Saints

SAINT AGATHO

A Sicilian cleric, Pope/St. Agatho was born c. 577 and was elected to the Roman see in 678. He had been a monk before his election and was well-versed in Latin and Greek. Although the exarch of Ravenna, Theodore, desired independence from Rome, he eventually submitted to Agatho’s rule. In 678, Bishop Wilfrid of York, claiming he had been unjustly deposed, appealed to the pope, who ruled that Bishop Wilfrid should be returned immediately to his see. Concerned about the condition of the English church, Agatho sent an envoy to teach the Britons about chant and to report to him on the state of the church. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681) accepted Agatho’s definitions of the two wills of Christ, although the pope did not attend the council. Agatho died during a plague in 681.

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SAINT VERONICA

Saint Veronica is the woman of Jerusalem who wiped the face of Christ with a veil while he was on the way to Calvary. The cloth was imprinted with the image of Christ’s face. There is no historical evidence or scriptural reference to this event but the legend of Veronica became one of the most popular in Christian lore and the veil one of the beloved relics in the Church.

Saint Veronica used the veil to cure Emperor Tiberius of some illness. The veil was subsequently seen in Rome in the eighth century and was taken to Saint Peter’s in 1297 by command of Pope Boniface VIII.

The apocryphal Acts of Pilate identify her with the woman mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew who suffered from an issue of blood. The relic is still preserved in Saint Peter’s and the memory of Veronica’s act of charity is commemorated in the Stations of the Cross.

While she is not included in the Roman Martyrology she is honored with a feast day. Her symbol is the veil bearing the face of Christ and the Crown of Thorns.

Feastday is July 12.

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SAINT FRANCIS de SALES

Saint Francis de Sales was Born in France in 1567. Francis was a patient man. His biggest concern on being ordained was that he had to have his curly gold hair cut off.

Just over the mountains from where Francis lived was Switzerland, a Calvinist territory. Francis decided that he should lead an expedition to convert the 60,000 Calvinists back to Catholicism. By the time he left his expedition consisted of himself and his cousin. His father refused to give him any aid for this crazy plan and the diocese was too poor to support him. For three years he trudged through the countryside, had doors slammed in his face and rocks thrown at him. After three years he had not made one convert. Nobody would listen to him or would they even open their door. Francis finally found a way to gain the attention of the Calvinists. He wrote out his sermons, copied them by hand and slipped them under their doors. This is the first record we have of religious tracts being used to communicate with people. The parents wouldn’t come to him out of fear. So Francis went to the children. When the parents saw how kind he was as he played with the children they began to talk to him. When Francis left to go home he is said to have converted 40,000 people back to Catholicism.
In 1602 he was made bishop of the diocese of Geneva, in the Calvinist territory. In 1604
Francis took one of the most important steps in his life. A step toward holiness and mystical union with God.
In Dijon Francis saw a widow listening closely to his sermon. A woman he had seen already in a dream. Jane de Chantal was a person on her own. Jane wanted him to take over her spiritual direction but Francis wanted to wait. “I had to know fully what God himself wanted. I had to be sure that everything in this should be done as though his hand had done it.” Jane was on a path to mystical union with God and, in directing her, Francis was compelled to follow her and become a mystic himself. After working three years with Jane he formed a new religious order. A man came to Francis and donated a place for use by pious women.

At that time the way of holiness was only for monks and nuns not for ordinary people. Francis changed all that by giving spiritual direction to lay people living ordinary lives in the world. He had proven with his own life that people could grow in holiness while involved in a very active
occupation. His most famous book, INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE, was written for these ordinary people in 1608. Written originally as letters it became an instant success all over Europe. Some preachers tore it up because he tolerated dancing and jokes!
For Francis the love of God was like romantic love. He said, “The thoughts of those moved by natural human love are almost completely fastened on the beloved, their hearts are
filled with passion for it, and their mouths full of its praises. When it is gone they express their feelings in letters, and can’t pass by a tree without carving the name of their beloved in its bark. Thus too those who love God can never stop thinking about him, longing for him, aspiring to him, and speaking about him. If they could, they would engrave the name of Jesus on the hearts of all humankind.” The key to love of God was prayer. “By turning your eyes on God in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with God. Begin all your prayers in the presence of God.”
For busy people of the world, he advised “Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others and talk to God.”
The test of prayer was a person’s actions: “To be an angel in prayer and a beast in one’s relations with people is to go lame on both legs.”
He believed the worst sin was to judge someone or to gossip about them. Even if we say we do it out of love we’re still doing it to look better ourselves. But we should be as gentle and
forgiving with ourselves as we should be with others.
He is patron saint of journalists.

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SAINT PHILIP, APOSTLE

Saint Philip was of Bethsaida, in Galilee, and called by our Saviour to follow him the day after Saint Peter and Saint Andrew. He was at that time a married man and had several daughters. Philip had no sooner discovered the Messias, than he was desirous to make his friend
Nathanael a sharer in his happiness. Philip desired him to come himself to Jesus, not doubting that upon his personal acquaintance with the Son of God, he would be as much convinced of the truth as he was himself. Nathanael complied and Jesus seeing him approach said within his hearing, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” Nathanael asked him how he came to know him. Jesus replied that before Philip called thee when thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee. Nathanael calling to mind that the closeness of his retirement on that occasion was such that no human creature could see him. The marriage at Cana of Galilee happening three days afterwards and Saint Philip was present at it with the rest. When Jesus was about to feed five thousand persons who had followed him into the wilderness. Forgreater evidence of the miracle and for the trial of this apostle’s faith Jesus proposed to him the difficulty of feeding the multitudes in that desolate place.

Our Saviour immediately after his last supper promised them a more clear and perfect knowledge of his heavenly Father. Saint Philip cried out, with a holy eagerness and impatience, “Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us”. From which words our Saviour took occasion to inculcate afresh a steady belief of his divinity and perfect equality with the Father, saying, “So long a time have I been with you, and have you not known me?” If you beheld me with the eyes of faith such as I really am, in seeing me you would see the Father also, because I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.

Saint Philip must have lived to a very advanced age. It appears, from a passage of Polyerates, quoted by Eusebius that he was buried at Hierapolis, in Phrygia. An arm of Saint Philip was brought from Constantinople to Florence, in 1204.

His body is said to be in the church of SS. Philip and James, in Rome, which was dedicated to God under their name, in 560. The emperor Theodosius in a vision received from Saint John the
Evangelist and Saint Philip the assurance of victory over the tyrant Eugenius the morning before the battle in 394.

The Orientals keep his festival on the 14th of November; the Latins on the 1st of May, with Saint James.

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SAINT ADELINA

Saint Adelina, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, became the abbess of the Benedictine Convent of La Blanche in Normandy, a religious community founded by her brother. Died: 1125, Feastday: October 20.

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SAINT ABIBAS

A convert to the faith, supposedly the second son of Gamaliel, the famed Jewish teacher of St. Paul. Gamaliel was a member of the Sanhedrin that tried Jesus and condemned him to death. Gamaliel is recorded as having become a Christian, and Abibas is traditionally listed as an early convert to the Church. Little else is known of his life.

Died: First Century Feasyday: August 3.

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SAINT AEDESIUS

Martyr and brother of St. Apphian. Aedesius, a Christian of some note in Caesarea, now part of modern Israel, witnessed the persecution of Christians, the result of Emperor Diocletian’s policies. He publicly rebuked the local Roman officials who were placing Christian virgins in brothels as part of the persecutions. Arrested, Aedesius was tortured and then drowned. Died: 306, Feastday: April 8.

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SAINT FIDELIS

Saint Fidelis was born in 1577 at Sigmaringen, a town in the principality of Hohenzollern. In 1612 he received Holy Orders and soon afterward entered the Capuchin Order at Fribourg. He changed his baptismal name Mark to Fidelis. At the request of the Congregation of Propaganda he and eight Fathers of his Order undertook the mission among the Calvinists in the Canton of the Grisons in Switzerland.

In spite of opposition he gained many converts. He spent much time at the foot of the altar or before his crucifix preparing himself for the martyrdom of which he had a premonition. In April 24, 1622, he made his confession, said Mass, and preached at Gruch. At the end of his sermon he seemed to be in ecstacy and foretold his death to several persons.

From Gruch he went to Sevis where he was fired upon by a Calvinist but was not injured. On his way back to Gruch he met twenty Calvinist soldiers with a minister at their head. They called him a false prophet and urged him to embrace Calvinism. He replied, “The Catholic religion is the Faith of all ages; I fear not death.” He received a blow upon his head, arose upon his knees, prayed for his persecutors and with the name of Jesus and Mary on his lips, he received the death-stroke.

His feast day is April 24th.

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SAINT AGAPIUS

Martyr and valiant defender of the faith. A Christian in Caesarea, Palestine, Agapius was taken prisoner in the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. Three times he suffered imprisonment for the faith, released after enduring torture each time. Arrested a fourth, he was offered a pardon if he denied Christ. When he refused, he was penned up with a wild boar. The animal inflicted severe damage on him but did not kill him, so officials drowned him the next day. Died: 306, Feastday: November 20 & August 19.

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SAINT AELRED of RIEVAULX

St. Aelred of Rievaulx, born in 1109, early showed signs of promise. The son of Eilaf, a Saxon priest, Aelred was educated at Roxburgh, the ancient Scottish capital, where he was known for his intellectual talents. The DNB notes that as a child, Aelred prophesied the death of a bad archbishop of York; the DNB notes also that scholars doubt this since Thomas, the archbishop at that time, was not bad. When Aelred finished his schooling, he became the steward to King David of Scotland. He left his job 1133 to join the Cistercian community at Rievaulx. He was the first abbot of Rievaulx’s daughterhouse in Revesby, Lincolnshire, but he returned to Rievaulx in 1147 to be abbot. During the last ten years of his life, his health deteriorated, and he suffered from gout and a bad cough. St. Aelred wrote his most famous work, The Mirror of Charity, at the request of Bernard of Clairvaux. On Spiritual Friendship is a Christianized version of Cicero’s De amicitia. Aelred also penned lives of St. Ninian and of Edward the Confessor, in addition to a rule for recluses and a genealogy of the kings of England. His correspondence and his work on St. Cuthbert have been lost. Died: 1167.

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