The Catholic Church recognizes patron saints from Academics–St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Albert the Great to Zoology–St. Albert the Great again! Today’s saint is the patron saint of Gardeners. St. Fiacre was born in Ireland about A.D. 600 and died in A.D. 670 in France. He grew up in a monastery, was ordained a priest, and eventually became an abbot. As people came to him because of his reputation for holiness and healing he went to France to become a hermit. He built a hermitage for himself and a hospice for travelers about 50 miles northeast of Paris. There he planted a vegetable and herb garden and an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He lived a life of self-denial, prayer, fasting, vigils and healing by laying on of hands. Veneration towards him seems to be based on his healing abilities as well as his holiness. His patronage of gardeners is based on his gardening abilities.
Every good act we do can be an act of love for God and others. Gardening may bring joy through the beauty of flowers and health through the nourishment of fruits, and vegetables. Tilling the soil may allow us to focus our minds and hearts on prayer to God in praise and on behalf of others. Tending the yard may bring peace. Scripture envisioned earthly paradise as a garden: “The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (Gn. 2:15). Furthermore: “You make the grass grow for the cattle and plants for people’s work to bring forth food from the earth, wine to gladden their hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread to sustain the human heart” (Ps. 104:14-15). St. Fiacre, pray for us.
“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt. 19:24). The U.S. has the world’s largest economy by measurement of the nominal GDP. What does that say to us? Well, let’s see what possession of wealth said to today’s saint!
St. Jeanne Delanoue, aka St. Joan of the Cross, was born in France in 1666 (died 1736) as the youngest of twelve to parents who owned a business. After her parents died she took over the business and became successful, due in part to her shrewdness, but also due in part to greed, to the point of keeping the store open on Sundays, which was against the traditions of the time. However, a poor widowed pilgrim “converted” her during the days of Pentecost. In his canonization homily, St. John Paul II stated: “Known as a prudent and self-interested merchant, she suddenly became ‘very generous in charity,’ when the Holy Spirit, extinguishing ‘the fire of her avarice,’ made her understand that her ardent faith also required ‘the fire of charity,’ showing her the extent of poverty.” And so she changed her ways, founded a religious order, and started to serve “all those who on the Day of Judgment might say to her: I was hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, homeless.”
So what does her life say to us? Again St. John Paul II guides us: “Her example will certainly challenge our modern world.” Too true! We need to root out and address the causes of poverty. “But attention to the poor, and immediate and effective aid, remain essential to remedying the harshness of our world.” We can be benefactors! St. Joan of the Cross, pray for us.
Although not common, it is not completely unusual for whole families to be saints. Before canonizations were under the direction of the papacy in the eleventh century, saints were often chosen by local churches and the people. Thus, whole families were known as saints, including Elizabeth, Zechariah, and John the Baptist; Basil the Elder, Emilia, Macrina the Elder, Macrina the Younger, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste; Augustine and Monica; Benedict and Scholastica; Louis, Zelie, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Leonie Martin; Clare and Agnes of Assisi; and today’s saints, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany.
“Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus were added to the General Roman Calendar as a combined memorial on July 29th by Pope Francis on January 26, 2021. This replaced the previous celebration of Saint Martha alone on that date.” This is because the identity of Mary of Bethany was not definitively established until recently by scholarship.
“Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany were beloved by Jesus. We don’t know the full background, but it appears all three siblings were loved by the Lord and were close friends and disciples of his. Each had a different charism. We know that Martha had a servant’s heart and that Mary preferred to sit at the feet of her Lord and learn from him. We don’t know as much about Lazarus other than he is one for whom Jesus wept and who he rose from the grave. John’s Gospel also tells us that because Jesus rose Lazarus from the grave, the chief priests and elders also plotted to put Lazarus to death, but we don’t know if they succeeded. May we be more like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus and draw near to Christ to love and serve him.”
Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, pray for us.
Whatever happened to St. Christopher? We know that he was a martyr under the persecution of the Emperor Decius in the third century in Lycea in present-dayTurkey, but we do not know anything else about him. Because of that, the Church removed him from the liturgical calendar. However, that does not mean that the Church demoted him or denied his existence. He is still on the Roman Martyrology, the approved list of saints in the Catholic Church.
In the Middle Ages a story spread about St. Christopher. The legend states that he was a giant who wished to serve the strongest, most powerful king. He started out serving a Christian king who crossed himself whenever he heard the devil’s name. Thus St. Christopher went to serve the devil who shuddered at the sight of the cross of Christ. Thus St. Christopher went to serve Christ. He was told by a hermit he would find Christ by carrying people across a river. “After Christopher had performed this service for some time, a little child asked him to take him across the river. During the crossing, the river became swollen and the child seemed as heavy as lead, so much that Christopher could scarcely carry him and found himself in great difficulty. When he finally reached the other side, he said to the child: ‘You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were.’ The child replied: ‘You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work.’ The child then vanished.” Thus, he is the patron of travelers.
St. Christopher is still a saint! St. Christopher, pray for us.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” We have all heard this aphorism many times in our lives. It speaks to the virtue of perseverance, which “signifies the steadfast pursuit of a goal despite facing obstacles, delays, or difficulties” and is a strength in the virtue category of courage. This is perhaps the single most important characteristic of today’s saint, Bl. Anne-Marie Javouhey.
Born in France in 1779 just before the French Revolution, she dedicated her life to care for children of all races. In 1801 she and her three natural sisters ran a school for poor children and “during the next decade she ran two day schools and an orphanage.” For many, that would be enough, but not for her. In 1812 she founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. From these beginnings she expanded her ministry to missionary work in the French Caribbean and African colonies, including Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, and French Guiana. At the request of the French government she prepared six hundred slaves for emancipation in French Guiana. “As each family was ready to be freed, Mother Javouhey arranged for them to have money, some land, and a cottage." She also faced and overcame episcopal opposition, including prohibition of reception of the sacraments for two years.
The motto she gave her sisters illustrated her entire mission: The Holy Will of God. She said, “I am in God’s hands, ready to do God’s Will as soon as it is revealed to me.” Thus she can guide us according to Jesus’ own words for us as we pray to the Father: “Thy will be done.” To do God’s will is our bread, our life, and our calling to holiness. She died in 1851 and was beatified in 1950. Bl. Anne-Marie Javouhey, pray for us!
Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on Saints Priscilla and Aquila, spouses, in February of 2007:
“Based on the information in our possession, this married couple played a very active role in the post-Paschal origins of the Church.
“When Paul wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus, together with his own greeting he explicitly sent those of ‘Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house’ (16: 19).
“Hence, we come to know the most important role that this couple played in the environment of the primitive Church: that of welcoming in their own house the group of local Christians when they gathered to listen to the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist.
“In the house of Aquila and Priscilla, therefore, the Church gathered, the convocation of Christ, which celebrates here the Sacred Mysteries.
“This couple in particular demonstrates how important the action of Christian spouses is. When they are supported by the faith and by a strong spirituality, their courageous commitment for the Church and in the Church becomes natural. The daily sharing of their life prolongs and in some way is sublimated in the assuming of a common responsibility in favour of the Mystical Body of Christ, even if just a little part of it. Thus it was in the first generation and thus it will often be.
“A further lesson we cannot neglect to draw from their example: every home can transform itself into a little church. Not only in the sense that in them must reign the typical Christian love made of altruism and of reciprocal care, but still more in the sense that the whole of family life, based on faith, is called to revolve around the singular lordship of Jesus Christ.”
Sts. Priscilla and Aquila, pray for us!
An ordinary man is going to be canonized! He wasn’t a cleric. He did no miracles in his lifetime. He wasn’t a visionary or a mystic. He went to school to become an engineer. He helped the poor. He was a mountain climber. He protested against injustice. He opposed Italian fascism. He is Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. St. John Paul II said he was a “man of the Beatitudes,” “a young man filled with a joy that swept everything along with it, a joy that also overcame many difficulties in his life”. Pope Francis said: “Pier Giorgio said that he wanted to return the love of Jesus that he received in Holy Communion by visiting and helping the poor.”
Frassati (1901-1925) was the son of an agnostic newspaper publisher and an artist. He became a member of the Catholic Federation of University Students and Catholic Action in Italy as a college student and also a member of the Third Order Dominicans. “He often said: ‘Charity is not enough; we need social reform’. He helped establish a newspaper entitled Momento whose principles were based on Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum.” He died of polio in 1925. “His parents expected Turin's elite and political figures to come to offer their condolences and attend the funeral and expected to find many of his friends there as well. All were surprised to find the streets lined with thousands of mourners as the cortege passed out of the reverence felt for him among the people he had helped.”
Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati was an ordinary man with an extraordinary dedication to God, love, and holiness. This is the purpose of canonization, to show that God’s love can be exemplified in our normal, everyday lives by loving others extraordinarily. Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!
