhaps a breakdown. He was selling religious books from town to town when he fell under the influence of a saint, John of Ávila. Saints know saints. Upon hearing John of Ávila preach about the martyr Saint Sebastian, and upon receiving his advice in spiritual direction, the wandering John stopped in his tracks. He fasted, he prayed, and he went on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain. So total was his repentance for his past sins that he was placed for a time in a hospital for the mentally ill. But his repentance was real. He changed forever and always and started caring for the kind of person that he used to be.

    John somehow raised enough money to start a small hospital and thus began, in an orderly and professional manner, to care for the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, convert the sinner, and shelter the homeless and orphans. He had no equal in giving of himself to his patients, and his reputation for holiness spread across Spain. He gave away his cloaks so often that his Bishop had a habit made, ordered John to put it on, and told him not to give it away. John’s total dedication to the poor and sick drew many followers. They emulated his generosity, and soon an Order was born. The group was eventually approved by the Holy See in 1572 under the title The Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God. The Order spread quickly throughout the world, often with the support of the Spanish Crown. Its work on behalf of the poor continues today in numerous countries through hundreds of institutions.

    Saint John of God practiced a type of Ignatian spirituality in evaluating his own life. But he was not just a spectator of his life, observing it from the outside. He became a student of himself, evaluated his own errors, listened to advice, stopped what he was doing, changed direction, and charted a new course in middle age. He was, in modern terms, a “late vocation.” He cared little for his own physical health and died on his fifty-fifth birthday while kneeling in prayer before an altar in his room. In some saints there is a fine line between sanctity and madness. Saint John of God straddled that fine line. He became mad for the Lord and was canonized by the Church for his holy madness in serving the poor and the God who loves them.

    Saint John of God, help us to follow your example of service to the poor through gift of self. You did not just ask for charitable donations but for charity itself. You did not ask others to do what you did not do yourself. Through your intercession, may all those in need encounter a servant as generous as yourself to satisfy their basic needs.
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