Mary the Mother of Jesus
    Wednesday Saints of October  04  Quarto Nonas Octóbris  
"We adore you and we bless you, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all the churches which are in the whole world, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world"
(St. Francis).



Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

Et álibi aliórum plurimórum sanctórum Mártyrum et Confessórum, atque sanctárum Vírginum.
And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
Пресвятая Богородице спаси нас!  (Santíssima Mãe de Deus, salva-nos!)
Francis.jpg
Six Canonized on Feast of Christ the King Nov 23 2014

CAUSES OF SAINTS April  2014

Our Bartholomew Family Prayer List
Joyful Mystery on Monday Saturday   Glorius Mystery on Sunday Wednesday
  
Sorrowful Mystery on Friday Tuesday   Luminous Mystery on Thursday Veterens of War

Acts of the Apostles

Nine First Fridays Devotion to the Sacred Heart From the writings of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
How do I start the Five First Saturdays?
Mary Mother of GOD 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary

How Saint Francis asked and obtained the indulgence of forgiveness
A Greeting to the Virgin Mary Saint Francis of Assisi
"Hail, O Lady,  Mary, holy Mother of God:  you are the Virgin made Church  and the one chosen by the  most holy Father in heaven  whom He consecrated  with His most holy beloved Son  and with the Holy Spirit the Paraclete,  in whom there was and is  the fullness of grace and every good. 
Hail His Palace!  Hail His Tabernacle!  Hail His Home!  Hail His Robe!  Hail His Servant!  Hail His Mother!  AMEN"  Saint Francis Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi, Deacon, Religious, Founder of the Three Orders (Solemnity)
October 4 - Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226)
   The Testimony of the First Franciscans Martyrs
In 1220, Saint Francis sent five of his disciples to Morocco. Their preaching was quickly put to an end by martyrdom, but the death of these first apostles made such an impression on the people, that the sultan had to authorize the opening of a church: it was called Saint Mary of Marrakech, the head and the mother of all the churches of Morocco.  Encyclopedia Maria, Beauchesne 1956

Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear,
for he who created you has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother.
Blessed be you, my God, for having created me. -- St Clare of Assisi

The Pedagogical Value of the Rosary (II) October 3 - OUR LADY OF GRACES (Italy, 1697)
If we had to synthesize the thoughts of the popes in a concise manner
on the remarkable pedagogical value of the Rosary, we could condense them this way:
It is the role of the mother to form and educate her children. Now the chief mission of Mary is to be a mother, the Mother of Jesus Christ, but also the mother of mankind. The Rosary is precisely the privileged way by which Mary initiates and forms her children to the Christian life.
Benoit Thierry D'Argenlieu, The Theology of the Rosary in Maria, Etudes sur la Vierge Marie, Vol. V

October 4 – Our Lady of Loreto (Port Lesney, France) – St Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) 
The Virgin Mary, Advocate of the Franciscan Order
Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of Saint Francis, wrote: “Then he moved to another place, called the Portiuncula, where there was a church to the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God.
It had been built a long time ago, and was then left in ruins...
“Overwhelmed with pity, he began to live there permanently and repair it. ‘He made it his home,’ Saint Bonaventure wrote, ‘because of his respect for the angels and his love for the Mother of Christ,’ to whom the chapel was dedicated.”
Celano summarized the Poverello's devotion to Mary in a few words: “He embraced the Mother of Jesus with indescribable love for the reason that she made the Lord of majesty a brother to us. He carried out special praise, poured out his prayers, and expressed his affection so frequently and in such ways that it would be difficult to describe.
“But—this is a source of great joy—he established her Advocate of the Order and placed under her wings the sons he was going to leave, so she would favor and protect them until the end.” www.francoisdassise.ca

St. Crispus & Gaius bishop Martyrs baptized by St. Paul at Corinth Crispin headed the local Jewish synagogue. Gaius served as St. Paul’s host and was also praised by St. John.  Before martyred, Crispin served as bishop of the Aegean Islands, and Gaius as bishop of Thessalonica, Greece.
 257 Caius, Faustus, Eusebius, Chaeremon, Lucius, & Comp. MM (RM)
 304 St. Mark Egyptian martyr with his brother, Marcian
St. Hierotheus Bishop friend of St. Dionysius the Areopagite
 310 St. Domnina Martyr with daughters Berenice & Prosdoce
 312 St. Adauctus Martyr & daughter
 350 St. Ammon Egyptian; St. Anthony saw his soul ascend to heaven
 445 St. Petronius  Bishop of Bologna Sent by Byzantine emperor Theodosius to Pope re: Nestorius
 
520 ST APOLLINARIS, BISHOP OF VALENCE
 570 St. Quintius  Martyred confessor; devout Christian and courtier in the palace of a Frankish king
 667 St. Aurea Abbess of St. Martial in Paris
 750 St. Peter of Damascus crucified bishop of Damascus Syria
1226 St. Francis of Assisi; Founder: Animals, Merchants & indulgences Ecology; The Christmas crèche first popularized  St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)  Francis of Assisi was a poor little man who astounded and inspired the Church by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit and without a mite of self-importance. Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his frolicking life as leader of Assisi's youth. Prayer—lengthy and difficult—led him to a self- emptying like that of Christ, climaxed by embracing a leper he met on the road. It symbolized his complete obedience to what he had heard in prayer: “Francis! Everything you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know my will. And when you have begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely to you will become intolerable and bitter, but all that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy.”
From the cross in the neglected field-chapel of San Damiano, Christ told him, “Francis, go out and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down.” Francis became the totally poor and humble workman.  He must have suspected a deeper meaning to “build up my house.” But he would have been content to be for the rest of his life the poor “nothing” man actually putting brick on brick in abandoned chapels. He gave up every material thing he had, piling even his clothes before his earthly father (who was demanding restitution for Francis' “gifts” to the poor) so that he would be totally free to say, “Our Father in heaven.”
He was, for a time, considered to be a religious “nut,” begging from door to door when he could not get money for his work, bringing sadness or disgust to the hearts of his former friends, ridicule from the unthinking. But genuineness will tell. A few people began to realize that this man was actually trying to be Christian. He really believed what Jesus said: “Announce the kingdom! Possess no gold or silver or copper in your purses, no traveling bag, no sandals, no staff” (see Luke 9:1-3).  Francis' first rule for his followers was a collection of texts from the Gospels. He had no idea of founding an order, but once it began he protected it and accepted all the legal structures needed to support it. His devotion and loyalty to the Church were absolute and highly exemplary at a time when various movements of reform tended to break the Church's unity. He was torn between a life devoted entirely to prayer and a life of active preaching of the Good News. He decided in favor of the latter, but always returned to solitude when he could. He wanted to be a missionary in Syria or in Africa, but was prevented by shipwreck and illness in both cases. He did try to convert the sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade.
During the last years of his relatively short life (he died at 44) he was half blind and seriously ill. Two years before his death, he received the stigmata, the real and painful wounds of Christ in his hands, feet and side. On his deathbed, he said over and over again the last addition to his Canticle of the Sun, “Be praised, O Lord, for our Sister Death.” He sang Psalm 141, and at the end asked his superior to have his clothes removed when the last hour came and for permission to expire lying naked on the earth, in imitation of his Lord. 

Comment:  Francis of Assisi was poor only that he might be Christ-like. He loved nature because it was another manifestation of the beauty of God. He did great penance (apologizing to “Brother Body” later in life) that he might be totally disciplined for the will of God. His poverty had a sister, humility, by which he meant total dependence on the good God. But all this was, as it were, preliminary to the heart of his spirituality: living the gospel life, summed up in the charity of Jesus and perfectly expressed in the Eucharist.
Quote:  “We adore you and we bless you, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all the churches which are in the whole world, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” (St. Francis).
1470 Blessed Julian Majali highly esteemed by popes and kings OSB Abbot (AC)
1537 Blessed Francis Titelmans spent his life caring for the sick OFM Cap. (AC)

Saint Mary of the Angels October 4 - OUR LADY OF VAUSSIVIERES (France, 1374) - St Francis of Assisi (d. 1226)
St Francis of Assisi went to a place called the Portioncula, which had a little chapel in honor of the Blessed Mother of the Lord. This chapel was now deserted and totally abandoned. The man of God, moved the poor condition of the place and excited by the ardent love he professed for the Queen of the Universe, returned there frequently to do repairs, but having learned that, since the name of that chapel was Saint Mary of the Angels, holy angels often appeared there, he settled there for good, out of respect for these celestial spirits and his special devotion to the Mother of Jesus.
Our saint always loved this place above all others: there he laid out the foundations of a perfect life; there he advanced wonderfully in virtue; there his life's course ended in a blessed death. And while dying he recommended this place to all as it was truly dear to the Virgin.  Before he died, a very edifying religious had a vision worthy of being reported. He saw a great multitude of men struck with blindness on their knees and with their faces turned up to heaven around that church. They all raised their hands and cried with tears to God, imploring his mercy and asking him for his light.
Then a bright flame, coming from heaven, spread over them, lit up their eyes and brought the desired salvation.
It is there also that Saint Francis established the Order of Friars Minor after being prompted by a revelation from heaven.  - St Francis of Assisi (d.1226)
The Legend of Saint Francis by St Bonaventure

October 4 - France. Port Lesney: Our Lady of Loreto

Through Her, Your Mercy Was Passed On to Us (I) Saint Faustina Kowalska
Be adored, O God of mercy, Because You have deigned to descend from heaven to earth.  Most humbly we adore You
For Your having vouchsafed to exalt all mankind.  Unfathomable and incomprehensible in Your mercy, For love of us You take on flesh >From the Immaculate Virgin, ever untouched by sin, Because You have willed it so from all ages.
The Blessed Virgin, that Snow-White Lily, Is first to praise the omnipotence of Your mercy.  Her pure heart opens with love for the coming of the Word; She believes the words of God's messenger and is confirmed in trust.
Heaven is astounded that God has become man, That there is on earth a heart worthy of God Himself.  Why is it that You do not unite Yourself with a Seraph, but with a sinner, O Lord?  Oh, because, despite the purity of the virginal womb, this is a mystery of Your mercy.
Saint Faustina Kowalska Divine Mercy in My Soul, # 1746


St. Crispus & Gaius bishop Martyrs baptized by St. Paul at Corinth Crispin headed the local Jewish synagogue. Gaius served as St. Paul’s host and was also praised by St. John.  Before martyred, Crispin served as bishop of the Aegean Islands, and Gaius as bishop of Thessalonica, Greece.
Corínthi item natális sanctórum Crispi et Caji, quorum méminit sanctus Paulus Apóstolus ad Corínthios scribens.
    At Corinth, the birthday of the Saints Crispus and Caius, who are mentioned by the apostle St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians.

The First Epistle Of Paul The Apostle To The Corinthians.
14 I thank God that I baptized none of you, but *Crispus and Gaius; 15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.
16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: *not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the *power of God.
19 For it is written, *I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Crispus and Caius of Corinth MM (RM) 1st century. Crispus and Caius were the only ones baptized by Saint Paul at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:14). Crispus was ruler of the synagogue in Corinth (Acts 18:8), and Caius probably hosted St. Paul (Romans 16:23) and was the “dearly beloved Gaius to whom Saint John addressed his third epistle. Tradition says that Crispus became bishop of Aegina and Caius, bishop of Thessalonica (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).

According to the Acts of the Apostles, Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house.
This Crispus is the same as the one referred to by Saint Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
I baptized Crispus, writes the great Apostle.
Crispus became Bishop of Aegina, an island near the Peloponnesus.
St. Paul: From Athens to Corinth in Greece
Paul, Timothy and Silas (Silvanus) were in Athens early in the year 50 A.D. Paul was worried about the Christian community he had left behind in Thessalonica. He couldn’t help but wonder what happened after they had been spirited out of the city at night. He told the Thessalonians later that he tried twice to return, but “Satan thwarted us” (1 Thes 2:18).
Finally, he sent Timothy and Silas back to see what was happening.  While they were gone, Paul preached at the Areopagus in Athens, a popular place where Greek philosophers had taught for centuries. He managed to make a few converts (Acts mentions Dionysius and Damaris), but his ministry in Athens was basically unsuccessful.
Even before Timothy and Silas could return, Paul decided to move on to Corinth, a much more prosperous city then. It was a bustling city that had more business than it could handle, and Greeks went there to make their fortunes. It was also the site of the Isthmian Games, celebrated every two years.  It was only 50 miles away, a two-day walk. Paul left word for Timothy and Silas to follow, and made the trip.
After arriving in Corinth, Paul sought work as a tentmaker. He found employment with a Jew named Aquila and his wife Priscilla (or Prisca). When Paul started to talk about Jesus, he was surprised to find that Aquila and Priscilla were already Christians. They had been in Rome when Emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome in 41 A.D. because—according to the historian Suetonius—of disturbances caused by disagreements over Jesus’ messiahship. Aquila and Priscilla would have been excited to meet Paul, especially since he had actually lived in Jerusalem.
Paul was in Corinth for 18 months and it was a fruitful 18 months, probably thanks in large part to Aquila and Priscilla, who were well-established in the city. His Christian community grew to at least 40 or 50, of whom we know 16 by name. Most were converts from paganism because, when Paul tried to preach in a synagogue, Acts says, he was reviled for teaching that Christ was the Messiah. So he went to the house of Titus Justus.
As his congregation grew, Paul needed the houses of relatively wealthy believers to accommodate it. He found that in Stephanas, Crispus and Gaius. Stephanus had the leisure to travel with Paul later. Crispus was a wealthy patron of a synagogue and Gaius had a home that could accommodate “the whole Church” (Rom 16:23). Most members of his Church, though, were not wealthy. They were a mixed group that had only their Christianity in common. Once again, though, the Jews rose up and accused Paul of “inducing people to worship God contrary to the law” (Acts 18:13). This happened while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia. We know that he held that position only from July to September of 51 A.D. Gallio dismissed the charges, but shortly after that Paul decided that it was time for him to return to Antioch. †

Homily XXXIX.  Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the RomansActs XVII. 32–34, XVIII. 1 “And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth.”

What can be the reason that, having persuaded (some so far as to say) that they would hear him again, and there being no dangers, Paul is so in haste to leave Athens? Probably he knew that he should do them no great good; moreover he was led by the Spirit to Corinth.904904 Here in mss. and Edd. the order is confused by the insertion of the text xvii. 34; xviii. 1–3, and the transposition of the sentence marked ( a ), in consequence of which the first sentence of ( c ) has been misunderstood, as if it meant that St. Paul thought it enough merely to sow the seeds at Athens ( τέως mod. text Cat. τῶν λόγων ), “because the greater part of his life was now passed.” So Cat. is further betrayed into a misconception of the following words ἐ πὶ μὲν γὰρ Νέρωνος ἐτελειώθη , adding ὁ Παῦλος , as if it referred to St. Paul’s martyrdom: and so Ben. mistakes the matter, major’ enim pars vitæ illius jam (ἐ νταῦθα) transacta erat. Nam sub Nerone consummatus est, as Erasm. occisus est:’ though the opposition to the ἐ πὶ μὲν N. in the following clause ἀ πὸ δὲ Κλ., might have obviated this misapprehension. (b) For the Athenians, although fond of hearing strange things, nevertheless did not attend (to him); for this was not their study, but only to be always having something to say; which was the cause that made them hold off from him. But if this was their custom, how is it that they accuse him, “he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods?” (ch. xvii. 18.) Yes, but these were matters they did not at all know what to make of. Howbeit, he did convert both Dionysius the Areopagite, and some others. For those who were careful of (right) living, quickly received the word; but the others not so. It seemed to Paul sufficient to have cast the seeds of the doctrines. (a) To Corinth then, as I said, he was led by the Spirit, in which city he was to abide. (c) “And having found a certain Jew named Aquila, of Pontus by birth, lately come from Italy”—for the greater part of his life had been passed there—“and Priscilla his wife, because that Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.” (v. 2.) For though it was in the reign of Nero that the war against the Jews was consummated, yet from the time of Claudius and thenceforward it was fanning up, at a distance indeed,905905 See Recapitulation, p. 239, note 1. so that, were it but so, they might come to their senses, and from Rome they were now driven as common pests. This is why it is so ordered by Providence that Paul was led thither as a prisoner, that he might not as a Jew be driven away, but as acting under military custody might even be guarded there. (Having found these,) “he came to them, and because he was of the same craft, he abode with them and wrought: for by occupation they were tent-makers.” (v. 3.) Lo, what a justification he found for dwelling in the same house with them! For because here, of all places, it was necessary that he should not receive, as he himself says, “That wherein they glory, they may be found, even as we” (2 Cor. xi. 12), it is providentially ordered that he there abides. “And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was straitened in the word,906906 A. B. C. τῷ λόγῳ : so the best mss. of the Acts, Gr. and Lat. instabat verbo. testifying to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.” (v. 4, 5.) “And when the Jews opposed and blasphemed,” i.e. they tried to bear him down (πηρέαζον), they set upon him—What then does Paul? He separates from them, and in a very awful manner: and though he does not now say, “It was need that the word should be spoken unto you,” yet he darkly intimates it to them:—“and when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.” (v. 6.) “And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man’s house, named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue.” See how having again said, “Henceforth—” for all that, he does not neglect them; so that it was to rouse them that he said this, and thereupon came to Justus, whose house was contiguous to the synagogue, so that907907 A. B. C. ὥ στε καὶ ἀπὸ (B. om.) τοῦ ζήλου ( ζῆλον C.) ἔ χειν ἀπὸ τῆς γειτνιάσεως . Cat. has preserved the true reading, ἀ πὸ τούτου ζῆλον . even from this they might have jealousy, from the very proximity. “And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house.” This also was, of all things, enough to bring them over. “And many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized. Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city.” (v. 8–10.) See by how many reasons He persuades him, and how He puts last the reason which of all others most prevailed with him, “I have much people in this city.” Then how was it, you may ask, that they set upon him? And908908 This would be better transposed thus: καὶ μὴν, φησὶν, ἤγαγον αὐτὸν πρὸς τὸν ἀνθ., ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν σχυσαν . Mod. text, “but they only brought him,” etc. What follows is confused by the transposition after ὅ ρα γοῦν ἐνταῦθα of the part ( a ) beginning with the same words. yet, the writer tells us, they prevailed nothing, but brought him to the proconsul. “And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. And when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the judgment-seat.” (v. 11, 12.) Do you mark why those men were ever contriving to give a public turn to the misdemeanors (they accused them of)? Thus see here: (b) “Saying, This fellow seduceth men contrary to the law to worship God. And when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said: If indeed it were any wrong-doing or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters. And he drave them from the judgment-seat.” (v. 13–16.) This Gallio seems to me to have been a sensible man. (a) Thus observe, when these had said, “Against the law he seduceth men to worship God,” he “cared for none of these things:” and observe how he answers them: “If indeed it were” any matter affecting the city, “any wrong-doing or wicked lewdness,” etc. (c) “Then all the Jews909909 The mss. have ἱ ο῞Ελληνες as in some copies of the Acts and Elz., but the best authorities Gr. and Lat. simply πάντες . We adopt οἱ ᾽Ιουδαῖοι from the Catena, and Chrys. evidently understood it of the Jews. took Sosthenes the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment-seat: and Gallio cared for none of these things” (v. 17): but their beating him he did not take as an insult to himself. So petulant were the Jews. But let us look over again what has been said.

(Recapitulation.) “And when they heard,” (ch. xvii. 32) what great and lofty doctrines, they did not even attend, but jeered at the Resurrection! “For the natural man,” it saith, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit.” (1 Cor. ii. 14.) “And so,” it says, “Paul went forth.” (v. 33.) How? Having persuaded some; derided by others. “But certain men,” it says, “clave unto him, and believed, among whom was also Dionysius the Areopagite and some others.”910910 Here A. B. C. insert the sentence ὅ ρα τους πιστους κ. τ. λ . which mod. text rightly removes to the comment on v. 8, and after it, ὅ ρα πῶς ὁ νόμος καταλύεται λοιπόν : which unless it means, “See here the beginning of the judgment on the Jews, the dissolution of their Law, and overthrow of their nation,” of which Chrys. speaks in this sentence, is out of place here, and belongs to the comment on v. 18, i.e. to the beginning of Hom. 40, which in fact opens with these words. So mod. text understands them. “Mark how the Law begins to be dissolved from henceforth. For this man, being a Jew, having after these things shorn his head in Cenchrea, goes with Paul into Syria. Being a man of Pontus, not in Jerusalem nor near it did he haste to come, but at a greater distance.” The innovator’s meaning seems to have been, that he shore his head in fulfilment of his vow, not in Jerusalem, nor near Jerusalem, but at a greater distance, viz. in Cenchrea.” But St. Chrys. is here commenting on Claudius’ edict (see above, p. 240, on v. 2): “See here the beginning of the judgment on the Jews: it was hasting to come, but it began not in Jerusalem, nor in Palestine, but at a greater distance—at Rome, in this edict of the Emperor: οὐκ ἐν ῾Ιεροσολύμοις, οὐδὲ πλησίον ἔσπευδεν ἐλθεῖν ἀλλὰ μακροτέρω .” (v. 34.) “And after these things,” etc. “And having found a certain Jew by name Aquila, of Pontus by birth, lately come from Italy, because that Claudius had ordered all Jews to depart from Rome, he came to them, and because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tent-makers.” (ch.xviii. 1–3.) Being of Pontus, this Aquila * * * .911911 The sentence may be completed with: “had spent the greater part of his life at Rome,” etc.; see above, p. 236, but the copyist make οὗτος nom. to οὐκ ἔσπευδεν ἐλθεῖν . Observe how, not in Jerusalem, nor near it (the crisis), was hasting to come, but at a greater distance. And with him he abides, and is not ashamed to abide, nay, for this very reason he does abide, as having a suitable lodging-place, for to him it was much more suitable than any king’s palace. And smile not thou, beloved, to hear (of his occupation). For (it was good for him) even as to the athlete the palæstra is more useful than delicate carpets; so to the warrior the iron sword (is useful), not that of gold. “And wrought,” though he preached. Let us be ashamed, who though we have no preaching to occupy us, live in idleness. “And he disputed in the synagogue every sabbath day, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks” (v. 4): but “when they opposed and blasphemed” he withdrew, by this expecting to draw them more. For wherefore having left that house did he come to live hard by the synagogue? was it not for this? For it was not that he saw any danger here. But therefore it is that Paul having testified to them—not teaches now, but testifies—“having shaken his garments,” to terrify them not by word only but by action, “said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads” (v. 6): he speaks the more vehemently as having already persuaded many. “I,” says he, “am clean.” Then we also are accountable for the blood of those entrusted to us, if we neglect them. “From this time forth I will go to the Gentiles.” So that also when he says, “Henceforth let no man trouble me” (Gal. vi. 17), he says it to terrify. For not so much did the punishment terrify, as this stung them. “And having removed thence he came into the house of one named Justus, that worshipped God, whose house was contiguous to the synagogue” (v. 7), and there abode, by this wishing to persuade them that he was in earnest (πρὸς τὰ ἐθνη ἠπείγετο) to go to the Gentiles. Accordingly, mark immediately the ruler of the synagogue converted, and many others, when he had done this. “Crispus the ruler of the synagogue believed in the Lord, with his whole house: and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized.”—(v. 8.) “With his whole house:”912912 To this clause, mod. text rightly refers the comment, ὅ ρα τοὺς πιστοὺς τότε μετὰ τῆς οἰκίας τοῦτο ποιοῦντας ὁλοκλήρου , which the original text has after καὶ ἕτεροι τινές of xvii. 34. observe the converts in those times doing this with their entire household. This Crispus he means where he writes, “I baptized none save Crispus and Gaius.” (1 Cor. i. 14.) This (same) I take to be called Sosthenes—(evidently) a believer, insomuch that he is beaten, and is always present with Paul.913913 There is no sufficient ground for the supposition of Chrys. that the Sosthenes here mentioned was a Christian and the same who is saluted in 1 Cor. i. 1. On the contrary, he was the leader of the Jewish party who persecuted the ruler of the synagogue, perhaps the successor of Crispus who had become a Christian. The reading οἱ ᾽Ιουδαῖοι of some inferior mss. in v. 17 which is followed by Chrys. would easily give rise to this misconception. The true text is most probably πάντες , meaning the officers of the governor. The representatives of the Roman government, then, attacked Sosthenes, the leader of the party which was persecuting Paul. Thus their effort ended in failure. And so indifferent was Gallio that he in no way interfered. Paul’s accusers were thus themselves beaten and the whole effort at prosecution miserably failed.—G.B.S. “And the Lord said in the night,” etc. Now even the number (of the “much people”) persuaded him, but Christ’s claiming them for His own (moved him) more.914914 ἡ δὲ οἰκείωσις τοῦ Χ. πλέον . Sed familiaritas Christi magis. Ben. Chrys. said above, that the most powerful consideration was this which is put last, “For I have much people in this city.” The meaning here is, That there was “much people” to be converted, was a cheering consideration: that Christ should say, λαός μοι πολύς ἐστιν , speaking of them as “His own,” was the strongest inducement. Yet He says also, “Fear not:” for the danger was become greater now, both because more believed, and also the ruler of the synagogue. This was enough to rouse him. Not that he was reproved915915 B. C. ὅ τι ἠλέγχθη φοβούμενος ἢ οὐκ ἠλέγχθη ὥστε μὴ (C. μηδὲ ) παθεῖν . A., ὅ τε ἐλέχθη ὥστε δὲ μὴ παθεῖν , (which is meant for emendation: “This was enough to rouse him when it was spoken: but, that he should not suffer,” etc.) Mod. text, ὅ τι ἠλ. φοβούμενος, ἢ οὐκ ἠλ. μὲν, ἀλλ᾽ ὥστε μηδὲ τοῦτο παθεῖν . We read Οὐκ ὅτι ἠλέγχθη ὡς φοβούμενος. & 244·στε δὲ μὴ παθεῖν, ᾽Εγώ εἰμι μετὰ σοῦ . The accidental omission of οὐκ may have been corrected in the margin by the gloss ἢ οὐκ ἠλ . But the sense seems to be otherwise confused by transpositions. “It is true, even the number, and still more Christ’s οἰκείωσις of them, prevailed with him. This was enough to rouse him. But Christ begins by saying, “Fear not,” etc. And in fact the danger was increased, etc. Not that Paul was reproved as being afraid, etc. as fearing; but that he should not suffer aught; “I am with thee, and none shall set upon thee to hurt thee.” (v. 9, 10.) For He did not always permit them to suffer evil, that they might not become too weak. For nothing so grieved Paul, as men’s unbelief and setting themselves (against the Truth): this was worse than the dangers. Therefore it is that (Christ) appears to him now. “And he continued a year and six months,” etc. (v. 11.) After the year and six months, they set upon him. “And when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia,” etc. (v. 12, 13), because they had no longer the use of their own laws.916916 From this point to the end of the Exposition all is confused. To make something like connection, it has been necessary to rearrange the parts, but the restoration is still unsatisfactory. (c) And observe how prudent he is: for he does not say straightway, I care not, but, “If,” says he, “it were a matter of wrong-doing or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you; but if it be a question of doctrine and words and of your law, see ye to it, for I do not choose to be a judge of such matters.” (v. 14, 15.) (g) He taught917 917 Καὶ ἐδιδάξεν ὅτι τὰ τοιαῦτα δικαστικῆς ψήφου [ οὐ , this we supply,] δεῖται· ἀλλὰ ἀτάκτως πάντα ποιοῦσιν . Mod. text ἐ δίδαξε γὰρ ( ἥ τε τούτων ῾ἐπιείκεια καὶ ἐκείνων θρασύτης , from f ) ὅ τι τὰ τοι. δικ. ψήφ. δεῖται . them that not such are the matters which crave a judicial sentence, but they do all things out of order. And he does not say, It is not my duty, but, “I do not choose,” that they may not trouble him again. Thus Pilate said in the case of Christ, “Take ye Him, and judge him according to your law.” (John xviii. 31.) But they were just like men drunken and mad. (d) “And he drave them from the judgment-seat” (v. 16)—he effectually closed the tribunal against them. “Then all” (the Jews) “having seized Sosthenes the ruler of the synagogue, beat him before the judgment-seat. And Gallio cared for none of these things.” (v. 17). (a) This thing, of all others, set them on (to this violence)—their persuasion that the governor would not even let himself down (to notice it). (e) It was a splendid victory. O the shame they were put to! (b) For it is one thing to have come off victorious from a controversy, and another for those to learn that he cared nothing for the affair. (f) “And Gallio cared for none of these things:” and yet the whole was meant as an insult to him! But, forsooth, as if they had received authority (they did this). Why did he (Sosthenes), though he also had authority, not beat (them)? But they were (otherwise) trained: so that the judge should learn which party was more reasonable. This was no small benefit to those present—both the reasonableness of these, and the audacity of those. (h)918918 Here, between the parts g and h, the mss. have two sentences retained by Edd. but clearly out of place, unless they form part of a second recapitulation: “Therefore he departed from Athens.” “Because there was much people here.” He was beaten, and said nothing.

This man let us also imitate: to them that beat us, let us return blow for blow, by meekness, by silence, by long-suffering. More grievous these wounds, greater this blow, and more heavy. For to show that it is not the receiving a blow in the body that is grievous, but the receiving it in the mind, we often smite people, but since it is in the way of friendship, they are even pleased: but if you smite any indifferent person in an insolent manner, you have pained him exceedingly, because you have touched his heart. So let us smite their heart. But that meekness inflicts a greater blow than fierceness, come, let us prove, so far as that is possible, by words. For the sure proof indeed is by acts and by experience: but if you will, let us also make the enquiry by word, though indeed we have often made it already. Now in insults, nothing pains us so much, as the opinion passed by the spectators; for it is not the same thing to be insulted in public and in private, but those same insults we endure even with ease, when we suffer them in a solitary place, and with none by to witness them, or know of them. So true is it that it is not the insult, as it is in itself, that mortifies us, but the having to suffer it in the sight of all men: since if one should do us honor in the sight of all men, and insult us in private, we shall notwithstanding even feel obliged to him. The pain then is not in the nature of the insult, but in the opinion of the beholders; that one may not seem to be contemptible. What then, if this opinion should be in our favor? Is not the man attempting to disgrace us himself more disgraced, when men give their opinion in our favor? Say, whom do the bystanders despise? Him who insults, or him who being insulted keeps silence? Passion indeed suggests, that they despise him who is insulted: but let us look into it now while we are free from that excitement, in order that we may not be carried away when the time comes. Say, whom do we all condemn? Plainly the man who insults: and if he be an inferior, we shall say that he is even mad; if an equal, that he is foolish; if a superior, still we shall not approve of it. For which man, I ask, is worthy of approval, the man who is excited, who is tossed with a tempest of passion, who is infuriated like a wild beast, who demeans himself in this sort against our common nature, or he who lives in a state of calm, in a haven of repose, and in virtuous equanimity? Is not the one like an angel, the other not even like a man? For the one cannot even bear his own evils, while the other bears even those of others also: here, the man cannot even endure himself; there, he endures another too: the one is in danger of shipwreck, the other sails in safety, his ship wafted along the favoring gales: for he has not suffered the squall of passion to catch his sails and overturn the bark of his understanding: but the breath of a soft and sweet air fanning upon it, the breath of forbearance, wafts it with much tranquillity into the haven of wise equanimity. And like as when a ship is in danger of foundèring, the sailors know not what they cast away, whether what they lay hands upon be their own or other men’s property, but they throw overboard all the contents without discrimination, alike the precious and what is not such: but when the storm has ceased, then reckoning up all that they have thrown out, they shed tears, and are not sensible of the calm for the loss of what they have thrown overboard: so here, when passion blows hard, and the storm is raised, people in flinging out their words know not how to use order or fitness; but when the passion has ceased, then recalling to mind what kind of words they have given utterance to, they consider the loss and feel not the quiet, when they remember the words by which they have disgraced themselves, and sustained most grievous loss, not as to money, but as to character for moderation and gentleness. Anger is a darkness. “The fool,” saith Scripture, “hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Ps. xiii. 1.) Perhaps also of the angry man it is suitable to say the same, that the angry man hath said, There is no God. For, saith Scripture, “Through the multitude of his anger he will not seek” (after God).919919 Ps. x. 4. “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not,” etc. E.V. (Ps. x. 4.) For let what pious thought will enter in, (passion) thrusts and drives all out, flings all athwart. (b) When you are told, that he whom you abused uttered not one bitter word, do you not for this feel more pain than you have inflicted? (a) If you in your own mind do not feel more pain than he whom you have abused, abuse still; (but) though there be none to call you to account, the judgment of your conscience, having taken you privately, shall give you a thousand lashes, (when you think) how you poured out a flood of railings on one so meek, and humble, and forbearing. We are forever saying these things, but we do not see them exhibited in works. You, a human being, insult your fellow-man? You, a servant, your fellow-servant? But why do I wonder at this, when many even insult God? Let this be a consolation to you when suffering insult. Are you insulted? God also is insulted. Are you reviled? God also was reviled. Are you treated with scorn? Why, so was our Master also. In these things He shares with us, but not so in the contrary things. For He never insulted another unjustly: God forbid! He never reviled, never did a wrong. So that we are those who share with Him, not ye. For to endure when insulted is God’s part: to be merely abusive, is the part of the devil. See the two sides. “Thou hast a devil” (John vii. 20; ib. xviii. 22), Christ was told: He received a blow on the face from the servant of the high-priest. They who wrongfully insult, are in the same class with these. For if Peter was even called “Satan” (Matt. xvi. 23) for one word; much920920 mss. πολλῷ μᾶλλον οὗτοι ᾽Ιουδαῖοι ἀκούσονται, ὅταν τὰ ᾽Ιουδαίων ποιῶσιν ὥσπερ κἀκεῖνοι διαβόλου τέκνα, ἔπειδη κ. τ. λ . We omit ᾽ Ιουδαῖοι . more shall these men, when they do the works of the Jews, be called, as those were called, “children of the devil” (John viii. 44), because they wrought the works of the devil. You insult; who are you, I ask (that you do so)? Nay, rather the reason why you insult, is this, that you are nothing: no one that is human insults. So that what is said in quarrels, “Who are you?” ought to be put in the contrary way: “Insult: for you are nothing.” Instead of that the phrase is, “Who are you, that you insult?” “A better man than you,” is the answer. And yet it is just the contrary: but because we put the question amiss, therefore they answer amiss: so that the fault is ours. For as if we thought it was for great men to insult, therefore we ask, “Who are you, that you insult?” And therefore they make this answer.

But, on the contrary, we ought to say: “Do you insult? insult still:  for you are nobody:” whereas to those who do not insult this should be said: “Who are you that you insult not?—you have surpassed human nature.” This is nobility, this is generosity, to speak nothing ungenerous, though a man may deserve to have it spoken to him. Tell me now, how many are there who are not worthy to be put to death? Nevertheless, the judge does not this in his own person, but interrogates them; and not this either, in his own person. But if it is not to be suffered, that the judge, sitting in judgment, should (in his own person) speak with a criminal, but he does all by the intervention of a third person, much more is it our duty not to insult our equals in rank; for921921 οὐ γὰρ οὕτω τὸ ὑβρίσαι πλεονεκτήσομεν αὐτῶν, ὡς τὸ διδαχθῆναι ὅτι ὑβρίσαμεν ἑαυτούς . B. and mod. text τῷ ὑβρ., τῷ διδ . The ὅ τι om. by A. B. C. Sav. is supplied by mod. text. A has δειχθῆναι , Sav. διαλεχθῆναι . The construction is πλεονεκτεῖν τί τινός . “We may think we have got something, viz. the pleasure of having disgraced them; whereas all that we get, in advance of them, is the being taught that we have disgraced ourselves.” all the advantage we shall get of them will be, not so much to have disgraced them, as to be made to learn that we have disgraced ourselves. Well then, in the case of the wicked, this is why we must not insult (even them); in the case of the good there is another reason also because they do not deserve it: and for a third,922922 καὶ τρίτον (om. C.), ὅ τι ὑβριστὴν εἶναι οὐ χρή . This cannot be, “for a third reason,” or “in the third place,” but seems rather to mean “the third party” spoken of in the preceding sentence. Perhaps it may mean, As the judge does not himself arraign nor even interrogate the criminal, but by a third person, because the judge must not seem to be an ὑ βριστὴς , so there is need of a third person, καὶ τρίτον δεῖ εἰς μέσον ἐλθεῖν ὅτι .…But the whole scope of the argument is very obscure. because it is not right to be abusive. But as things are, see what comes of it; the person abused is a man, and the person abusing is a man, and the spectators men. What then? must the beasts come between them and settle matters? for only this is left. For when both the wrong-doers and those who delight in the wrong-doing are men, the part of reconciler is left for the beasts: for just as when the masters quarrel in a house, there is nothing left but for the servants to reconcile them,—even if this be not the result, for the nature of the thing demands this,—just so is it here.—Are you abusive? Well may you be so, for you are not even human. Insolence seemed to be a high-born thing; it seemed to belong to the great; whereas it belongs rather to slaves; but to give good words belongs to free men. For as to do ill is the part of those, so to suffer ill is the part of these.—Just as if some slave should steal the master’s property, some old hag,—such a thing as that is the abusive man. And like as some detestable thief and runaway,923 923 Old text: ὑ βριστὴς, κλέπτης κατάρατος καὶ δραπέτης· καὶ ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις σπουδῇ εἰσιὼν, καθάπερ ἐκεῖνος πανταχοῦ περιβλέπεται ὑφελέσθαι τι σπουδάζων, οὕτω καὶ οὗτος πάντα περισκοπεῖ ἐκβάλλειν τι θέλων . We read ὑ βριστής. Καὶ ὡς ἂν εἴ τις κλέπτης καταρ. καὶ δραπ. σπουδῇ εἰσιὼν, παντ. περιβλ. ὑφ. τι θέλων, οὕτω καὶ οὗτος καθάπερ ἐκεῖνος πάνταπερισκ. ἐκβάλλειν τι σπουδάζων . But it can hardly be supposed that Chrys. thus expressed himself. The purport seems to be this: To be abusive is to behave like a slave, like a foul-mouthed hag. (see p. 200.) And the abusive man, when he is eager to catch at something in your life or manners, the exposure of which may disgrace you, is like a thief who should slink into a house, and pry about for something that he can lay hold of—nay, like one who should purposely look about for the filthiest things he can bring out, and who in so doing disgraces himself more than the owner. with studied purpose stealing in, looks all around him, wishing to filch something: so does this man, even as he, look narrowly at all on every side, studying how to throw out some (reproach). Or perhaps we may set him forth by a different sort of example. Just as if924924 Here again ὥ σπερ ἂν εἴποι τις , B. for ὥ σπερ ἂν εἴ τις , C.—The sentence οὐχὶ τὰ ὑφαιρεθέντα ᾔσχυνε τοσοῦτον is incomplete; viz. “the owner, by the exposure of the noisomeness, as the stealer himself who produces it.” one should steal filthy vessels out of a house, and bring them out in the presence of all men, the things purloined do not so disgrace the persons robbed, as they disgrace the thief himself: just so this man, by bringing out his words in the presence of all men, casts disgrace not on others but on himself by the words, in giving vent to this language, and be-fouling both his tongue and his mind. For it is all one, when we quarrel with bad men, as if one for the sake of striking a man who is immersed in putrefying filth should defile himself by plunging his hands into the nastiness. Therefore, reflecting on these things, let us flee the mischief thence accruing, and keep a clean tongue, that being clear from all abusiveness, we may be enabled with strictness to pass through the life present, and to attain unto the good things promised to those that love Him, through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father and the Holy Ghost together be glory, might, honor, now and ever, world without end. Amen.

Athénis sancti Hieróthei, qui fuit discípulus ipsíus beáti Pauli Apóstoli.
    At Athens, St. Hierotheos, disciple of the blessed apostle Paul.

257 Caius, Faustus, Eusebius, Chaeremon, Lucius, & Comp. MM (RM)
3rd century. These martyrs of Alexandria died during the persecution of Valerian in 257. Caius and Faustus may be the saints who names are associated with Saint Dionysius of Alexandria, their bishop.
The deacon Eusebius (d. 269) survived to become bishop of Laodicea.
Chaeremon, who had already suffered under Decius, was exiled. Nothing is noted or known about Lucius (Benedictines)
.
304 St. Mark Egyptian martyr with his brother, Marcian
In Ægypto sanctórum Mártyrum Marci et Marciáni fratrum, et aliórum ferme innumerabílium utriúsque sexus atque omnis ætátis; quorum álii post vérbera, álii post divérsa géneris horríbiles cruciátus flammis tráditi, álii in mare præcipitáti, nonnúlli cápite cæsi, plúrimi inédia consúmpti, álii partíbulis affíxi, quidam étiam, cápite deórsum verso et pédibus in sublíme sublátis, appénsi, beatíssimam martyrii corónam meruérunt.
    In Egypt, the holy martyrs Mark and Marcian, brothers, and an almost countless number of both sexes and of all ages, who merited the blessed crown of martyrdom, some after being scourged, others when they had suffered horrible torment, and others after being delivered to the flames.  Some were cast into the sea, some others were beheaded; many were starved to death; many were fastened to gibbets; and others again were suspended by the feet with their heads downward.
and “innumerable companions.” They were probably slain in Alexandria.
Men and women, young and old, were martyred with Mark.
Mark, Marcian, and Companions MM (RM) Died . Mark and his brother, Marcian, were martyrs in Egypt under Diocletian together with an innumerable host of other "victims of all ages and both sexes." They may be duplicates of other groups of martyrs, however (Benedictines)
.
310 St. Domnina Martyr with daughters Berenice & Prosdoce
They died in Syria and were commemorated by Greek hagiographers.{writings on the subject of such holy persons; and specifically, the biography of ecclesiastical and secular leaders, canonized by the Christian Church.}
Dominina, Berenice, and Prosdoce MM (AC) Died 303-310. Berenice and Prosdoce were the daughters of Saint Dominina. Their lives and martyrdom in Syria under Diocletian were celebrated and commemorated by several contemporary Greek martyrs (Benedictines)
.
312 St. Adauctus Martyr & daughter Callisthene, were caught up in the persecutions of co-Emperor Maximinus Daia (r. 310-313)
The Caesar or junior emperor of Syria and Egypt and a pagan who opposed the Church, Maximus Dala was halted in his persecutions by Constantine's Edict of Milan in 312. A year later he was forced to poison himself.  During the persecutions, Adauctus was executed in Ephesus. His daughter, Callisthene, was not martyred, and spent the rest of her life doing works of mercy.
Adauctus M and Callisthene V (AC) Died c. 312 and later. Adauctus and his daughter were Ephesian martyrs, who suffered under Maximinus Daza. Adauctus died but Callisthene escaped martyrdom and devoted herself to works of charity until her death (Benedictines).

350 St. Ammon Egyptian St. Anthony saw his soul ascend to heaven
350 ST AMMON
IT is often stated that St Ammon was the first of the Egyptian fathers to establish a monastery in Nitria; this is by no means certain, but it is beyond doubt that he was one of the most famous hermit monks to live in that desert. After the death of his wealthy parents, his uncle and other relatives forced Ammon, when he was twenty-two years old, into matrimony. But he read to his wife what St Paul wrote in commendation of the state of virginity, by which she was persuaded to consent to their living together in perpetual continence. They thus lived eighteen years under the same roof. He was severe in his mortifications so as gradually to inure and prepare his body to bear the austerity of the desert. Having spent the day in hard labour tilling a large garden in which he planted and cultivated balsam, at evening he supped with his wife on vegetables or fruit, and afterwards retired to prayer in which he passed a great part of the night. When his uncle and others who opposed his retreat were dead, he retired to Nitria with his wife's consent, and she assembled in her house a number of religious women, who were visited and directed by St Ammon once every six months.

Nitria, now called the Wady Natrun, is about seventy miles south-east from Alexandria and has been described as
 “a poisonous marsh overgrown with weeds, full of reptiles and blood-sucking flies .. There are good and evil oases. This was the marsh that gave its name to Nitria-the soda marsh. The hermits chose it because it was even worse than the desert."
 Palladius visited it fifty years after the time of St Ammon. He writes:
“On the mountain live some five thousand men with different modes of life, each living in accordance with his own powers and wishes, so that it is allowed to live alone or with another or with a number of others. There are seven bakeries in the mountain, which serve the needs both of these men and also of the anchorites of the great desert, six hundred in all. . . . In this mountain of Nitria there is a great church, by which stand three palm trees, each with a whip suspended from it. One is intended for the solitaries who transgress, one for robbers, if any pass that way, and one for chance comers; so that all who transgress and are judged worthy of blows are tied to the palm tree and receive on the back the appointed number of stripes and are then released. Next to the church is a guest-house, where they receive the stranger who has arrived until he goes away of his own accord, without limit of time, even if he remains two or three years. Having allowed him to spend one week in idleness, the rest of his stay they occupy with work either in the garden or bakery or kitchen. If he should be an important person they give him a book, not allowing him to talk to anyone before the hour. In this mountain there also live doctors and confectioners. And they use wine and wine is on sale. All these men work with their hands at linen manufacture, so that all are self supporting. And indeed at the ninth hour it is possible to stand and hear how the strains of psalmody rise from each habitation, so that one believes that one is high above the world in Paradise. They occupy the church only on Saturday and Sunday. There are eight priests who serve the church, in which so long as the senior priest lives no one else celebrates or preaches or gives decisions, but they all just sit quietly by his side” (Lausiac History, Lowther Clarke's trans.). Thus lived the monks and anchorites who, in the words of St Athanasius, “came forth from their own people and enrolled themselves for citizenship in Heaven”.
St Ammon's first disciples lived dispersed in separate cells, till St Antony the Great advised him to assemble the greater part of them under the eye of an attentive superior, though even then the monastery was no more than a fortuitous aggregation of private dwellings. Antony himself selected the site for their group and set up a cross there, and he and Ammon often exchanged visits. St Ammon lived in great austerity. When he first retired into the desert he took a meal of bread and water only once a day; this he afterwards extended to two and sometimes to three or even four days. St Ammon wrought many miracles, one of which is recorded by St Athanasius in his Life of St Antony and elsewhere. He was going to cross a river when the banks were overflowed, with Theodore his disciple, and they withdrew from one another to undress. But St Ammon even when alone was too shy to swim across naked, and while he stood trying to make up his mind he found himself on a sudden transported to the other side. Theodore coming up and seeing he had got over without being wet, asked him how it was done, and pressed him so earnestly that Ammon confessed the miracle, making him first promise not to mention it to anyone till after his death. St Ammon died at the age of sixty-two years; and St Antony, at the distance of thirteen days' journey from him, knew the exact time of his death, having seen in a vision his soul ascend to Heaven.
Our information comes mainly from the Lausiac History of Palladius, but one or two miracles may be added from the document now commonly known as the Historia monachorum. The Greek text of this last was edited by Preuschen in his book Palladius und Rufinus (1897). See also the Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. ii, and Schiwietz, Das morgenländische Mönchtum, vol. i, p. 94.
Monastic founder, sometimes called Amon, Amun, or Amus. An Egyptian living in or near Alexandria, he was forced into a marriage at the age of twenty-two. He asked his wife to take a vow of chastity on their wedding night and they lived as brother and sister for eighteen years. His wife then formed a congregation of women religious, and Ammon went to the desert area south of Alexandria. There Ammon founded or aided in the development of a great religious community called "The City of God" by St. Jerome. By the end of the fourth century there were five thousand hermits in the community.
St. Anthony came to visit Ammon, whose holiness attracted countless solitaries.
When Ammon died at the age of sixty-two, St. Anthony, who was some thirteen miles distant, saw his soul ascend to heaven.
Ammon the Great, Abbot (AC). Although he was a wealthy, married Egyptian, St. Ammon lived with his wife as a brother for 18 years. Then they mutually agreed to embrace religious life. Ammon became one of the earliest and greatest desert monks. He eventually attracted 4,000 to 5,000 followers. He was known for his extraordinary ability to fast--eating only once every three or four days in his later life (Benedictines).
In art, St. Ammon is depicted as a layman in bed with his wife, saying the rosary (Roeder).
(Fourth Century)
One of the most astounding phenomena in Christian history was the Egyptian monastic movement of the fourth century. During the Roman persecutions of the third century, many men and women took to the desert, partly to escape death, partly to improve their lives. Gradually the movement grew, until there were almost 100,000 monks and nuns in the desert areas all up the Nile River! Only a few of them were priests. Most of them were laymen and laywomen attracted to the life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Nor was it a purely temporary fad. Although the numbers later fell off and many monasteries were destroyed, even today there are still a few desert monasteries standing and in use by Coptic monks.
St. Ammon was one of the early leaders, and the first to establish a monastic center in the Nitrian desert, so called because of its repulsively salty marsh. (Today it is called the Wady Natrun.) Ammon, the son of wealthy parents, had been forced into marriage after their death. On reading together St. Paul's praise of virginity, he and his wife agreed to live under the same roof thereafter in perfect continence. Having prepared himself spiritually and physically for life in the desert over a period of 18 years, Ammon finally asked his wife to allow him to go out to Nitria and establish a monastic center. She consented, and, for her part, gathered in her home a number of religious women to whom Ammon used to come and give conferences twice a year. Theirs was a true marriage, but one of souls rather than bodies, for God's greater glory.

At first, St. Ammon's monks at Nitria lived in scattered cells. Then the great leader of the monastic movement, St. Anthony of Egypt, advised Ammon to have his hermits live closer together, so that he, as their abbot, could keep a careful eye on all of them. Ammon set an example of great austerity to his followers. At the outset, he ate one meal of bread and water per day. Eventually, he ate this meal only every other day, or third day, or even fourth day. (Have we been eating too much of late?)

Many miracles were also attributed to this lay ascetic. Once, for instance, he had to swim a swollen stream. Too shy to undress, he stood on the river bank wondering what to do. Suddenly, his companion Theodore saw him on the other side of the river. Ammon called across to the puzzled Theodore that he had been lifted across by divine power, but no mention should be made of this miracle so long as he lived.
St. Ammon died at the age of 62, but his great work continued after him. What was his monastery like? Not at all like those we know today, small and compact.
A visitor to Wadi Natrun fifty years later has left us an account. On the monastic mountain in various forms of dwelling lived 5,000 hermits. These monks were no idlers. They supported themselves by manual labor, particularly the manufacture of linen and wine, and the baking of bread in their seven bakeries. All male visitors were cordially received in a guest house. They might stay as long as they wanted, even two or three years. But after one week of residence they were given community chores to perform. Doctors and confectioners also lived in the colony to care for the needs of this monastic village. Whips hung on three palm trees, to be used on those who committed some infraction. The first whip was for the hermits themselves. The second was for robbers who were caught intruding. The third was for other assorted upstarts.

There was a great church, serviced by eight priests, but it was used only Saturdays and Sundays. The hermits sang the psalms, at set hours, in their own habitations, where they lived alone or in twos or threes. Standing in the center of the settlement at the hours of prayer, you could hear thousands of invisible voices raised in musical praise of God. “It sounds like Paradise itself,” said one observer. 
Thus did these armies of Egyptian Christians “enroll themselves for citizenship in Heaven.”  Could a movement like this arise in our own day?  Hardly.  But the Holy Spirit is very inventive.  Who knows what He might inspire thousands more to do for His glory, even, say, tomorrow?  --Father Robert F. McNamara
St. Hierotheus Bishop friend of St. Dionysius the Areopagite
There is considerable confusion concerning him.
Hierotheus of Athens B (RM) Date unknown. St. Hierotheus is reputed to be the teacher and friend of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Scholars now either discount his existence entirely or place him in a later period (4th or 5th century) than Dionysius (Benedictines)
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445 St. Petronius  Bishop of Bologna Sent by Byzantine emperor Theodosius to Pope re: Nestorius
Bonóniæ sancti Petrónii, Epíscopi et Confessóris; qui doctrína, miráculis et sanctitáte cláruit.
 At Bologna, St. Petronius, bishop and confessor, celebrated for learning, miracles, and sanctity.
445 ST PETRONIUS, BISHOP OF BOLOGNA
THERE was a Petronius who was prefect of the praetorium in Gaul at the beginning of the fifth century, and this saint was perhaps his son. A reference in a letter of St Eucherius of Lyons suggests that the younger Petronius also at one time held an important civil office, for he is said to have passed from a position of secular rank to the service of the Church, and then became renowned in Italy for his virtues. While a young man he is said to have made a journey to Palestine, “where he passed many days collecting all the vestiges of Christian antiquity” and acquiring information which he was afterwards to put to practical use. About the year 432 he was appointed bishop of Bologna, and he devoted his attention first to the repair of churches, which were in a ruined condition owing to the recent ravages of the Goths.

We are told that “he built a monastery outside the city towards the east, in honour of the protomartyr St Stephen: a spacious building with lofty walls, and built with many columns of porphyry and precious marbles, having capitals carved with the figures of men, animals and birds. He devoted the greatest attention to this building, and with special care in the reproduction of the Lord's sepulchre, of which he set out the work himself with a measuring rod...The buildings extended to the place which represented Golgotha, where the cross of Christ stood. In all there were seven churches and the system of buildings reproduced in general lines the Holy Places at Jerusalem. St Petronius made the church of San Stefano his cathedral, and it was so used by the bishops of Bologna until the tenth century, in the third year of which Emilia was ravaged by the Huns and the buildings of Petronius destroyed. They were rebuilt and restored at various times during the middle ages, and during the twelfth century San Stefano achieved great popularity as a place of pilgrimage for those who could not go to the East. In 1141 some new representations were set up which were probably fruitful in putting false relics into circulation. Rather conveniently, the relics of St Petronius himself were discovered at the same time, and a life of the saint was written in which fables and nonsense make up for lack of precise information. In a much-modified form the Nuova Gerusalemme of Bologna remains to this day: “it still possesses a singular air of the most profound antiquity.  

The document printed in the Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. ii, as a life of St Petronius, is of no historical value; it was fabricated only in the twelfth century. A compilation in Italian written one hundred and fifty years later is equally worthless. The whole question has been thoroughly investigated by Mgr Lanzoni in his monograph S. Petronio, vescavo di Bologna nella storia e nella leggenda (1907). See also Delehaye's review in Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xxvii (1908), pp. 104-106. In the periodical Romagna, vol. vii (1910), pp. 269--277, Mgr Lanzoni carries his investigation further. He seems very doubtful whether Petronius ever visited Palestine. For San Stefano, see G. Jeffery, The Holy Sepulchre (1919), pp. 195-211.

The son a Roman praetorian prefect named Petronius in Gaul, he was most likely a Roman official who went to Palestine and visited the holy places. Influenced by the visit, he entered the priesthood and later became bishop of Bologna about 432. His two main achievements were the repair of the many buildings and churches destroyed by the Goths during their invasion of the Western Empire and building the monastery of St. Stephen in the design of the sacred sites of the Holy Land. Petronius figured in a fictitious life which was immensely popular during the Middle Ages.
Petronius of Bologna B (RM) Born in Byzantium. Sent by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius to report to the pope on the case of Nestorius, Petronius remained in Italy and became bishop of Bologna. He is said to have built the monastery of Saint Stephen in Bologna along the general lines of the buildings of the Holy Places of Jerusalem, which he had visited (Benedictines, Encyclopedia).
St. Petronius is portrayed in art as a mitred bishop between Saints Cosmas and Damian, as found in S. Petronio in Bologna, Italy. He may also be shown holding the city of Bologna or interceding for the city (Roeder)
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570 St. Quintius  Martyred confessor  devout Christian and courtier in the palace of a Frankish king
A , possibly Sigebert of Austrasia who became the target of the affections of the queen, possibly Fredegunde. When, however, he declined her attentions, she had him assassinated.
Quintus (Quentin, Quintius) of Tours M (AC) Born in Tours, France; died c. 570. St. Quintus was a Frankish courtier, whom the queen unsuccessfully tried to seduce. Following her humiliation, she had him assassinated at L'Indrois near Montresor (Benedictines)
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667 St. Aurea Abbess of St. Martial in Paris
Lutétiæ Parisiórum sanctæ Aureæ Vírginis.
 At Paris, St. Aurea, virgin.
 
disciple of St. Elegius.
Aurea was a Syrian who was named abbess by St. Elegius in 633. She governed the community for thirty-three years until she and 160 nuns of her abbey died of the plague.
Aurea of Paris, Abbess (RM) Died 666. Saint Eligius founded the convent of Saint Martial in Paris and chose the Syrian Aurea as its abbess in 633. She governed the community for 33 years before dying during a plague which killed another 160 of her nuns (Benedictines, Encyclopedia)
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750 St. Peter of Damascus; crucified bishop of Damascus Syria at the time of the Islamic conquest of the region
Damásci sancti Petri, Epíscopi et Mártyris; qui, accusátus apud Agarenórum Príncipem quod fidem Christi docéret, ídeo, lingua et mánibus pedibúsque amputátis, cruci affíxus martyrium consummávit.
   
St. Peter, bishop and martyr At Damascus, who was accused before the king of the Agarenians of teaching the faith of Christ.  His tongue, hands, and feet were cut off, and being fastened to a cross, his martyrdom was fulfilled. He was seized by the Muslims for preaching against Muhammad and condemned to death. His captors tortured, blinded, crucified, and finally beheaded him
1226 St. Francis of Assisi; Founder: Animals, Merchants & Ecology Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181
Assísii, in Umbria, natális sancti Francísci, Levítæ et Confessóris; qui trium Ordinum, scílicet Fratrum Minórum, Páuperum Dominárum, ac Fratrum et Sorórum de Pæniténtia Fundátor éxstitit.  Ipsíus autem vitam, sanctitáte ac miráculis plenam, sanctus Bonaventúra conscrípsit.
    At Assisi in Umbria, the birthday of St. Francis, cleric and confessor, founder of three orders: the Friars Minor, the Poor Clares, and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance.  His life, filled with holy deeds and miracles, were written by St. Bonaventure..

The Christmas crèche first popularized
In 1182, Pietro Bernadone returned from a trip to France to find out his wife had given birth to a son. Far from being excited or apologetic because he'd been gone, Pietro was furious because she'd had his new son baptized Giovanni after John the Baptist. The last thing Pietro wanted in his son was a man of God -- he wanted a man of business, a cloth merchant like he was, and he especially wanted a son who would reflect his infatuation with France. So he renamed his son Francesco -- which is the equivalent of calling him Frenchman.

Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. From the beginning everyone -- and I mean everyone -- loved Francis. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader. If he was picky, people excused him. If he was ill, people took care of him. If he was so much of a dreamer he did poorly in school, no one minded. In many ways he was too easy to like for his own good. No one tried to control him or teach him.

As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. Thomas of Celano, his biographer who knew him well, said, "In other respects an exquisite youth, he attracted to himself a whole retinue of young people addicted to evil and accustomed to vice." Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time.

Francis fulfilled every hope of Pietro's -- even falling in love with France. He loved the songs of France, the romance of France, and especially the free adventurous troubadours of France who wandered through Europe. And despite his dreaming, Francis was also good at business. But Francis wanted more..more than wealth. But not holiness! Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight. Battle was the best place to win the glory and prestige he longed for. He got his first chance when Assisi declared war on their longtime enemy, the nearby town of Perugia.

Most of the troops from Assisi were butchered in the fight. Only those wealthy enough to expect to be ransomed were taken prisoner. At last Francis was among the nobility like he always wanted to be...but chained in a harsh, dark dungeon. All accounts say that he never lost his happy manner in that horrible place. Finally, after a year in the dungeon, he was ransomed. Strangely, the experience didn't seem to change him. He gave himself to partying with as much joy and abandon as he had before the battle.

The experience didn't change what he wanted from life either: Glory. Finally a call for knights for the Fourth Crusade gave him a chance for his dream. But before he left Francis had to have a suit of armor and a horse -- no problem for the son of a wealthy father. And not just any suit of armor would do but one decorated with gold with a magnificent cloak. Any relief we feel in hearing that Francis gave the cloak to a poor knight will be destroyed by the boasts that Francis left behind that he would return a prince.

But Francis never got farther than one day's ride from Assisi. There he had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. And return home he did. What must it have been like to return without ever making it to battle -- the boy who wanted nothing more than to be liked was humiliated, laughed at, called a coward by the village and raged at by his father for the money wasted on armor.

Francis' conversion did not happen over night.
God had waited for him for twenty-five years and now it was Francis' turn to wait. Francis started to spend more time in prayer. He went off to a cave and wept for his sins. Sometimes God's grace overwhelmed him with joy. But life couldn't just stop for God. There was a business to run, customers to wait on.

One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.

His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano.
While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft -- and put together with Francis' cowardice, waste of money, and his growing disinterest in money made Francis seem more like a madman than his son. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.

The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide.
That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernadone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again.
From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.

Francis went back to what he considered God's call. He begged for stones and rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. Scandal and avarice were working on the Church from the inside while outside heresies flourished by appealing to those longing for something different or adventurous.

Soon Francis started to preach.
(He was never a priest, though he was later ordained a deacon under his protest.)
Francis was not a reformer; he preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church. Francis must have known about the decay in the Church, but he always showed the Church and its people his utmost respect. When someone told him of a priest living openly with a woman and asked him if that meant the Mass was polluted,
Francis went to the priest, knelt before him, and kissed his hands -- because those hands had held God.

Slowly companions came to Francis, people who wanted to follow his life of sleeping in the open, begging for garbage to eat...and loving God. With companions, Francis knew he now had to have some kind of direction to this life so he opened the Bible in three places.
He read the command to the rich young man to sell all his good and give to the poor, the order to the apostles to take nothing on their journey, and the demand to take up the cross daily.
"Here is our rule," Francis said -- as simple, and as seemingly impossible, as that.
He was going to do what no one thought possible any more -- live by the Gospel.
Francis took these commands so literally that he made one brother run after the thief who stole his hood and offer him his robe!

Francis never wanted to found a religious order -- this former knight thought that sounded too military. He thought of what he was doing as expressing God's brotherhood. His companions came from all walks of life, from fields and towns, nobility and common people, universities, the Church, and the merchant class.
Francis practiced true equality by showing honor, respect, and love to every person whether they were beggar or pope.

Francis' brotherhood included all of God's creation.
Much has been written about Francis' love of nature but his relationship was deeper than that. We call someone a lover of nature if they spend their free time in the woods or admire its beauty. But Francis really felt that nature, all God's creations, were part of his brotherhood. The sparrow was as much his brother as the pope.

In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care.The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among him, only flying off when he said they could leave.
Another famous story involves a wolf that had been eating human beings. Francis intervened when the town wanted to kill the wolf and talked the wolf into never killing again. The wolf became a pet of the townspeople who made sure that he always had plenty to eat.
Following the Gospel literally, Francis and his companions went out to preach two by two.
At first, listeners were understandably hostile to these men in rags trying to talk about God's love. People even ran from them for fear they'd catch this strange madness! And they were right. Because soon these same people noticed that these barefoot beggars wearing sacks seemed filled with constant joy. They celebrated life. And people had to ask themselves: Could one own nothing and be happy? Soon those who had met them with mud and rocks, greeted them with bells and smiles.

Francis did not try to abolish poverty, he tried to make it holy.
When his friars met someone poorer than they, they would eagerly rip off the sleeve of their habit to give to the person. They worked for all necessities and only begged if they had to.
But Francis would not let them accept any money. He told them to treat coins as if they were pebbles in the road.
When the bishop showed horror at the friars' hard life, Francis said, "If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them." Possessing something was the death of love for Francis. Also, Francis reasoned, what could you do to a man who owns nothing? You can't starve a fasting man, you can't steal from someone who has no money, you can't ruin someone who hates prestige. They were truly free.

Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach.
Sometimes this direct approach led to mistakes that he corrected with the same spontaneity that he made them. Once he ordered a brother who hesitated to speak because he stuttered to go preach half-naked. When Francis realized how he had hurt someone he loved he ran to town, stopped the brother, took off his own clothes, and preached instead.

Francis acted quickly because he acted from the heart; he didn't have time to put on a role. Once he was so sick and exhausted, his companions borrowed a mule for him to ride. When the man who owned the mule recognized Francis he said, "Try to be as virtuous as everyone thinks you are because many have a lot of confidence in you." Francis dropped off the mule and knelt before the man to thank him for his advice.

Another example of his directness came when he decided to go to Syria to convert the Moslems while the Fifth Crusade was being fought. In the middle of a battle, Francis decided to do the simplest thing and go straight to the sultan to make peace. When he and his companion were captured, the real miracle was that they weren't killed. Instead Francis was taken to the sultan who was charmed by Francis and his preaching.
He told Francis, "I would convert to your religion which is a beautiful one -- but both of us would be murdered."

Francis did find persecution and martyrdom of a kind -- not among the Moslems, but among his own brothers. When he returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to 5000 in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others. His dream of radical poverty was too harsh, people said.
Francis responded, "Lord, didn't I tell you they wouldn't trust you?"
He finally gave up authority in his order -- but he probably wasn't too upset about it. Now he was just another brother, like he'd always wanted. Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation.
Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.
Years of poverty and wandering had made Francis ill.
When he began to go blind, the pope ordered that his eyes be operated on. This meant cauterizing his face with a hot iron. Francis spoke to "Brother Fire": "Brother Fire, the Most High has made you strong and beautiful and useful. Be courteous to me now in this hour, for I have always loved you, and temper your heat so that I can endure it."
And Francis reported that Brother Fire had been so kind that he felt nothing at all.

How did Francis respond to blindness and suffering?
That was when he wrote his beautiful Canticle of the Sun that expresses his brotherhood with creation in praising God.
Francis never recovered from this illness. He died on October 4, 1226 at the age of 45. Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants.
Copyright 1996-2000 by Terry Matz. All Rights Reserved.

 The Gospel account of Jesus' nativity is so graphic that it invites artists to depict it. As early as the fifth century, Pope Sixtus III constructed a group of Nativity figures in a little grotto in Rome's great Marian church, St. Mary Major. In fact, that basilica became also known as "S. Maria ad Praesepe". ("St. Mary of the Manger").
     It was, however, St. Francis of Assisi who launched the Christmas Crib as a worldwide popular devotion. He planned and featured the first holiday crib in 1223, at the Italian hill-town of Greccio, near Rieti. Here is the story, as recounted by Thomas of Celano in his "First Life of St. Francis", written A.D. 1232-1239.
     "What he did on the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ near the little town called Greccio... should be recalled with reverent memory.
     "In that place there was a certain man named John, of good reputation and better life.... Blessed Francis sent for this man... and he said to him, 'If you want us to celebrate the present feast of our Lord at Greccio, go with haste and diligently prepare what I tell you.... For I wish to do something that will recall to memory the little Child who was born in Bethlehem....'When the good and faithful man heard these things, he ran with haste and prepared in that place all the things the saint had told him.
     "But the day of rejoicing drew near, the time of great rejoicing came. The friars were called from their various places. Men and women of that neighborhood prepared with glad hearts candles and torches to light up that night. At length the saint of God came, and finding all things prepared, he saw it and was glad. The manger was prepared, the hay had been brought in, the ox and the ass were led in. The people came and were filled with new joy over the new mystery.... The friars sang... and the whole night resounded with their rejoicing. The solemnities of the Mass were celebrated over the manger and the priest experienced a new consolation.
     "The saint of God was clothed with the vestments of a deacon, for he was a deacon, and he sang the holy Gospel in a sonorous voice. Then he preached, and he spoke charming words concerning the nativity of the poor King and the little town of Bethlehem... His mouth was filled more with sweet affection than with words.
     "The gifts of the Almighty were multiplied there, and a wonderful vision was seen by a certain virtuous man. For he saw a little child lying in the manger lifeless, and he saw the holy man of God go up to it and rouse the child from a deep sleep. This vision was not unfitting, for the Child Jesus had been forgotten in the hearts of men; but by the working of his grace, he was brought to life again through his servant St. Francis and stamped upon their fervent memory."
     It had, indeed, been the intention of Francis, by a concrete representation of the manger-crib, the hay, the live animals, and the child-image, to remind all of the pitiably harsh circumstances of the birth of the Son of God. The Christmas crèche first popularized on that day, has since become an effective international reminder at Christmastide, that Jesus' arms still stretch out for our love.

1226 ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI, FOUNDER OF THE FRIARS MINOR
IT has been said of St Francis that he entered into glory in his lifetime, and that he is the one saint whom all succeeding generations have agreed in canonizing. This over-statement has sufficient truth in it to provoke another, namely, that he is the one saint whom, in our day, all non-Catholics have agreed in canonizing. Certainly no other has so appealed to Protestants and even to non-Christians. He captured the imagination of his time by presenting poverty, chastity and obedience in the terms of the troubadours and courts of love, and that of a more complex age by his extraordinary simplicity. Religious and social cranks of all sorts have appealed to him for justification, and he has completely won the hearts of the sentimental. But the idylls that are associated with his name—the marriage with Lady Poverty, the listening birds, the hunted leveret, the falcon, and the nightingale in the ilex-grove, his “ love of nature” (in the thirteenth century “nature” was still regarded as natural), his romance of speech and action, these were only, so to speak, “trimmings” of a character which was wholly imbued with the spiritual, inspired by Christian dogma, and devoted not simply to Christ but to the crucified Christ.

   St Francis was born at Assisi in Umbria in 1181 or 1182. His father, Peter Bernardone, was a merchant, and his mother was called Pica some say she was gently born and of Provençal blood. His parents were persons of probity, and were in good circumstances. Much of Peter’s trade was with France, and his son having been born while he was absent in that country, they called him Francesco, “the Frenchman”, though the name of John had been given him at his baptism. In his youth he was devoted to the ideas of romantic chivalry propagated by the troubadours; he had plenty of money and spent it lavishly, even ostentatiously. He was uninterested alike in his father’s business and in formal learning. He was bent on enjoying himself. Nevertheless, he was not licentious, and would never refuse alms to any poor man who asked it of him for the love of God.
When he was about twenty, strife broke out between the cities of Perugia and Assisi, and Francis was carried away prisoner by the Perugians. This he bore a whole year with cheerfulness and good temper. But as soon as he was released he was struck down by a long and dangerous sickness, which he suffered with so great patience that by the weakness of his body his spirit gathered greater strength and became more serious. On his recovery he determined to join the forces of Walter de Brienne, who was fighting in southern Italy. He bought himself expensive equipment and handsome outfit, but as he rode out one day in a new suit, meeting a gentleman reduced to poverty and very ill-clad, he was touched with compassion and changed clothes with him. That night he seemed to see in his sleep a magnificent palace, filled with rich arms, all marked with the sign of the cross; and he thought he heard one tell him that these arms belonged to him and his soldiers. He set out exultingly for Apulia, but never reached the front. At Spoleto he was taken ill again, and as he lay there a heavenly voice seemed to tell him to turn back, “to serve the master rather than the man”. Francis obeyed. At first he returned to his old life, but more quietly and with less enjoyment. His preoccupation was noticed, and he was told he was in love. “Yes”, he replied, “I am going to take a wife more beautiful and worthy than any you know.” He began to give himself much to prayer and to have a desire to sell his goods and buy the precious jewel of the gospel. He knew not yet how he should do this, but certain strong inspirations made him understand that the spiritual warfare of Christ is begun by mortification and victory over one’s self. Riding one day in the plain of Assisi he met a leper, whose sores were so loathsome that at the sight of them he was struck with horror. But he dismounted, and as the leper stretched out his hand to receive an alms, Francis, whilst he bestowed it, kissed the man.
Henceforward he often visited the hospitals and served the sick, and gave to the poor sometimes his clothes and sometimes money. One day as he was praying in the church of St Damian, outside the walls of Assisi, he seemed to hear a voice coming from the crucifix, which said to him three times, “Francis, go and repair my house, which you see is falling down”. The saint, seeing that church was old and ready to fall, thought our Lord commanded him to repair that. He therefore went home, and in the simplicity of his heart took a horseload of cloth out of his father’s warehouse and sold it, with the horse. The price he brought to the poor priest of St Damian’s, asking to be allowed to stay with him. The priest consented, but would not take the money, which Francis therefore left on a windowsill. His father, hearing what had been done, came in great indignation to St Damian’s, but Francis had hid himself. After some days spent in prayer and fasting, he appeared again, though so disfigured and ill-clad that people pelted him and called him mad. Bernardone, more annoyed than ever, carried him home, beat him unmercifully (Francis was about twenty-five), put fetters on his feet, and locked him up, till his mother set him at liberty while his father was out. Francis returned to St Damian’s. His father, following him thither, hit him about the head and insisted that he should either return home or renounce all his share in his inheritance and return the purchase-price of the goods he had taken. Francis had no objection to being disinherited, but said that the other money now belonged to God and the poor. He was therefore summoned before Guido, Bishop of Assisi, who told him to return it and have trust in God: “He does not wish His Church to profit by goods which may have been gotten unjustly.” Francis did as he was told and, with his usual literalness, added, “The clothes I wear are also his. I’ll give them back.” He suited the action to the word, stripped himself of his clothes, and gave them to his father, saying cheerfully, “Hitherto I have called you father on earth; but now I say, ‘ Our Father, who art in Heaven ‘.” Peter Bernardone left the court, “burning with rage and with an exceeding sorrow”. The frock of a labourer, a servant of the bishop, was found, and Francis received this first alms with many thanks, made a cross on the garment with chalk, and put it on.
   Francis went in search of some convenient shelter, singing the divine praises along the highway. He was met by a band of robbers, who asked him who he was. He answered, “I am the herald of the great King”. They beat him and threw him into a ditch full of snow. He went on singing the praises of God. He passed by a monastery, and there received alms and a job of work as an unknown poor man. In the city of Gubbio, one who knew him took him into his house, and gave him a tunic, belt and shoes, such as pilgrims wore, which were decent though poor and shabby. These he wore two years, and he walked with a staff in his hand like a hermit. He then returned to San Damiano at Assisi. For repair of the church he gathered alms and begged in Assisi, where all had known him rich, bearing with joy the railleries and contempt with which he was treated by some. For the building he himself carried stones and served the masons and helped put the church in order. He next did the same for an old church that was dedicated in honour of St Peter. After this he went to a little chapel called Porziuncola, belonging to the abbey of Benedictine monks on Monte Subasio, who gave it that name probably because it was built on so small a parcel of land. {*Porziuncola means the “little piece”. The tiny building is now entirely enclosed within the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.} It stands in a plain two miles from Assisi, and was at that time forsaken and ruinous. The retiredness of this place appealed to St Francis, and he was delighted with the title which the church bore, it being dedicated in honour of our Lady of the Angels. He repaired it, and fixed his abode by it. Here, on the feast of St Matthias in the year 1209, his way of life was shown to St Francis. In those days the gospel of the Mass on this feast was Matt. X 7—19 “And going, preach, saying: The kingdom of Heaven is at hand…Freely have you received, freely give.  Do not possess gold…nor two coats nor shoes nor a staff…Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.”  The words went straight to his heart and, applying them literally to himself, he gave away his shoes, staff and girdle, and left himself with one poor coat, which he girt about him with a cord. This was the dress that he gave to his friars the year following the undyed woolen dress of the shepherds and peasants in those parts. Thus garbed, he began to exhort to repentance with such energy that his words pierced the hearts of his hearers. As he passed them on the road he saluted the people with the words, “Our Lord give you peace”. God had already given him the gifts of prophecy and miracles. When he was begging alms to repair the church of St Damian, he used to say, “Help me to finish this building. Here will one day be a monastery of nuns by whose good fame our Lord will be glorified over the whole Church.” This was verified in St Clare five years after. A man in Spoleto was afflicted with a cancer, which had disfigured him hideously. He met St Francis and would have thrown himself at his feet but the saint prevented him and kissed his diseased face, which was instantly healed. “I know not”, says St Bonaventure, “which I ought most to wonder at, such a kiss or such a cure.”
   Many began to admire Francis, and some desired to be his companions and disciples. The first of these was Bernard da Quintavalle, a rich tradesman of Assisi. He watched the career of Francis with curiosity, invited him to his house, and had a bed made ready for him near his own. When Bernard seemed to be fallen asleep, the servant of God got up and passed a long time in prayer, frequently repeating aloud the words, Deus meus et Omnia, “My God and my All”. Bernard secretly watched, saying to himself, “This man is truly a servant of God”, and at length he asked the saint to make him his companion. They assisted at Mass together, and searched the Scriptures that they might learn the will of God. The sortes biblicae being favourable, Bernard sold all his effects and divided the sum among the poor. Peter of Cattaneo, a canon of the cathedral of Assisi, desired to be admitted with him, and Francis “gave his habit” to them both together ontunic, belt and shoes, such as pilgrims wore, which were decent though poor and shabby. These he wore two years, and he walked with a staff in his hand like a hermit. He then returned to San Damiano at Assisi. For repair of the church he gathered alms and begged in Assisi, where all had known him rich, bearing with joy the railleries and contempt with which he was treated by some. For the building he himself carried stones and served the masons and helped put the church in order. He next did the same for an old church that was dedicated in honour of St Peter. After this he went to a little chapel called Porziuncola, belonging to the abbey of Benedictine monks on Monte Subasio, who gave it that name probably because it was built on so small a parcel of land. {*Porziuncola means the “little piece”. The tiny building is now entirely enclosed within the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.} It stands in a plain two miles from Assisi, and was at that time forsaken and ruinous. The retiredness of this place appealed to St Francis, and he was delighted with the title which the church bore, it being dedicated in honour of our Lady of the Angels. He repaired it, and fixed his abode by it. Here, on the feast of St Matthias in the year 1209, his way of life was shown to St Francis. In those days the gospel of the Mass on this feast was Matt. X 7—19 “And going, preach, saying: The kingdom of Heaven is at hand…Freely have you received, freely give.  Do not possess gold…nor two coats nor shoes nor a staff…Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.”  The words went straight to his heart and, applying them literally to himself, he gave away his shoes, staff and girdle, and left himself with one poor coat, which he girt about him with a cord. This was the dress that he gave to his friars the year following the undyed woolen dress of the shepherds and peasants in those parts. Thus garbed, he began to exhort to repentance with such energy that his words pierced the hearts of his hearers. As he passed them on the road he saluted the people with the words, “Our Lord give you peace”. God had already given him the gifts of prophecy and miracles. When he was begging alms to repair the church of St Damian, he used to say, “Help me to finish this building. Here will one day be a monastery of nuns by whose good fame our Lord will be glorified over the whole Church.” This was verified in St Clare five years after. A man in Spoleto was afflicted with a cancer, which had disfigured him hideously. He met St Francis and would have thrown himself at his feet but the saint prevented him and kissed his diseased face, which was instantly healed. “I know not”, says St Bonaventure, “which I ought most to wonder at, such a kiss or such a cure.”
   Many began to admire Francis, and some desired to be his companions and disciples. The first of these was Bernard da Quintavalle, a rich tradesman of Assisi. He watched the career of Francis with curiosity, invited him to his house, and had a bed made ready for him near his own. When Bernard seemed to be fallen asleep, the servant of God got up and passed a long time in prayer, frequently repeating aloud the words, Deus meus et Omnia, “My God and my All”. Bernard secretly watched, saying to himself, “This man is truly a servant of God”, and at length he asked the saint to make him his companion. They assisted at Mass together, and searched the Scriptures that they might learn the will of God. The sortes biblicae being favourable, Bernard sold all his effects and divided the sum among the poor. Peter of Cattaneo, a canon of the cathedral of Assisi, desired to be admitted with him, and Francis “gave his habit” to them both together on April 26, 1209. The third person who joined them was the famous Brother Giles, a person of great simplicity and spiritual wisdom. When his followers had increased to a dozen, Francis drew up a short informal rule consisting chiefly of the gospel counsels of perfection. This he took to Rome in 1210 for the pope’s approbation. Innocent III appeared at first averse, and many of the cardinals alleged that the orders already established ought to be reformed and their number not multiplied, and that the intended poverty of this new body was impracticable. Cardinal John Colonna pleaded in its favour that it was no more than the evangelical counsels of perfection. The pope afterwards told his nephew, from whom St Bonaventure heard it, that in a dream he saw a palm tree growing up at his feet, and in another he saw St Francis propping up the Lateran church, which seemed ready to fall (as he saw St Dominic in another vision five years after). He therefore sent again for St Francis, and approved his rule, but only by word of mouth, tonsuring him and his companions and giving them a general commission to preach repentance.
   St Francis and his companions now lived together in a little cottage at Rivo Torto, outside the gates of Assisi, whence they sometimes went into the country to preach. After a time they had trouble with a peasant who wanted the cottage for the use of his donkey. “God has not called us to prepare a stable for an ass”, observed Francis, and went off to see the abbot of Monte Subasio. The abbot, in 1212, handed over the Portiuncula chapel to St Francis, upon condition that it should always continue the head church of his order. The saint refused to accept the property “in fee simple” but would only have the use of the place; and in token that he held it of the monks, he sent them every year a basket of fish caught in a neighbouring river. The monks sent the friars in return a barrel of oil. This custom is now revived between the friars of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Benedictines of San Pietro at Assisi. Round about the chapel the brothers built themselves huts of wood and clay. St Francis would not suffer any dominion or property of temporal goods to be vested in his order, or in any community or convent of it; he called the spirit of holy poverty the foundation of the order, and in his dress, in everything that he used, and in all his actions he showed the reality of his love for it. Francis would call his body Brother Ass, because it was to carry burdens, to be beaten, and to eat little and coarsely. When he saw anyone idle, profiting by other men’s labour, he called him Brother Fly, because he did no good, but spoiled the good that others did and was troublesome to them. As a man owes charity to his own body, the saint a few days before he died asked pardon of his for having treated it perhaps with too great rigour. Indiscreet or excessive austerities always displeased him. When a brother through immoderate abstinence was not able to sleep, Francis brought him food and, that he might eat it with less embarrassment, began himself to eat with him.
   At the beginning of his conversion, finding himself assailed with violent temptations against purity he sometimes cast himself naked into ditches full of snow. Once, under a more grievous trial than ordinary, he began to discipline himself sharply, and when this failed of its effect threw himself into a briar-patch and rolled therein. The humility of Francis was no emotional self-depreciation, but grounded in the certainty that, “what each one is in the eyes of God, that he is and no more.”
He never proceeded in holy orders beyond the diaconate, not daring to be ordained priest. He had no use for singularity. In a certain house he was told that one of the friars was so great a lover of silence that he would only confess his faults by signs. The saint did not like it, and said, “This is not the spirit of God but of theDevil. A temptation, not a virtue.” God illuminated the understanding of His servant with a light and wisdom that is not taught in books. When a certain brother asked leave to study, Francis told him that if he would often repeat the Gloria Patri with devotion he would become very learned before God. He was himself an example of knowledge so attained. His love for and power over the lower animals were noted and often referred to by those who knew him: his rebuke to the swallows while he was preaching at Alviano, “My sisters the swallows, it is now my turn to speak. You have been talking enough all this time”; the birds that perched around him while he told them to praise their Creator; the rabbit that would not leave him at Lake Trasimene; and the tamed wolf at Gubbio, which some maintain is an allegory and others a plain fact.
   The early years at Santa Maria degli Angeli was a time of training in poverty and brotherly love. For their daily bread the brothers worked at their trades and in the fields for neighbouring farmers. When work was lacking, they begged from door to door, and even then were forbidden to accept money. They were always at the service of their neighbours, and particularly of lepers and similar sufferers. These, St Francis insisted, should be referred to and addressed as “my brother Christians”, with that same instinctive delicacy of mind which makes some country people in England and Wales today refer to tramps not as “tramps” but as “travellers”. Recruits continued to come, and among them the “renowned jester of the Lord”, Brother Juniper, of whom St Francis said, when he had been even more “simple” than usual, “I would that I had a forest of such junipers!”
   He was the man who, when a crowd of people was waiting to receive him at Rome, was found playing seesaw with some children outside the walls. St Clare called him “God’s plaything”. This young girl left her home in Assisi to be a follower of St Francis after hearing him preach, in the spring of 1212. He established her with other maidens at San Damiano, which soon became to the Franciscans what the nuns of Prouille were to the Dominicans: a tower of womanly strength and sense, an enclosed garden of supporting prayer. In the autumn of the same year, Francis, not content with all that he did and suffered for souls in Italy, resolved to go and preach to the Mohammedans. He embarked with one companion at Ancona for Syria, but they were driven straight on to the coast of Dalmatia and wrecked. The two friars could get no further and, having no money for their passage, travelled back to Ancona as stowaways. After preaching for a year in central Italy, during which the lord of Chiusi put at the disposal of the Franciscans as a place of retreat Mount Alvernia (La Verna) in the Tuscan Apennines, St Francis made another attempt to reach the Mohammedans, this time in Morocco by way of Spain. But again he was disappointed in his object, for somewhere in Spain he was taken ill, and when he recovered he returned into Italy, where again he laboured strenuously to advance the glory of God among all Christian people.
   Out of humility St Francis gave to his order the name of Friars Minor, desiring that his brethren should really be below their fellows and seek the last and lowest places. He exhorts his brethren to manual labour, but will have them content to receive for it things necessary for life, not money. He bids them not to be ashamed to beg alms, remembering the poverty of Christ; and he forbids them to preach in any place without the bishop’s licence. Incidentally, it was provided that “should any one of them stray from the Catholic faith or life in word or in deed, and will not amend, he shall be altogether cast out of the brotherhood”. Many cities were now anxious to have the once-despised brothers in their midst, and small communities of them sprang up throughout Umbria, Tuscany, Lombardy and Ancona. In 1216 Francis is said to have begged from Pope Honorius III the Portiuncula indulgence, or pardon of Assisi; {* It is commonly held that, in accordance with a vision of Jesus Christ to St Francis in the Portiuncula chapel, Honorius III granted a plenary indulgence on one day in the year for visiting that chapel (now toties quoties on August 2). Whether in fact this indulgence was originally granted to St Francis personally has been the subject of much discussion. But whether the grant was made to him or not, it is quite certain that the gaining of the indulgence over and over again by going in at one door and out at another was not dreamed of in his day. This would be magis derisorium quam devotum, wrote Nicholas de Lyra; and other medieval theologians speak in the same sense. It may be explained for non-Catholic readers that an indulgence, or pardon, is the remission, not of the guilt, but of the temporal punishment due to those sins of which the guilt has already been forgiven (normally by confession and absolution), granted by the Church and ratified by God; the amount of the remission is expressed in terms of time, of which the significance is only relative. A plenary indulgence is such a remission of all temporal punishment hitherto incurred.}
   In the following year he was in Rome, where he probably met his fellow friar St Dominic, who had been preaching faith and penance in southern France while Francis was still a “young man about town” in Assisi. St Francis also wanted to preach in France, but was dissuaded by Cardinal Ugolino (afterwards Pope Gregory IX); so he sent instead Brother Pacifico and Brother Agnello, who was afterwards to bring the Franciscans to England. The good and prudent Ugolino considerably influenced the development of the brotherhood. The members were so numerous that some organization and systematic control was imperatively necessary. The order was therefore divided into provinces, each in charge of a minister to whom was committed “the care of the souls of the brethren, and should anyone be lost through the minister’s fault and bad example, that minister will have to give an account before our Lord Jesus Christ”. The friars now extended beyond the Alps, missions being sent to Spain, Germany and Hungary.
   The first general chapter was held at the Portiuncula at Pentecost in 1217 and in 1219 was held the chapter called “of Mats”, because of the number of huts of wattles and matting hastily put up to shelter the brethren. There were said to be five thousand of them present, and it was inevitable that among so many were some for whom the original spirit of Francis himself was already diluted. He was too haphazard, that is, in this case, too trusting in God, for them; they agitated for more “practicalness”. Francis was moved to indignation. “My brothers”, he replied, “the Lord has called me by the way of simplicity and humbleness, and this is the way He has pointed out to me for myself and for those who will believe and follow me…The Lord told me that He would have me poor and foolish in this world, and that He willed not to lead us by any way other than by that. May God confound you by your own wisdom and learning and, for all your fault-finding, send you back to your vocation whether you will or no.” And to those who wished him to obtain for them of the pope a licence to preach everywhere without the leave of the bishop of each diocese, he answered, “When the bishops see that you live holily, and attempt nothing against their authority, they will themselves entreat you to work for the salvation of the souls committed to their charge. Let it be your singular privilege to have no privilege!…” St Francis sent some of his friars from this chapter on their first missions to the infidels, to Tunis and Morocco, reserving to himself the Saracens of Egypt and Syria. Innocent III’s appeal at the Lateran Council in 1215 for a new crusade had resulted only in a desultoryattempt to bolster up the Latin kingdom in the East: Francis would wield the sword of the word of God.
He set sail with twelve friars from Ancona in June 1219, and came to Damietta on the Nile delta, before which the crusaders were sitting in siege. Francis was profoundly shocked by the dissoluteness and self-seeking of the soldiers of the Cross. Burning with zeal for the conversion of the Saracens, he desired to pass to their camp, though he was warned that there was a price on the head of every Christian. The papal legate gave him permission and he went with Brother Illuminato among the infidels, crying out, “Sultan! Sultan!” Being brought before Malek al-Kamil and asked his errand, he said boldly, “I am sent not by men but by the most high God, to show you and your people the way of salvation by announcing to you the truths of the gospel”. Discussion followed, and other audiences. The sultan was somewhat moved and invited him to stay with him. Francis replied, “ If you and your people will accept the word of God, I will with joy stay with you. If you yet waver between Christ and Mohammed, cause a fire to be kindled, and I will go into it with your priests that you may see which is the true faith.” The sultan answered that he did not believe any of the imams would be willing to go into the fire, and that he could not accept his condition for fear of upsetting the people. After some days Malek al-Kamil sent Francis back to the camp before Damietta. Disappointed that he could do so little either with the crusaders or their opponents, St Francis returned to Akka, whence he visited the Holy Places. Then, summoned by an urgent message of distress, he returned to Italy.
   Francis found that in his absence his two vicars, Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples, had introduced certain innovations whose tendency was to bring the Franciscans into line with the other religious orders and to confine their proper spirit within the more rigid framework of monastic observance and prescribed asceticism. With the sisters at San Damiano this had taken the form of regular constitutions, drawn up on the Benedictine model by Cardinal Ugolino. When St Francis arrived at Bologna he was amazed and grieved to find his brethren there housed in a fine convent he refused to enter it, and lodged with the Friars Preachers, from whence he sent for the guardian of his brethren, upbraided him and ordered the friars to leave that house. St Francis saw these events as a betrayal it was a crisis that might transform or destroy his followers. He went to the Holy See, and obtained from Honorius III the appointment of Cardinal Ugolino as official protector and adviser to the Franciscans, for he was a man who believed in St Francis and his ideas while being at the same time an experienced man of affairs. Then he set himself to revise the rule, and summoned another general chapter, which met at the Portiuncula in 1221. To this assembly he presented the revised rule, which abated nothing of the poverty, humbleness and evangelical freedom which characterized the life he had always set before them it was Francis’s challenge to the dissidents and legalists who now, beneath the surface, were definitely threatening the peaceful development of the Franciscans. Chief among them was Brother Elias of Cortona, who, as vicar of St Francis, who had resigned active direction of the order, was in effect minister general of the brethren; but he did not dare too openly to oppose himself to the founder whom he sincerely respected. The order had in fact become too big. “Would that there were fewer Friars Minor”, cried Francis himself, “and that the world should so rarely see one as to wonder at their fewness!” At the end of two years, throughout which he had toface the growing tendency to break away from his ideas and to expand in directions which seemed to him to compromise the Franciscan vocation, Francis once again revised his rule. This done, he handed it to Brother Elias for communication to the ministers. It was promptly lost, and St Francis had again to dictate it to Brother Leo, amid the protests of many of the brethren who maintained that the forbiddance of holding corporate property was impracticable. In the form in which Pope Honorius III eventually approved it in 1223, it represented substantially the spirit and manner of life for which St Francis had stood from the moment that he cast off his fine clothes in the bishop’s court at Assisi.

   About two years earlier St Francis and Cardinal Ugolino may have drawn up a rule for the fraternity of lay people who associated themselves with the Friars Minor in the spirit of Francis’s “Letter to all Christians”, written in the early years of his mission—the Franciscan tertiaries of today.
   These congregations of lay penitents, bound to a life very different from that of their neighbours, grew to be a significant power in the religious life of the middle ages, and in canon law tertiaries, of whatever order, still have a status differing in kind from that of members of confraternities and sodalities.

   St Francis spent the Christmas of 1223 at Grecchio in the valley of Rieti where, he told his friend John da Vellita, “I would make a memorial of that Child who was born in Bethlehem and in some sort behold with bodily eyes the hardships of His infant state, lying on hay in a manger with the ox and the ass standing by”. Accordingly a “crib” was set up at the hermitage, and the peasants crowded to the midnight Mass, at which Francis served as deacon and preached on the Christmas mystery. The custom of making a crib was probably not unknown before this time, but this use of it by St Francis is said to have begun its subsequent popularity. He remained for some months at Grecchio in prayer and quietness, and the graces that he received from God in contemplation he was careful to conceal from men. Brother Leo, his secretary and confessor, testified that he had seen him in prayer sometimes raised above the ground so high that he could only touch his feet, and that sometimes he was raised much higher. Towards the festival of the Assumption in 1224, St Francis retired to Mount Alvernia and there made a little cell. He kept Leo with him, but forbade any other person to come to him before the feast of St Michael. Here it was, on or about Holy Cross day 1224, which happened the miracle of the stigmata, an account has been given on September 17. Having been thus marked with the signs of our Lord’s passion, Francis tried to conceal this favour of Heaven from the eyes of men, and for this purpose he ever after covered his hands with his habit, and wore shoes and stockings on his feet. Yet having first asked the advice of Brother Illuminato and others, he with fear disclosed to them this wonderful happening, and added that several things had been manifested to him, which he never would disclose to anyone. To soothe him during illness he was one day asked to let someone read a book to him; but he answered, “Nothing gives me so much consolation as to think of the life and passion of our Lord. Were I to live to the end of the world I should stand in need of no other book.” It was in contemplation of Christ naked and crucified, and crucified again in the persons of his suffering poor, that Francis came to love poverty as his lady and mistress. And he extended his rule of poverty to what is interior and spiritual. Francis did not despise learning, but he feared it for his followers. Studies were good as a means to an end, if they spent still more time in prayer, and studied not so much how to speak to others as how to preach to themselves. Studies which feed vanity rather than piety be abhorred, because they extinguish charity and devotion, and drain and puff up the heart; but above all he feared the Lady Learning as a rival of the Lady Poverty.  “Wheedled by the evil spirits, these brethren of mine will leave the way of holy simplicity and most high poverty”, he groaned, as he watched their anxiety for books and schools. Before he left Alvernia St Francis composed that poem which has been called the “Praise of the Most High God”, then, after the feast of St Michael, he came down from the mountain bearing in his flesh the marks of the sacred wounds, and healed the sick who were brought to him in the plain below.
   The two years that remained of his life were years of suffering and of happiness in God. His health was getting worse, the stigmata were a source of physical pain and weakness, and his sight was failing. He got so bad that in the summer of 1225 Cardinal Ugolino and the vicar Elias obliged him to put himself in the hands of the pope’s physicians at Rieti. He complied with simplicity, and on his way thither paid his last visit to St Clare at San Damiano. Here, almost maddened with pain and discomfort, he made the “Canticle of Brother Sun”, which he set to a tune and taught the brethren to sing. He went to Monte Rainerio to undergo the agonizing treatment prescribed, and got but temporary relief. He was taken to Siena to see other physicians, but he was dying. He dictated a message to his brethren, to love one another, to love and observe the Lady Poverty, and to love and honour the clergy of the Church. Some time before his death he made a longer testament for his religious brethren, in which he recommends that they faithfully observe their rule and work with their hands, not out of a desire of gain but for the sake of good example and to avoid idleness. “If we receive nothing for our work, let us have recourse to the table of the Lord, begging alms from door to door.” Then he went to Assisi and was lodged in the bishop’s house. The doctors there, pressed to speak the truth, told him he could not live beyond a few weeks. “Welcome, Sister Death!” he exclaimed, and asked to be taken to the Portiuncula. As they came on the way to a hill in sight of Assisi he asked for the stretcher to be put down, and turning his blind eyes towards the town called down the blessing of God upon it and upon his brethren. Then they carried him on to the Portiuncula. When he knew the end was close at hand, Francis asked that they would send to Rome for the Lady Giacoma di Settesoli, who had often befriended him, and ask her to come, bringing with her candles and a grey gown for his burial, and some of the cake that he liked so well. But the lady arrived before the messenger started. “Blessed be God”, said Francis, “who has sent our Brother Giacoma to us. Bring her in. The rule about women is not for Brother Giacoma.” He sent a last message to St Clare and her nuns, and bade his brethren sing the verse of the song he had made to the Sun which praises Death. Then he called for bread and broke it and to each one present gave a piece in token of mutual love and peace, saying, “I have done my part; may Christ teach you to do yours”. He was laid on the ground and covered with an old habit, which the guardian lent him. He exhorted his brethren to the love of God, of poverty, and of the gospel “before all other ordinances”, and gave his blessing to all his disciples, the absent as well as those that were present. The passion of our Lord in the gospel of St John was read aloud, and in the evening of Saturday, October 3, 1226, St Francis died.
   He had asked to be buried in the criminals’ cemetery on the Colle d’Inferno, but the next day his body was taken in solemn procession to the church of St George in Assisi. Here it remained until two years after his canonization when, in 1230, it was secretly removed to the great basilica built by Brother Elias. For six hundred years it was not seen by the eyes of man, till in 1818 after fifty-two days’ search it was found deep down beneath the high altar in the lower church. St Francis was only forty-four or forty-five years old at the time of his death. This is not the place to relate, even in outline, the chequered and glorious history of the order that he founded but in its three branches of Friars Minor, Friars Minor Capuchin and Friars Minor Conventual, together making the one Order of St Francis, it is the most numerous religious institute in the Church today. And it is the opinion of Professor David Knowles that by the foundation of this brotherhood St Francis “did more than any other man to save the medieval Church from decay and revolution.”

Francis of Assisi was a poor little man who astounded and inspired the Church by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without limit and without a mite of self-importance.
Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his frolicking life as leader of Assisi's youth. Prayer—lengthy and difficult—led him to a self-emptying like that of Christ, climaxed by embracing a leper he met on the road. It symbolized his complete obedience to what he had heard in prayer:
“Francis! Everything you have loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if you wish to know my will. And when you have begun this, all that now seems sweet and lovely to you will become intolerable and bitter, but all that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and exceeding joy.”
From the cross in the neglected field-chapel of San Damiano, Christ told him, “Francis, go out and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down.” Francis became the totally poor and humble workman.

He must have suspected a deeper meaning to “build up my house.” But he would have been content to be for the rest of his life the poor “nothing” man actually putting brick on brick in abandoned chapels. He gave up every material thing he had, piling even his clothes before his earthly father (who was demanding restitution for Francis'
gifts to the poor) so that he would be totally free to say, Our Father in heaven. He was, for a time, considered to be a religious nut, begging from door to door when he could not get money for his work, bringing sadness or disgust to the hearts of his former friends, ridicule from the unthinking.
But genuineness will tell. A few people began to realize that this man was actually trying to be Christian. He really believed what Jesus said:
Announce the kingdom! Possess no gold or silver or copper in your purses, no traveling bag, no sandals, no staff (see Luke 9:1-3).
Francis' first rule for his followers was a collection of texts from the Gospels. He had no idea of founding an order, but once it began he protected it and accepted all the legal structures needed to support it. His devotion and loyalty to the Church were absolute and highly exemplary at a time when various movements of reform tended to break the Church's unity.

He was torn between a life devoted entirely to prayer and a life of active preaching of the Good News. He decided in favor of the latter, but always returned to solitude when he could. He wanted to be a missionary in Syria or in Africa, but was prevented by shipwreck and illness in both cases. He did try to convert the sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade.
During the last years of his relatively short life (he died at 44) he was half blind and seriously ill. Two years before his death, he received the stigmata, the real and painful wounds of Christ in his hands, feet and side.
On his deathbed, he said over and over again the last addition to his Canticle of the Sun, “Be praised, O Lord, for our Sister Death.
He sang Psalm 141, and at the end asked his superior to have his clothes removed when the last hour came and for permission to expire lying naked on the earth, in imitation of his Lord.
Comment: Francis of Assisi was poor only that he might be Christ-like. He loved nature because it was another manifestation of the beauty of God. He did great penance (apologizing to "Brother Body" later in life) that he might be totally disciplined for the will of God. His poverty had a sister, humility, by which he meant total dependence on the good God. But all this was, as it were, preliminary to the heart of his spirituality: living the gospel life, summed up in the charity of Jesus and perfectly expressed in the Eucharist. 
Quote:  "We adore you and we bless you, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all the churches which are in the whole world, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world" (St. Francis).


So vast and ever growing is the literature associated with the life of St Francis, and so intricate are the problems presented by some of the principal sources, that it would be impossible to enter into any detail in the space available here. Let it be noted in the first place that we have certain small ascetical writings of the saint himself. They have been critically edited by Fr Edouard d’Alençon, and have been translated into English, e.g. by Archbishop Paschal Robinson in America and by the Countess de la Warr in England. Secondly there is a series of legendae (a word which here implies no suggestion of a fabulous origin), in other words, the primitive biographies. The most certainly attested are three documents attributed to Thomas of Celano, the Vita prima, written before 1229; the Vita secunda, a supplement composed between 1244 and 1247; and the Miracula, dating from about 1257. Then we have the official life by St Bonaventure, c. 1263 (a critical text appeared first in vol. viii of his Opera omnia, edited at Quaracchi), from which the legenda minor was afterwards compiled for liturgical use. This life by St Bonaventure was written with a view to pacification. A heated controversy had broken out in the order between the Zelanti, or “Spiritual” friars, and those who favoured a mitigated observance. The former appealed to acts and sayings of the founder that were on record in certain earlier writings. Many of these incidents were suppressed in the Bonaventure life, and in order that such occasions of discord might not be revived, directions were issued that the older legendae should be destroyed. The manuscripts representing this earlier tradition are therefore rare, and in many cases they have only been brought to light by modern research. Brother Leo, the special confidant of St Francis, undoubtedly wrote certain cedule or rotuli about his seraphic father, and the great medievalist Paul Sabatier always maintained that the substance of these writings was preserved in a document known as the Speculum perfectionis. His final revision of this work was edited by A. G. Little and brought out by the British Society of Franciscan Studies in 1931. Its origin and date have been much controverted, and, on the other hand, a text discovered at Perugia by F. M. Delorme—he printed it in 1926 under the name Legenda antiqua— has, Delorme avers, a much better claim to be regarded as Brother Leo’s long-lost work. Among other primitive and important texts is the Sacrum commercium, “the Converse of Francis and his sons with holy Poverty”, which may well have been written, so it has been suggested, by John Parenti as early as 1227 an excellent translation was published by Montgomery Carmichael (1901). Then we have the Legenda trium sociorum, the Legenda Juliani de Spira and other similar compositions, as well as the Actus beati Francisci, which last, under the name given it in its Italian adaptation, the Fioretti, is familiar everywhere, and has been translated into every language. Of the innumerable modern lives of St Francis it will be sufficient to mention a few best worthy of notice. In the first place, there is the English life by Father Cuthbert, Capuchin, which in Sabatier’s opinion is perhaps the best of all modern lives of Francis.  Other books of the same author dealing with the early Franciscan history and spirit have supplemented it. Another life is that of John Jorgensen which has appeared in many European languages; unfortunately the English translation is not altogether satisfactory, and the same must be said of the English version of the biography by O. Englebert (1950); the French original should not be overlooked. G. K. Chesterton’s sketch, brief in compass, is admirably written and leaves a vivid impression. Paul Sabatier was not a Catholic, but he wrote most sympathetically in his biography of St Francis. It was first printed in 1894, but the edition définitive appeared only after the author’s death in 1931. To these may be added Archbishop P. Robinson’s The Real St Francis; Bishop Felder’s The Knight-errant of Assisi and The Ideals of St Francis; St Francis the Legends and Lauds, containing the contemporary writings, with commentary by O. Karrer; and a good concise biography by J. R. H. Moorman (1950). The same writer produced. Sources for the Life of St Francis (1940), and V. Facchinetti’s Guida bibliografica (1928) is full and useful; but it is hard to keep pace with Franciscan literature.
How st. Francis asked and obtained the indulgence of forgiveness
Patriarchal Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels

He awoke one night in 1216 at the Porziuncola and an inspiration stronger than usual prompted him to arise and go into the little chapel. He knelt in prayer and, as he prayed, our Lord, accompanied by His Mother, appeared to him and bade him ask for that which he desired most. 0 God, he said, although I m a great sinner, I beseech You to grant a full pardon of all sins to all who, having repented and confessed their sins, shall visit this church. And Jesus said to him: Francis, you ask much, but you are worthy of greater things, and greater things you shall have.
The Regula of 1223
Our Lord then granted Francis' request and told him to go to His Vicar for ratification of the indulgence. Honorius III, who was just beginning his Pontificate, was holding court at Perugia, and it was to him that Francis presented his petition.
Honorius was a spiritual, unworldly man, yet at such a request he hesitated. Holy Father, Francis said urgently, a little while ago I restored a chapel for you in honour of the Virgin Mother of Christ (the Portiuncula), and I beseech you to bestow on it an indulgence.
  For how many years do you want this indulgence?“” the Pontiff inquired. “”Holy Father, said Francis, I ask not for years but for souls. Just what do you want? Honorius asked. Holy Father, replied Francis, the Lord has commanded me to ask you that all those who after confession shall visit the Portiuncula with contrite hearts may obtain full remission of the punishment due to the sins of their whole lives from the day of Baptism to the day they enter this church.

Honorius pondered the extraordinary request, and said slowly three times:
I also, in the name of God, grant you the indulgence.
Honorius wanted to give Francis the document of the indulgence, but Francis saw no need for it. What have you to show that this indulgence has been granted you? the Pope asked in amazement as Francis prepared to depart for Assisi without any written confirmation of the great permission. Holy Father, he replied, Your word is enough for me. If this is the work of God, it is for Him to make His work manifest. I desire no other document. The Blessed Virgin Mary shall be the charter, Christ the notary, and the angels the witnesses.
Some days later, before the Bishops of Umbria, Francis said:
Brethren, I want to send you all to Heaven!
 CONDITIONS TO OBTAIN THE PLENARY INDULGENCE OF THE FORGIVENESS OF ASSISI
 (for oneself or for a departed soul)
Sacramental Confession to be in God's grace (during the eight days before or after);
Participation in the Holy Mass and Eucharist Communion;
Visit to the Porziuncola, followed by PROFESSION OF FAITH, in order to reaffirm one's own Christian identity;
Say the OUR FATHER, in order to reaffirm the dignity as child of God that one received in Baptism;
A prayer according to Pope's intention, in order to reaffirm one's membership in the Church, of which the Roman Pontiff is the foundation and sign of visible unity.
A prayer according to Pope's intention.
THE INDULGENCE
Sin not only destroys communion with God, but also compromises the interior state of persons and their relationship with other creatures. For a total repentance, it is not enough to be sorry and to receive the remission of faults. It is also necessary that reparation be made for the disorder provoked by sin, a disorder that usually continues after the sin. In this process of purification the penitent is not alone. The penitent participates in a mystery of solidarity, for which Christ and the Saints rejoice with one. God communicates to one the grace merited by others with the immense value of their existence, in order to effect one's reparation rapidly and effectively.
The Church has always exhorted the faithful to offer prayers, good works and sufferings for the conversion of sinners and for the repose of the faithful departed. During the first centuries, bishops reduced the duration and the severeness of public punishment, through the intercession of the witnesses of faith who survived tortures. Progressively the consciousness grew that the power to bind and unbind, received from the Lord, included the faculty to free penitents from the residue left by already forgiven sins, by applying to them the merits of Christ and the Saints, in order to obtain the grace of a fervent charity. Priests grant this privilege to those who have the right interior disposition and have adhered to the prescribed norms. Participation in this penitential rite is a prerequisite to the concession of an indulgence.
Italian Bishops' Conference, Adult Catechism, n. 710
Shrine of the Porziuncola
The very ancient chapel, venerated for an apparition of angels within it, was originally property of the Benedictines of Subasio. It was located on a piece of land known as the Portiuncula; this name became attached to the chapel.
After a long period of abandonment, it was restored by St. Francis. Here he was given a dear understanding of his vocation. He founded here the Order of Friars Minor (1209), establishing here his home, St. Bonaventure tells us, because of bis reverence for the angels, and of his great love of the Mother of Christ to whom the little church is dedicated. He obtained the use of the land and the chapel from the Benedictines and made this place the centre of his new religious family.
On March 28, 1211, Clare, daughter of Favarone di Offreduccio, received here, from the hands of St. Francis, the religious habit, and thus began the Order of Poor Clares. In 1216, in a vision, St. Francis obtained from Jesus Christ the indulgence called the Pardon of Assisi. It was ratified by Honorius III. This plenary indulgence may ordinarily be gained on August 2 and 15; pilgrims may gain it once a year on any day of the year.
At this centre and heart of the Franciscan Order, St. Francis yearly assembled all the Friars in Chapter to discuss the Rule, and renew their dedication to the Gospel Life. The Chapter of Mats (1221) was attended by more than 5000 friars.

Interior of the Portiuncula
The interior retains its aspect of rude simplicity. Some of the rough hewn stones were put in place by St. Francis who repaired the church. The stones seem to reflect the echo of prayer that, for centuries has radiated from this little portion of earth.
The warm atmosphere of devotion has been fostered by millions of faithful who have entered this gate of eternal life to implore the peace and pardon of the Indulgence. Conditions for gaining the Pardon are those decreed for all plenary indulgences: 1) visit to this shrine with recitation of one Our Father and one Creed; 2) Sacramental Confession and Communion as near the date as possible; 3) prayer according to intentions of the Pope (such as Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be).

Altarpiece by the Priest Hilary
The painting above the altar is by the priest Hilary of Viterbo (1393). In the centre: the Annunciation, to the right Francis in the thorny brambles, and the Miracle of the roses and to the left, Concession of the Indulgence; Approval and promulgation of the Indulgence.
The noteworthy upper panel represents the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary interceding for St. Francis as he petitions for the great privilege. Throngs of faithful come to the Portiuncula not only for the celebration of the Pardon, but also for the feasts of the Assumption, St. Francis, the Immaculate Conception, and others. Other sacred events of exceptional importance are the Day of Prayer for the Devotees of the Shrine, March 25, and the Day of Commemoration of the Deceased Devotees, on the second Sunday of November.
1470 Blessed Julian Majali highly esteemed by popes and kings OSB Abbot (AC)
Julian was a Benedictine monk of San Martino delle Scale in Sicily until he became a hermit six years before his death. He was highly esteemed by popes and kings (Benedictines)
.
1537 Blessed Francis Titelmans spent his life caring for the sick OFM Cap. (AC)
Blessed Francis joined the Capuchins while he was a student of Louvain. He spent his life caring for the sick in Saint James Hospital in Rome (Benedictines)
.


THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PSALM 85

Praise the name of the Lord: bless the name of Mary, His Mother.

Be diligent in prayer to Mary: and she will raise up for you eternal delights.

Let us come to her in a contrite soul: and sinful cupidity will not besiege us.

He who thinks of her in tranquillity of mind: shall find sweetness and the rest of peace.

Let us breathe forth our souls to her in our end: and she will lay open to us the courts of them that triumph.


For thy spirit is kind: thy grace fills the whole world.

Thunder, ye heavens, from above, and give praise to her: glorify her, ye earth, with all the dwellers therein.


Rejoice, ye Heavens, and be glad, O Earth: because Mary will console her servants and will have mercy on her poor.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning and will always be.

God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique, for each is the result of a new idea.  As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike. It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints. Dear Lord, grant us a spirit that is not bound by our own ideas and preferences.  Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.
O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory. Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.  Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.   God calls each one of us to be a saint in order to get into heavenonly saints are allowed into heaven. The more "extravagant" graces are bestowed NOT for the benefit of the recipients so much as FOR the benefit of others.
There are over 10,000 named saints beati  from history
 and Roman Martyology Orthodox sources

Patron_Saints.html  Widowed_Saints htmIndulgences The Catholic Church in China
LINKS: Marian Shrines  
India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East   Lourdes 1858  China Marian shrines 1995
Kenya national Marian shrine  Loreto, Italy  Marian Apparitions (over 2000Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798
 
Links to Related MarianWebsites  Angels and Archangels  Saints Visions of Heaven and Hell

Widowed Saints  html
Doctors_of_the_Church   Acts_Of_The_Apostles  Roman Catholic Popes  Purgatory  UniateChalcedon

Mary the Mother of Jesus Miracles_BLay Saints  Miraculous_IconMiraculous_Medal_Novena Patron Saints
Miracles by Century 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000    1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800  1900 2000
Miracles 100   200   300   400   500   600   700    800   900   1000  
 
1100   1200   1300   1400  1500  1600  1700  1800   1900 Lay Saints

The great psalm of the Passion, Chapter 22, whose first verse “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Jesus pronounced on the cross, ended with the vision: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him
For kingship belongs to the LORD, the ruler over the nations. All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. And I will live for the LORD; my descendants will serve you. The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.
Pope Benedict XVI to The Catholic Church In China {whole article here} 2000 years of the Catholic Church in China
The saints “a cloud of witnesses over our head”, showing us life of Christian perfection is possible.

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Saint Frances Xavier Seelos  Practical Guide to Holiness
1. Go to Mass with deepest devotion. 2. Spend a half hour to reflect upon your main failing & make resolutions to avoid it.
3. Do daily spiritual reading for at least 15 minutes, if a half hour is not possible.  4. Say the rosary every day.
5. Also daily, if at all possible, visit the Blessed Sacrament; toward evening, meditate on the Passion of Christ for a half hour, 6.  Conclude the day with evening prayer & an examination of conscience over all the faults & sins of the day.
7.  Every month make a review of the month in confession.
8. Choose a special patron every month & imitate that patron in some special virtue.
9. Precede every great feast with a novena that is nine days of devotion. 10. Try to begin & end every activity with a Hail Mary

My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee.  I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not
O most Holy trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly.  I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the Tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended, and by the infite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I beg the conversion of poor sinners,  Fatima Prayer, Angel of Peace
The voice of the Father is heard, the Son enters the water, and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove.
THE spirit and example of the world imperceptibly instil the error into the minds of many that there is a kind of middle way of going to Heaven; and so, because the world does not live up to the gospel, they bring the gospel down to the level of the world. It is not by this example that we are to measure the Christian rule, but words and life of Christ. All His followers are commanded to labour to become perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect, and to bear His image in our hearts that we may be His children. We are obliged by the gospel to die to ourselves by fighting self-love in our hearts, by the mastery of our passions, by taking on the spirit of our Lord.
   These are the conditions under which Christ makes His promises and numbers us among His children, as is manifest from His words which the apostles have left us in their inspired writings. Here is no distinction made or foreseen between the apostles or clergy or religious and secular persons. The former, indeed, take upon themselves certain stricter obligations, as a means of accomplishing these ends more perfectly; but the law of holiness and of disengagement of the heart from the world is general and binds all the followers of Christ.
God loves variety. He doesn't mass-produce his saints. Every saint is unique each the result of a new idea.
As the liturgy says: Non est inventus similis illis--there are no two exactly alike.
It is we with our lack of imagination, who paint the same haloes on all the saints.

Dear Lord, grant us a spirit not bound by our own ideas and preferences.
 
Grant that we may be able to appreciate in others what we lack in ourselves.

O Lord, grant that we may understand that every saint must be a unique praise of Your glory.
 
Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives.
Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts.
The 15 Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary ) Revealed to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan)
1.    Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces. 2.    I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary. 3.    The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. 4.    It will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of people from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things.  Oh, that soul would sanctify them by this means.  5.    The soul that recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish. 6.    Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying themselves to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune.  God will not chastise them in His justice, they shall not perish by an unprovided death; if they be just, they shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life. 7.    Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church. 8.    Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise. 9.    I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary. 10.    The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.  11.    You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary. 12.    I shall aid all those who propagate the Holy Rosary in their necessities. 13.    I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death. 14.    All who recite the Rosary are my children, and brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ. 15.    Devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
His Holiness Aram I, current (2013) Catholicos of Cilicia of Armenians, whose See is located in Lebanese town of Antelias. The Catholicosate was founded in Sis, capital of Cilicia, in the year 1441 following the move of the Catholicosate of All Armenians back to its original See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia. The Catholicosate of Cilicia enjoyed local jurisdiction, though spiritually subject to the authority of Etchmiadzin. In 1921 the See was transferred to Aleppo in Syria, and in 1930 to Antelias.
Its jurisdiction currently extends to Syria, Cyprus, Iran and Greece.
Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac
The exact date of the introduction of Christianity into Edessa {Armenian Ourhaï in Arabic Er Roha, commonly Orfa or Urfa, its present name} is not known. It is certain, however, that the Christian community was at first made up from the Jewish population of the city. According to an ancient legend, King Abgar V, Ushana, was converted by Addai, who was one of the seventy-two disciples. In fact, however, the first King of Edessa to embrace the Christian Faith was Abgar IX (c. 206) becoming official kingdom religion.
Christian council held at Edessa early as 197 (Eusebius, Hist. Ecc7V,xxiii).
In 201 the city was devastated by a great flood, and the Christian church was destroyed (“Chronicon Edessenum”, ad. an. 201).
In 232 the relics of the Apostle St. Thomas were brought from India, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.

Under Roman domination martyrs suffered at Edessa: Sts. Scharbîl and Barsamya, under Decius; Sts. Gûrja, Schâmôna, Habib, and others under Diocletian.
 
In the meanwhile Christian priests from Edessa evangelized Eastern Mesopotamia and Persia, established the first Churches in the kingdom of the Sassanides.  Atillâtiâ, Bishop of Edessa, assisted at the Council of Nicæa (325). The “Peregrinatio Silviæ” (or Etheriæ) (ed. Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, 62 sqq.) gives an account of the many sanctuaries at Edessa about 388.
Although Hebrew had been the language of the ancient Israelite kingdom, after their return from Exile the Jews turned more and more to Aramaic, using it for parts of the books of Ezra and Daniel in the Bible. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the main language of Palestine, and quite a number of texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls are also written in Aramaic.
Aramaic continued to be an important language for Jews, alongside Hebrew, and parts of the Talmud are written in it.
After Arab conquests of the seventh century, Arabic quickly replaced Aramaic as the main language of those who converted to Islam, although in out of the way places, Aramaic continued as a vernacular language of Muslims.
Aramaic, however, enjoyed its greatest success in Christianity. Although the New Testament wins written in Greek, Christianity had come into existence in an Aramaic-speaking milieu, and it was the Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now known as Syriac, that became the literary language of a large number of Christians living in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire and in the Persian Empire, further east. Over the course of the centuries the influence of the Syriac Churches spread eastwards to China (in Xian, in western China, a Chinese-Syriac inscription dated 781 is still to be seen); to southern India where the state of Kerala can boast more Christians of Syriac liturgical tradition than anywhere else in the world.

680 Shiite saint Imam Hussein, grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad Known as Ashoura and observed by Shiites across the world, the 10th day of the lunar Muslim month of Muharram: the anniversary of the 7th century death in battle of one of Shiite Islam's most beloved saints.  Imam Hussein died in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that's home to the saint's shrine.  The battle over a dispute about the leadership of the Muslim faith following Muhammad's death in 632 A.D. It is the defining event in Islam's split into Sunni and Shiite branches.  The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson. "He sacrificed his blood to teach us not to give in to corruption, coercion, or use of force and to seek honor and justice."  According to Shiite beliefs, Hussein and companions were denied water by enemies who controlled the nearby Euphrates.  Streets get partially covered with blood from slaughter of hundreds of cows and sheep. Volunteers cook the meat and feed it to the poor.  Hussein's martyrdom recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to many Shiites, 10 percent of the world's estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.
Meeting of the Saints  walis (saints of Allah)
Great men covet to embrace martyrdom for a cause and principle.
So was the case with Hazrat Ali. He could have made a compromise with the evil forces of his time and, as a result, could have led a very comfortable, easy and luxurious life.  But he was not a person who would succumb to such temptations. His upbringing, his education and his training in the lap of the holy Prophet made him refuse such an offer.
Rabia Al-Basri (717–801 C.E.) She was first to set forth the doctrine of mystical love and who is widely considered to be the most important of the early Sufi poets. An elderly Shia pointed out that during his pre-Partition childhood it was quite common to find pictures and portraits of Shia icons in Imambaras across the country.
Shah Abdul Latif: The Exalted Sufi Master born 1690 in a Syed family; died 1754. In ancient times, Sindh housed the exemplary Indus Valley Civilisation with Moenjo Daro as its capital, and now, it is the land of a culture which evolved from the teachings of eminent Sufi saints. Pakistan is home to the mortal remains of many Sufi saints, the exalted among them being Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, a practitioner of the real Islam, philosopher, poet, musicologist and preacher. He presented his teaching through poetry and music - both instruments sublime - and commands a very large following, not only among Muslims but also among Hindus and Christians. Sindh culture: The Shah is synonymous with Sindh. He is the very fountainhead of Sindh's culture. His message remains as fresh as that of any present day poet, and the people of Sindh find solace from his writings. He did indeed think for Sindh. One of his prayers, in exquisite Sindhi, translates thus: “Oh God, may ever You on Sindh bestow abundance rare! Beloved! All the world let share Thy grace, and fruitful be.”
Shia Ali al-Hadi, died 868 and son Hassan al-Askari 874. These saints are the 10th and 11th of Shia's 12 most revered Imams. Baba Farid Sufi 1398 miracle, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki renowned Muslim Sufi saint scholar miracles 569 A.H. [1173 C.E.] hermit gave to poor, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti greatest mystic of his time born 533 Hijri (1138-39 A.D.), Hazrat Ghuas-e Azam, Hazrat Bu Ali Sharif, and Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia Sufi Saint Hazrath Khwaja Syed Mohammed Badshah Quadri Chisty Yamani Quadeer (RA)
1236-1325 welcomed people of all faiths & all walks of life.
801 Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya Sufi One of the most famous Islamic mystics
(b. 717). This 8th century saint was an early Sufi who had a profound influence on later Sufis, who in turn deeply influenced the European mystical love and troubadour traditions.  Rabi'a was a woman of Basra, a seaport in southern Iraq.  She was born around 717 and died in 801 (185-186).  Her biographer, the great medieval poet Attar, tells us that she was "on fire with love and longing" and that men accepted her "as a second spotless Mary" (186).  She was, he continues, “an unquestioned authority to her contemporaries" (218).
Rabi'a began her ascetic life in a small desert cell near Basra, where she lost herself in prayer and went straight to God for teaching.  As far as is known, she never studied under any master or spiritual director.  She was one of the first of the Sufis to teach that Love alone was the guide on the mystic path (222).  A later Sufi taught that there were two classes of "true believers": one class sought a master as an intermediary between them and God -- unless they could see the footsteps of the Prophet on the path before them, they would not accept the path as valid.  The second class “...did not look before them for the footprint of any of God's creatures, for they had removed all thought of what He had created from their hearts, and concerned themselves solely with God. (218)
Rabi'a was of this second kind.  She felt no reverence even for the House of God in Mecca:  "It is the Lord of the house Whom I need; what have I to do with the house?" (219) One lovely spring morning a friend asked her to come outside to see the works of God.  She replied, "Come you inside that you may behold their Maker.  Contemplation of the Maker has turned me aside from what He has made" (219).  During an illness, a friend asked this woman if she desired anything.
"...[H]ow can you ask me such a question as 'What do I desire?'  I swear by the glory of God that for twelve years I have desired fresh dates, and you know that in Basra dates are plentiful, and I have not yet tasted them.  I am a servant (of God), and what has a servant to do with desire?" (162)
When a male friend once suggested she should pray for relief from a debilitating illness, she said,
"O Sufyan, do you not know Who it is that wills this suffering for me?  Is it not God Who wills it?  When you know this, why do you bid me ask for what is contrary to His will?  It is not  well to oppose one's Beloved." (221)
She was an ascetic.  It was her custom to pray all night, sleep briefly just before dawn, and then rise again just as dawn "tinged the sky with gold" (187).  She lived in celibacy and poverty, having renounced the world.  A friend visited her in old age and found that all she owned were a reed mat, screen, a pottery jug, and a bed of felt which doubled as her prayer-rug (186), for where she prayed all night, she also slept briefly in the pre-dawn chill.  Once her friends offered to get her a servant; she replied,
"I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from Him to Whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?"  (186-7)
A wealthy merchant once wanted to give her a purse of gold.  She refused it, saying that God, who sustains even those who dishonor Him, would surely sustain her, "whose soul is overflowing with love" for Him.  And she added an ethical concern as well:
"...How should I take the wealth of someone of whom I do not know whether he acquired it lawfully or not?" (187)
She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance.  She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did.  For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils -- i.e., hindrances to the vision of God Himself.  The story is told that once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other.  When they asked her to explain, she said:
"I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..." (187-188)
She was once asked where she came from.  "From that other world," she said.  "And where are you going?" she was asked.  "To that other world," she replied (219).  She taught that the spirit originated with God in "that other world" and had to return to Him in the end.  Yet if the soul were sufficiently purified, even on earth, it could look upon God unveiled in all His glory and unite with him in love.  In this quest, logic and reason were powerless.  Instead, she speaks of the "eye" of her heart which alone could apprehend Him and His mysteries (220).
Above all, she was a lover, a bhakti, like one of Krishna’s Goptis in the Hindu tradition.  Her hours of prayer were not so much devoted to intercession as to communion with her Beloved.  Through this communion, she could discover His will for her.  Many of her prayers have come down to us:
       "I have made Thee the Companion of my heart,
        But my body is available for those who seek its company,
        And my body is friendly towards its guests,
        But the Beloved of my heart is the Guest of my soul."  [224]

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Mother Angelica saving souls is this beautiful womans journey  Shrine_of_The_Most_Blessed_Sacrament
Colombia was among the countries Mother Angelica visited. 
In Bogotá, a Salesian priest - Father Juan Pablo Rodriguez - brought Mother and the nuns to the Sanctuary of the Divine Infant Jesus to attend Mass.  After Mass, Father Juan Pablo took them into a small Shrine which housed the miraculous statue of the Child Jesus. Mother Angelica stood praying at the side of the statue when suddenly the miraculous image came alive and turned towards her.  Then the Child Jesus spoke with the voice of a young boy:  “Build Me a Temple and I will help those who help you.” 

Thus began a great adventure that would eventually result in the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a Temple dedicated to the Divine Child Jesus, a place of refuge for all. Use this link to read a remarkable story about
The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Father Reardon, Editor of The Catholic Bulletin for 14 years Lover of the poor; A very Holy Man of God.
Monsignor Reardon Protonotarius Apostolicus
 
Pastor 42 years BASILICA OF SAINT MARY Minneapolis MN
America's First Basilica Largest Nave in the World
August 7, 1907-ground broke for the foundation
by Archbishop Ireland-laying cornerstone May 31, 1908
James M. Reardon Publication History of Basilica of Saint Mary 1600-1932
James M. Reardon Publication  History of the Basilica of Saint Mary 1955 {update}

Brief History of our Beloved Holy Priest Here and his published books of Catholic History in North America
Reardon, J.M. Archbishop Ireland; Prelate, Patriot, Publicist, 1838-1918.
A Memoir (St. Paul; 1919); George Anthony Belcourt Pioneer Catholic Missionary of the Northwest 1803-1874 (1955);
The Catholic Church IN THE DIOCESE OF ST. PAUL from earliest origin to centennial achievement
1362-1950 (1952);

The Church of Saint Mary of Saint Paul 1875-1922;
  (1932)
The Vikings in the American Heartland;
The Catholic Total Abstinence Society in Minnesota;
James Michael Reardon Born in Nova Scotia, 1872;  Priest, ordained by Bishop Ireland;
Member -- St. Paul Seminary faculty.
Affiliations and Indulgence Litany of Loretto in Stained glass windows here.  Nave Sacristy and Residence Here
Sanctuary
spaces between them filled with grilles of hand-forged wrought iron the
life of our Blessed Lady After the crucifixon
Apostle statues Replicas of those in St John Lateran--Christendom's earliest Basilica.
Ordered by Rome's first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, Popes' cathedral and official residence first millennium of Christian history.

The only replicas ever made:  in order from west to east {1932}.
Every Christian must be a living book wherein one can read the teaching of the gospel
 
It Makes No Sense
Not To Believe In GOD
THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi
  June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.
By Father John Corapi
THE BLESSED MOTHER AND ISLAM By Father John Corapi
  June 19, Trinity Sunday, 1991: Ordained Catholic Priest under Pope John Paul II;
then 2,000,000 miles delivering the Gospel to millions, and continues to do so.
By Father John Corapi
Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order—a true battle between good and evil.

Today we have a similar spiritual battle in progress—a battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death. If we do not soon stop the genocide of abortion in the United States, we shall run the course of all those that prove by their actions that they are enemies of God—total collapse, economic, social, and national. The moral demise of a nation results in the ultimate demise of a nation. God is not a disinterested spectator to the affairs of man. Life begins at conception. This is an unalterable formal teaching of the Catholic Church. If you do not accept this you are a heretic in plain English. A single abortion is homicide. The more than 48,000,000 abortions since Roe v. Wade in the United States constitute genocide by definition. The group singled out for death—unwanted, unborn children.

No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.

As we watch the spectacle of the world seeming to self-destruct before our eyes, we can’t help but be saddened and even frightened by so much evil run rampant. Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, North Korea—It is all a disaster of epic proportions displayed in living color on our television screens.  These are not ordinary times and this is not business as usual. We are at a crossroads in human history and the time for Catholics and all Christians to act is now. All evil can ultimately be traced to its origin, which is moral evil. All of the political action, peace talks, international peacekeeping forces, etc. will avail nothing if the underlying sickness is not addressed. This is sin. One person at a time hearts and minds must be moved from evil to good, from lies to truth, from violence to peace.
Islam, an Arabic word that has often been defined as “to make peace,” seems like a living contradiction today. Islam is a religion of peace.  As we celebrate the birthday of Our Lady, I am proposing that each one of us pray the Rosary for peace. Prayer is what must precede all other activity if that activity is to have any chance of success. Pray for peace, pray the Rosary every day without fail.  There is a great love for Mary among Muslim people. It is not a coincidence that a little village named Fatima is where God chose to have His Mother appear in the twentieth century. Our Lady’s name appears no less than thirty times in the Koran. No other woman’s name is mentioned, not even that of Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima. In the Koran Our Lady is described as “Virgin, ever Virgin.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen prophetically spoke of the resurgence of Islam in our day. He said it would be through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Islam would be converted. We must pray for this to happen quickly if we are to avert a horrible time of suffering for this poor, sinful world. Turn to our Mother in this time of great peril. Pray the Rosary every day. Then, and only then will there be peace, when the hearts and minds of men are changed from the inside.
Talk is weak. Prayer is strong. Pray!  God bless you, Father John Corapi

Father Corapi's Biography

Father John Corapi is what has commonly been called a late vocation. In other words, he came to the priesthood other than a young man. He was 44 years old when he was ordained. From small town boy to the Vietnam era US Army, from successful businessman in Las Vegas and Hollywood to drug addicted and homeless, to religious life and ordination to the priesthood by Pope John Paul II, to a life as a preacher of the Gospel who has reached millions with the simple message that God's Name is Mercy!

Father Corapi's academic credentials are quite extensive. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Pace University in the seventies. Then as an older man returned to the university classrooms in preparation for his life as a priest and preacher. He received all of his academic credentials for the Church with honors: a Masters degree in Sacred Scripture from Holy Apostles Seminary and Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctorate degrees in dogmatic theology from the University of Navarre in Spain.

Father John Corapi goes to the heart of the contemporary world's many woes and wars, whether the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, or the Congo, or the natural disasters that seem to be increasing every year, the moral and spiritual war is at the basis of everything. “Our battle is not against human forces,” St. Paul asserts, “but against principalities and powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness...” (Ephesians 6:12). 
The “War to end all wars” is the moral and spiritual combat that rages in the hearts and minds of human beings. The outcome of that  unseen fight largely determines how the battle in the realm of the seen unfolds.  The title talk, “With the Moon Under Her Feet,” is taken from the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation, and deals with the current threat to the world from radical Islam, and the Blessed Virgin Mary's role in the ultimate victory that will result in the conversion of Islam. Few Catholics are aware of the connection between Islam, Fatima, and Guadalupe. Presented in Father Corapi's straight-forward style, you will be both inspired and educated by him.

About Father John Corapi.
Father Corapi is a Catholic priest .
The pillars of father's preaching are basically:
Love for and a relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary 
Leading a vibrant and loving relationship with Jesus Christ
Great love and reverence for the Most Holy Eucharist from Holy Mass to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
An uncompromising love for and obedience to the Holy Father and the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church


God Bless you on your journey Father John Corapi


Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
Jul 23, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The cause for canonization of Servant of God Edward Flanagan, the priest who founded Nebraska's Boys Town community for orphans and other boys, advanced Monday with the presentation of a summary of records on his life.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen to be beatified
Jul 6, 2019 - 04:00 am .- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

Brooklyn diocese advances sainthood cause of local priest
Jun 25, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The Bishop of Brooklyn accepted last week the findings of a nine-year diocesan investigation into the life of Monsignor Bernard John Quinn, known for fighting bigotry and serving the African American population, as part of his cause for canonization.

Fr. Augustus Tolton, former African American slave, advances toward sainthood
Jun 12, 2019 - 05:03 am .- Fr. Augustus Tolton advanced along the path to sainthood Wednesday, making the runaway slave-turned-priest one step closer to being the first black American saint.

Pope Francis will beatify these martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Romania
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.
 
Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

Seven 20th-century Romanian bishops declared martyrs
Mar 19, 2019 - 12:01 pm .- Pope Francis declared Tuesday the martyrdom of seven Greek-Catholic bishops killed by the communist regime in Romania in the mid-20th century.

Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
Jan 15, 2019 - 11:12 am .- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
 
Nineteen Algerian martyrs beatified
Dec 10, 2018 - 03:08 pm .- Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, were beatified Saturday during a Mass in Oran.

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”
 
Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
Sep 14, 2018 - 06:01 pm .- The Algerian bishops' conference has announced that the beatification of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in the country between 1994 and 1996, will be held Dec. 8.

Now a cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu heads to congregation for saints' causes
Jun 28, 2018 - 11:41 am .- Newly-minted Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu will resign from his post as substitute of the Secretariat of State tomorrow, in anticipation of his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints later this summer.

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.
 
Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.
 
Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.
 
Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.
 
Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward
Feb 27, 2017 - 11:03 am .- Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

Records on life of Father Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, presented at Vatican
Jul 23, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The cause for canonization of Servant of God Edward Flanagan, the priest who founded Nebraska's Boys Town community for orphans and other boys, advanced Monday with the presentation of a summary of records on his life.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen to be beatified
Jul 6, 2019 - 04:00 am .- Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen Friday, making possible the American television catechist's beatification.

Brooklyn diocese advances sainthood cause of local priest
Jun 25, 2019 - 03:01 am .- The Bishop of Brooklyn accepted last week the findings of a nine-year diocesan investigation into the life of Monsignor Bernard John Quinn, known for fighting bigotry and serving the African American population, as part of his cause for canonization.

Fr. Augustus Tolton, former African American slave, advances toward sainthood
Jun 12, 2019 - 05:03 am .- Fr. Augustus Tolton advanced along the path to sainthood Wednesday, making the runaway slave-turned-priest one step closer to being the first black American saint.

Pope Francis will beatify these martyred Greek-Catholic bishops in Romania
May 30, 2019 - 03:01 pm .- On Sunday in Blaj, Pope Francis will beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania who were killed by the communist regime between 1950 and 1970.
 
Woman who served Brazil’s poorest to be canonized
May 14, 2019 - 06:53 am .- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Bl. Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.

Seven 20th-century Romanian bishops declared martyrs
Mar 19, 2019 - 12:01 pm .- Pope Francis declared Tuesday the martyrdom of seven Greek-Catholic bishops killed by the communist regime in Romania in the mid-20th century.

Pope advances sainthood causes of 17 women
Jan 15, 2019 - 11:12 am .- Pope Francis approved Tuesday the next step in the canonization causes of 17 women from four countries, including the martyrdom of 14 religious sisters killed in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
 
Nineteen Algerian martyrs beatified
Dec 10, 2018 - 03:08 pm .- Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, were beatified Saturday during a Mass in Oran.

The Algerian martyrs shed their blood for Christ, pope says
Dec 7, 2018 - 10:02 am .- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.
Algerian martyrs are models for the Church, archbishop says
Nov 16, 2018 - 03:01 am .- Archbishop Paul Desfarges of Algiers has said that Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, are “models for our lives as disciples today and tomorrow.”
 
Francesco Spinelli to be canonized after healing of a newborn in DR Congo
Oct 9, 2018 - 05:01 pm .- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Algerian martyrs to be beatified in December
Sep 14, 2018 - 06:01 pm .- The Algerian bishops' conference has announced that the beatification of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in the country between 1994 and 1996, will be held Dec. 8.

Now a cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu heads to congregation for saints' causes
Jun 28, 2018 - 11:41 am .- Newly-minted Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu will resign from his post as substitute of the Secretariat of State tomorrow, in anticipation of his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints later this summer.

Pope Francis creates new path to beatification under ‘offering of life’
Jul 11, 2017 - 06:22 am .- On Tuesday Pope Francis declared a new category of Christian life suitable for consideration of beatification called “offering of life” – in which a person has died prematurely through an offering of their life for love of God and neighbor.
 
Twentieth century Polish nurse among causes advancing toward sainthood
Jul 7, 2017 - 06:14 am .- Pope Francis on Friday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Hanna Chrzanowska, a Polish nurse and nursing instructor who died from cancer in 1973, paving the way for her beatification.
 
Sainthood causes advance, including layman who resisted fascism
Jun 17, 2017 - 09:22 am .- Pope Francis on Friday recognized the heroic virtue of six persons on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of an Italian man who died from injuries of a beating he received while imprisoned in a concentration camp for resisting fascism.
 
Solanus Casey, Cardinal Van Thuan among those advanced toward sainthood
May 4, 2017 - 10:47 am .- Pope Francis on Thursday approved decrees of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints advancing the causes for canonization of 12 individuals, including the American-born Capuchin Solanus Casey and the Vietnamese cardinal Francis Xavier Nguen Van Thuan.
 
Pope clears way for canonization of Fatima visionaries
Mar 23, 2017 - 06:44 am .- On Thursday Pope Francis approved the second and final miracle needed to canonize Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the Fatima Marian apparitions.
Surgeon and father among sainthood causes moving forward
Feb 27, 2017 - 11:03 am .- Pope Francis recognized on Monday the heroic virtue of eight persons on the path to canonization, including an Italian surgeon and father of eight who suffered from several painful diseases throughout his life.

8 Martyrs Move Closer to Sainthood 8 July, 2016
Posted by ZENIT Staff on 8 July, 2016

The angel appears to Saint Monica
This morning, Pope Francis received Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato. During the audience, he authorized the promulgation of decrees concerning the following causes:

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MIRACLES:
Miracle attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God Luis Antonio Rosa Ormières, priest and founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Guardian Angel; born July 4, 1809 and died on Jan. 16, 1890
MARTYRDOM:
Servants of God Antonio Arribas Hortigüela and 6 Companions, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart; killed in hatred of the Faith, Sept. 29, 1936
Servant of God Josef Mayr-Nusser, a layman; killed in hatred of the Faith, Feb. 24, 1945
HEROIC VIRTUE:

Servant of God Alfonse Gallegos of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, Titular Bishop of Sasabe, auxiliary of Sacramento; born Feb. 20, 1931 and died Oct. 6, 1991
Servant of God Rafael Sánchez García, diocesan priest; born June 14, 1911 and died on Aug. 8, 1973
Servant of God Andrés García Acosta, professed layman of the Order of Friars Minor; born Jan. 10, 1800 and died Jan. 14, 1853
Servant of God Joseph Marchetti, professed priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles; born Oct. 3, 1869 and died Dec. 14, 1896
Servant of God Giacomo Viale, professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, pastor of Bordighera; born Feb. 28, 1830 and died April 16, 1912
Servant of God Maria Pia of the Cross (née Maddalena Notari), foundress of the Congregation of Crucified Sisters Adorers of the Eucharist; born Dec. 2, 1847 and died on July 1, 1919
Sunday, November 23 2014 Six to Be Canonized on Feast of Christ the King.

On the List Are Lay Founder of a Hospital and Eastern Catholic Religious
VATICAN CITY, June 12, 2014 (Zenit.org) - Today, the Vatican announced that during the celebration of the feast of Christ the King on Sunday, November 23, an ordinary public consistory will be held for the canonization of the following six blesseds, who include a lay founder of a hospital for the poor, founders of religious orders, and two members of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See:
-Giovanni Antonio Farina (1803-1888), an Italian bishop who founded the Institute of the Sisters Teachers of Saint Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts
-Kuriakose Elias Chavara (1805-1871), a Syro-Malabar priest in India who founded the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate
-Ludovico of Casoria (1814-1885), an Italian Franciscan priest who founded the Gray Sisters of St. Elizabeth
-Nicola Saggio (Nicola da Longobardi, 1650-1709), an Italian oblate of the Order of Minims
-Euphrasia Eluvathingal (1877-1952), an Indian Carmelite of the Syro-Malabar Church
-Amato Ronconi (1238-1304), an Italian, Third Order Franciscan who founded a hospital for poor pilgrims

CAUSES OF SAINTS July 2015.
Pope Recognizes Heroic Virtues of Ukrainian Archbishop
Recognition Brings Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky Closer to Beatification
By Junno Arocho Esteves Rome, July 17, 2015 (ZENIT.org)
Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtues of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky. According to a communique released by the Holy See Press Office, the Holy Father met this morning with Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

The Pope also recognized the heroic virtues of several religious/lay men and women from Italy, Spain, France & Mexico.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky is considered to be one of the most influential 20th century figures in the history of the Ukrainian Church.
Enthroned as Metropolitan of Lviv in 1901, Archbishop Sheptytsky was arrested shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 by the Russians. After his imprisonment in several prisons in Russia and the Ukraine, the Archbishop was released in 1918.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic prelate was also an ardent supporter of the Jewish community in Ukraine, going so far as to learn Hebrew to better communicate with them. He also was a vocal protestor against atrocities committed by the Nazis, evidenced in his pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." He was also known to harbor thousands of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries.
Following his death in 1944, his cause for canonization was opened in 1958.
* * *
The Holy Father authorized the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees regarding the heroic virtues of:
- Servant of God Andrey Sheptytsky, O.S.B.M., major archbishop of Leopolis of the Ukrainians, metropolitan of Halyc (1865-1944);
- Servant of God Giuseppe Carraro, Bishop of Verona, Italy (1899-1980);
- Servant of God Agustin Ramirez Barba, Mexican diocesan priest and founder of the Servants of the Lord of Mercy (1881-1967);
- Servant of God Simpliciano della Nativita (ne Aniello Francesco Saverio Maresca), Italian professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, founder of the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Hearts (1827-1898);
- Servant of God Maria del Refugio Aguilar y Torres del Cancino, Mexican founder of the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (1866-1937);
- Servant of God Marie-Charlotte Dupouy Bordes (Marie-Teresa), French professed religious of the Society of the Religious of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (1873-1953);
- Servant of God Elisa Miceli, Italian founder of the Rural Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart (1904-1976);
- Servant of God Isabel Mendez Herrero (Isabel of Mary Immaculate), Spanish professed nun of the Servants of St. Joseph (1924-1953)
October 01, 2015 Vatican City, Pope Authorizes following Decrees
(ZENIT.org) By Staff Reporter
Polish Layperson Recognized as Servant of God
Pope Authorizes Decrees
Pope Francis on Wednesday authorised the Congregation for Saints' Causes to promulgate the following decrees:

MARTYRDOM
- Servant of God Valentin Palencia Marquina, Spanish diocesan priest, killed in hatred of the faith in Suances, Spain in 1937;

HEROIC VIRTUES
- Servant of God Giovanni Folci, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the Opera Divin Prigioniero (1890-1963);
- Servant of God Franciszek Blachnicki, Polish diocesan priest (1921-1987);
- Servant of God Jose Rivera Ramirez, Spanish diocesan priest (1925-1991);
- Servant of God Juan Manuel Martín del Campo, Mexican diocesan priest (1917-1996);
- Servant of God Antonio Filomeno Maria Losito, Italian professed priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (1838-1917);
- Servant of God Maria Benedetta Giuseppa Frey (nee Ersilia Penelope), Italian professed nun of the Cistercian Order (1836-1913);
- Servant of God Hanna Chrzanowska, Polish layperson, Oblate of the Ursulines of St. Benedict (1902-1973).
March 06 2016 MIRACLES authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
Pope Francis received in a private audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, during which he authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
MIRACLES

– Blessed Manuel González García, bishop of Palencia, Spain, founder of the Eucharistic Missionaries of Nazareth (1877-1940);
– Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity (née Elisabeth Catez), French professed religious of the Order of Discalced Carmelites (1880-1906);
– Venerable Servant of God Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus (né Henri Grialou), French professed priest of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, founder of the Secular Institute “Notre-Dame de Vie” (1894-1967);
– Venerable Servant of God María Antonia of St. Joseph (née María Antonio de Paz y Figueroa), Argentine founder of the Beaterio of the Spiritual Exercise of Buenos Aires (1730-1799);
HEROIC VIRTUE

– Servant of God Stefano Ferrando, Italian professed priest of the Salesians, bishop of Shillong, India, founder of the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians (1895-1978);
– Servant of God Enrico Battista Stanislao Verjus, Italian professed priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, coadjutor of the apostolic vicariate of New Guinea (1860-1892);
– Servant of God Giovanni Battista Quilici, Italian diocesan priest, founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Crucified (1791-1844);
– Servant of God Bernardo Mattio, Italian diocesan priest (1845-1914);
– Servant of God Quirico Pignalberi, Italian professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (1891-1982);
– Servant of God Teodora Campostrini, Italian founder of the Minim Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Sorrows (1788-1860);
– Servant of God Bianca Piccolomini Clementini, Italian founder of the Company of St. Angela Merici di Siena (1875-1959);
– Servant of God María Nieves of the Holy Family (née María Nieves Sánchez y Fernández), Spanish professed religious of the Daughters of Mary of the Pious Schools (1900-1978).

April 26 2016 MIRACLES authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
Here is the full list of decrees approved by the Pope:

MIRACLES
– Blessed Alfonso Maria Fusco, diocesan priest and founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. John the Baptist (1839-1910);
– Venerable Servant of God John Sullivan, professed priest of the Society of Jesus (1861-1933);
MARTYRDOM
– Servants of God Nikolle Vinçenc Prennushi, O.F.M., archbishop of Durres, Albania, and 37 companions killed between 1945 and 1974;
– Servants of God José Antón Gómez and three companions of the Benedictines of Madrid, Spain, killed 1936;
HEROIC VIRTUES
– Servant of God Thomas Choe Yang-Eop, diocesan priest (1821-1861);
– Servant of God Sosio Del Prete (né Vincenzo), professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor, founder of the Congregation of the Little Servants of Christ the King (1885-1952);
– Servant of God Wenanty Katarzyniec (né Jósef), professed priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (1889-1921);
– Servant of God Maria Consiglia of the Holy Spirity (née Emilia Paqualina Addatis), founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Addolorata, Servants of Mary (1845-1900);
– Servant of God Maria of the Incarnation (née Caterina Carrasco Tenorio), founder of the Congregation of the Franciscan Tertiary Sisters of the Flock of Mary (1840-1917);
– Servant of God , founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Family of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1851-1923);
– Servant of God Ilia Corsaro, founder of the Congregation of the Little Missionaries of the Eucharist (1897-1977);
– Servant of God Maria Montserrat Grases García, layperson of the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei (1941-1959).
LINKS:
Marian Apparitions (over 2000)  India Marian Shrine Lourdes of the East   Lourdes Feb 11- July 16, Loreto, Italy 1858 
China
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May 23, 1995 Zarvintisya Ukraine Lourdes Kenya national Marian shrine    Quang Tri Vietnam La Vang 1798  
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