November 7--St. Diego of Alcalá, Religious

San Diego de Alcalá by Francisco de Zurbarán licensed under PDM 1.0 DEED.

There are 21 Franciscan missions in California stretching from San Diego to Sonoma, 650 miles north. The first nine were founded by St. Junipero Serra, the first being San Diego de Alcalá, named for today’s saint. St. Diego, also known as St. Didacus, was born about 1400 in the Kingdom of Seville in Spain. He wanted to become a hermit as a child and later applied to the Observant branch of the Franciscans. He became a lay brother, that is, he was not ordained. As a friar he would do various trades as well as preach to the people in the surrounding villages. He was then sent to the Canary Islands as part of a missionary group. He became the head of the Franciscan community on one of the islands, which was unusual for a lay brother. He was filled with zeal and holiness and defended the indigenous people against the colonizers, which led to his return to Spain. He visited Rome in 1450 and served the sick during an epidemic. He returned to Alcalá, Spain, where he spent the rest of his life praying and remaining in solitude. He died on November 12, 1463 and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588, the first lay brother of the Franciscans to be so honored.

St. Diego sounds like your ordinary run-of-the-mill brother, preaching, praying, serving the poor and sick. He would probably approve of that description. But that is precisely the point of discipleship–prayer, worship, and service–the corporal and spiritual works of mercy! We are all called to be missionary disciples by our Baptism and Confirmation, sharing the love and joy of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We are called to holiness in our daily lives by being ambassadors of Christ. St. Diego, pray for us!  Amen!

October 9--St. John Henry Newman, Priest

John Henry Newman, by Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Bt (died 1896), licensed under Public Domain.

“God has created me to do him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission; I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.”

St. John Henry Newman was a late-comer to Catholicism. Born in 1801, he became an Anglican priest in 1825 and leader of the Oxford Movement, which tried to move the Church of England closer to Catholicism. Eventually, he saw that he could not be an Anglican and converted to Catholicism in 1845 and ordained a Catholic priest in 1847. He wrote extensively in theology, apologetics, education, and more. He is known today for his teachings on the development of doctrine, which were taken up in Vatican II in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum: ″[T]he understanding of the things and words handed down grows, through the contemplation and study of believers, [...] [which] tends continually towards the fullness of divine truth” (8). He was created cardinal in 1879 without becoming a bishop and died in 1890. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2019.

St. John Henry Newman was a brilliant, humble, and holy man. Saints like him are models for us, so that we may “keep His commandments and serve Him in [our] calling.”