St. John Chrysostom

Feast date: Sep 13

“If the Lord should give you power to raise the dead, He would give much less than He does when he bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and a sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves, understands what I say.”
-St. John Chrysostom

Born in Antioch, c. 347, Saint John Chrysostom (Golden-mouthed) was perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of the Church, thus the name given him, and the most prominent Greek father of the Church.

He grew up in Antioch, received an excellent classical Greek education, and upon meeting the holy bishop Meletus, he decided to devote his time to the study of religious works and the Sacred Scriptures. He received Baptism after three years of study and set out for the desert to live the ascetic life of a hermit.

His extreme mortifications left him in fragile health, and he thus returned to Antioch after two years of recovery, and devoted himself to studying for the priesthood. He was ordained in 386 and served in the Cathedral of Antioch for 12 years, winning widespread fame for his sublime preaching.

In 398 he was forcefully appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, and fast became very popular with his flock through his example of preaching and courage in front of the imperial power, whose corruption and decadence he never shirked from criticizing in public.

This attitude naturally made an enemy of the empress, Eudoxia as well as Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, who had him condemned on false charges in 403. He was exiled to Armenia where he continued to be a great presence in the Church of the East through his many letters. He was exiled from Armenia to an isolated place along the Black Sea. He died during the journey in 407 in Pontus, his ill health unable to endure its rigors.

In 438 the Emperor Theodosius II of Constantinople had John’s body returned to Constantinople, and did penance for the sins of his mother Eudoxia.

Chrysostom’s many writings, especially homilies and commentaries on the Gospels, are still extant and have exerted great influence over the centuries.

“When you are before the altar where Christ reposes, you ought no longer to think that you are amongst men; but believe that there are troops of angels and archangels standing by you, and trembling with respect before the sovereign Master of Heaven and earth. Therefore, when you are in church, be there in silence, fear, and veneration.”
– St. John Chrysostom

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Blessed Apollinaris Franco

Feast date: Sep 12

Blessed Apollinaris was born in Old Castile, Spain where he joined the Franciscan order.  He was sent to Japan to head the Japanese Franciscan mission in 1614, the year that the new Japanese shogun had instituted a nationwide ban on Christianity and declared being a Christian a capital offense.

Friar Apollinaris Franco evangelized covertly until he was arrested in 1617 and thrown into prison in Nagasaki along with other priests and laymen, for five years to await his execution. The conditions in the prison were exceedingly harsh in an attempt to force the prisoners to reject the faith.

Apollinaris ministered to the other prisoners and converted some of the jailers through his example and teaching. On September 12, 1622, he was burned at the stake along with other Franciscans and Jesuits.

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Saint Jean Gabriel Perboyre

Feast date: Sep 11

St. Jean Gabriel was born in Puech, France, on January 6th, 1802, to a pious family of eight children. Including Jean Gabriel, five of the Perboyer children became consecrated religious – three priests and two nuns. Accompanying his younger brother Louis while he was entering the seminary, Jean-Gabriel discovered his calling and entered the Congregation of the Mission, founded by St. Vincent de Paul, at the age of 16.

He was ordained at age 23 and taught theology at the seminary before being appointed rector, and later master of novices in Paris – on account of the sanctity his superiors saw in him.

His younger brother, Louis, died on his way to preach in China at the age of 24 and Jean-Gabriel asked to carry out the mission that had been entrusted to his brother. He arrived on the island of Macao on August 29, 1835 and set out for the mainland later that year.

He carried out his evangelical labors in Ho-Nan for three years before being transferred to Hou-Pé. His missions bore much fruit in the short time he spent there.

On September 11, 1839 Jean-Gabriel became one of the first victims of the persecutions against Christians, dying in a manner which had a striking resemblance to the passion of our Lord. He was betrayed for a sum of silver, stripped of his garments and dragged from tribunal to tribunal, beaten and tortured continuously until he was sentenced to death with seven criminals. He was crucified and died on a cross.

Canonized on June 2, 1996 by Pope John Paul II, St. Jean Gabriel Perboyre is the first saint of China.

Before his death St. Jean Gabriel wrote this prayer:

“O my Divine Savior,
Transform me into Yourself.
Grant that I may live but in You, by You, and for You,
So that I may truly say, with Saint Paul,

“‘I live – now not I – But Christ lives in me.'”

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St. Nicholas of Tolentino

Feast date: Sep 10

Born in 1246 in Sant’ Angelo, Italy, Nicholas became an Augustinian friar at the age of 18 after hearing an Augustinian hermit preach. He was ordained seven years later and quickly gained a reputation as a great preacher and confessor.

He practiced severe mortifications and fasted strictly. He was known for obtaining healings for many of the sick who lived in Tolentino, where he spent the last 30 years of his life.

St. Nicholas’ bread, a roll of dough with a cross in the center, has its origin in the bread he used to give to the sick to eat after he had prayed for the Virgin Mary’s healing intercession.

St. Nicholas died September 10, 1306 and was canonized by Pope Eugene IV in 1446.

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St. Peter Claver

Feast date: Sep 09

On Sept. 9, the Catholic Church celebrates St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary who spent his life in the service of African slaves brought against their will to South America during the 17th century.

Peter Claver was born into a farming family in the Spanish region of Catalonia during 1581. He studied at the University of Barcelona as a young man, and joined the Jesuits as a novice at the age of 20.

While studying philosophy in Tarragona, Peter developed a friendship with an older Jesuit lay brother, Alphonsus Rodriguez. Although Alphonsus spent his days doing menial work as a door-keeper, he had immense insight into spiritual matters and encouraged Peter to become a missionary in the Spanish colonies. Pope Leo XIII would later canonize both men on the same day, almost two centuries later.

In 1610, Peter Claver – now a priest – arrived in Cartagena, a port city in present-day Colombia. Despite Pope Paul III’s repeated condemnations of slavery during the previous century, European colonists continued importing African slaves, often sold by their own rulers, to work on plantations and in mines. Those who survived the ship journey could expect to be worked to death by their masters.

Peter was determined to sacrifice his own freedom to bring material aid and eternal salvation to the African slaves, in keeping with his vow to become “the slave of the blacks forever.” The young priest made and kept this resolution despite his own health problems (aggravated by Cartagena’s tropical climate) and the language barrier between himself and the population he served.

Many Spanish Royal officials in Cartagena appreciated Claver’s work, and made contributions toward the slaves’ relief and religious education. The slave traders, on the other hand, found the priest and his interpreters to be a nuisance. Meanwhile, some Spanish expatriates who sought out the priest because of his holy reputation, refused to enter the same church or confessional as the black slaves.

In order to minister to speakers of a foreign language, Claver often employed pictorial representations of Catholic truths. He also communicated by means of generosity and expressions of love, giving food and drink to the ailing workers and visiting them during bouts of sickness that often proved fatal.

“We must speak to them with our hands,” he reasoned, “before we try to speak to them with our lips.”

In keeping with his vow of “slavery,” Peter survived on minimal amounts of food and sleep. His life of humility and penance led to miraculous occurrences – as when he healed the sick with the touch of his cloak, or appeared surrounded by a supernatural light during his hospital visits.

St. Peter Claver’s work came to an end with his death on September 8, 1654. He had baptized and taught the faith to more than 300,000 slaves during his four decades in Cartagena.

During the Vatican’s Synod for Africa in 2009, Cartagena’s Archbishop Jorge Enrique Jiménez Carvajal lamented the fact that his city had been the center of an “awful commerce.”

But he spoke with gratitude for the fact that the same city had become the home of such a “great witness to sanctity,” the “apostle of the slaves, whose body rests in our cathedral, who lived to protect them and lead them towards the faith” in which they could experience God’s love.

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The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast date: Sep 08

The Catholic Church celebrates today the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anne.

The circumstances of the Virgin Mary’s infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church.

These accounts, although not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, outline some of the Church’s traditional beliefs about the birth of Mary.

The “Protoevangelium of James,” which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary’s father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anne, by their childlessness. “He called to mind Abraham,” the early Christian writing says, “that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac.”

Joachim and Anne began to devote themselves extensively and rigorously to prayer and fasting, initially wondering whether their inability to conceive a child might signify God’s displeasure with them.

As it turned out, however, the couple were to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah, as an angel revealed to Anne when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”

After Mary’s birth, according to the Protoevangelium of James, Anne “made a sanctuary” in the infant girl’s room, and “allowed nothing common or unclean” on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when she was one year old, her father “made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel.”

“And Joachim brought the child to the priests,” the account continues, “and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations’ . . . And he brought her to the chief priests, and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be for ever.’”

The protoevangelium goes on to describe how Mary’s parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated Virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.

Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic and historic significance, and an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.

The fourth-century bishop, whose theology profoundly shaped the Western Church’s understanding of sin and human nature, affirmed that “through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.”

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St. Cloud

Feast date: Sep 07

On Sept. 7, the Catholic Church honors the memory of Saint Clodoald, popularly known as Saint Cloud, who escaped from violent political intrigue to pursue holiness as a monk and priest.

Born in 522, Clodoald was the grandson of the Frankish King Clovis I, whose conversion to orthodox Christianity – rather than the Arian heresy – made him the first Catholic ruler of present-day France.

After Clodoald’s father Clodomir was killed in 524, he and his brothers Theudovald and Gunthar were raised by their grandmother Queen Clothilde, whom the Church now honors as St. Clothilde.

Clovis’ kingdom had been divided equally among his four sons following his death in 511. In an effort to secure Clodomir’s share of the territory after his death, two of Clodoald’s uncles plotted to kill the three boys who were under the protection of the queen. While the uncles managed to kill Gunthar and Theudovald, Clodoald fled and was taken in by the archbishop Saint Remigius of Rheims,

Forced into seclusion by the plot against him, the young man became determined to renounce the power and wealth that had brought grief to his family. Placing himself in God’s service, Clodoald lived in a small monastic cell where he pursued a life of asceticism and contemplative prayer. He gave his inheritance to the poor, and eventually became a disciple of the hermit St. Severinus near Paris.

No longer pursued by his uncles, Clodoald appeared before the bishop of Paris in 542. He formally received the monastic habit from the bishop, who cut off the long hair that had signified his Frankish royal origins. Clodoald eventually left Paris to live as a hermit in the forest for several years, growing closer to God in his contemplative vocation and studying Sacred Scripture extensively.

During these years, pilgrims began making their way to the hermitage, seeking his prayers which were known to work miracles. Though he had left Paris to live in anonymity and solitude, the hermit now sensed a need to return to the city, where he was ordained a priest in 551. His two murderous uncles are said to have repented of their deeds during the time of his ministry.

In 554 Clodoald returned to the monastic life, founding and leading a community of monks in the village of Nogent near Paris. There, he was known for his generosity toward the poor, and his attention to the work of religious instruction among the people. He died on Sept. 7, 560, at the age of 38.

Under the name of “St. Cloud,” Clodoald became the namesake of several cities and towns. These include the Parisian suburb of Saint-Cloud, and later St. Cloud, Minnesota, whose Catholic diocese has been placed under his patronage.

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Blessed Thomas Tzugi

Feast date: Sep 06

Born to nobility and educated by the Jesuits of the Arima province around 1571, Thomas entered the Jesuit order upon the completion of his schooling at around 17 years old. He quickly developed a reputation for his excellent preaching and evangelical zeal.

 

He was exiled to the island of Macao during a persecution of Christians, yet he managed to return to Japan in disguise and continue his priestly ministry.

 

He was recaptured and sentenced to death, yet he refused to seek his freedom through his family’s political connections.

 

He was burned to death at the stake in 1627 in Nagasaki, Japan, and was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867.

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St. Teresa of Kolkata

Feast date: Sep 05

The Church celebrates on Septermber 5 the feast of Mother Teresa, a universal symbol of God’s merciful and preferential love for the poor and forgotten.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, the youngest of three children. She attended a youth group called Sodality, run by a Jesuit priest at her parish, and her involvement opened her to the call of service as a missionary nun.

She joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Calcutta where she taught at a high school. She contracted Tuberculosis and was sent to rest in Darjeeling. It was on the train to Darjeeling that she received her calling – what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and work and live among the poor.  At this point she did not know that she was to found an order of nuns, or even exactly where she was to serve. “I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there,” she said once, recalling the moment on the train.

Confirmation of the calling came when the Vatican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loretto and fulfill her calling under the Archbshop of Calcutta. She started working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. She was joined a year later by some of her former students and together they took in men, women, and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets and cared for them.

In 1950 the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta and in 1952 the government granted them a house from which to continue their service among Calcutta’s forgotten.

The congregation very quickly grew from a single house for the dying and unwanted to nearly 500 around the world.  Mother Teresa set up homes for AIDS sufferers, for prostitutes, for battered women, and orphanages for poor children.

She often said that the poorest of the poor were those who had no one to care for them and no one who knew them. And she often remarked with sadness and desolation of milliions of souls in the developed world whose spiritual poverty and loneliness was such an immense cause of suffering.

She was a fierce defender of the unborn saying: “If you hear of some woman who does not want to keep her child and wants to have an abortion, try to persuade her to bring him to me. I will love that child, seeing in him the sign of God’s love.”

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 and was beatified only six years later, on October 19, 2003.

Mother Teresa once said, “A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.” She also said, “give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.” 

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Saint Boniface I, Pope

Feast date: Sep 04

Though few details are known of Boniface’s early life, he was elected Pope on December 28, 418. He is believed to have been ordained a priest by Pope Damasus I (366-384) and to have served as representative of Innocent I at Constantinople (c. 405).

Boniface was highly esteemed for his charitable and learned personality, which were clearly seen and lived through the service of his priestly duties.

At the death of Pope Zosimus in 418, two Popes were elected, Boniface and Eulalius. They were sent away from Rome by the emperor until the difficulty would be cleared. Eulalius failed to respect the Emperor’s decree and thus Boniface was recognized as the legitimate Pope.

Boniface’s reign was marked by great zeal and activity in disciplinary organization and control. He worked to reform certain corrupt practices and reduced the privileges granted to certain bishops.

He ardently supported St. Augustine in his fight against Pelagianism, and Augustine devoted several works to him.

 

Pope Saint Boniface died in Rome, September 4, 422.

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