St. Oswald Feast date: Feb 29
St. Oswald was a king of Northumbria from 634 until his death and is venerated as a saint.
Oswald spread the Christian faith throughout Northumbria. He had a cult following, and was generous with the poor.
There are many legends surrounding his reign.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
St. Robert Southwell Feast date: Feb 21
Saint Robert Southwell, SJ (c. 1561 – February 21 1595,) an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, is one of the 40 martyrs of England & Wales murdered during the English anti-Catholic Reformation.
Robert was born in Norfolk, the youngest of eight children in a well-to-do family with Catholic sympathies in the midts of the anti-Catholic sentiment started by the Anglican reformation.
In 1576, he was sent to France to study with the Jesuits at the English college at Douai. After completing his education, he requested to join the Society of Jesus, but was rejected because he was too young and the Jesuit seminary was temporarily closed because of the growing confrontations between French and Spanish forces.
But in a show of his conviction, in 1578, set off on foot to Rome to make his case for becoming a Jesuit.
After being admitted to the probation house of Sant’ Andrea on 17 October 1578, and after the completion of the novitiate, Southwell began studies in philosophy and theology at the Jesuit College in Rome, and was ordained in 1584.That same year, Queen Elizabeth had passed an edict establishing the death penalty for any British Catholic priest or religious who joined a religious order abroad to remain in England longer than forty days.
Two years later, Southwell requested to be sent back to England as a clandestine Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnet.
Southwell preached and ministered successfully for six years, publishing Catholic catechism and writing spiritual poetry that would make him one of the most important Barroque English poets.
But the Queen’s cheif priest-hunter, Richard Topcliffe, pressured a young Catholic woman he had raped to betray Southwell. Once captured, he was initially jailed in Topcliffe’s personal prison and tortured 13 different times, trying to get him to name Catholic families involved in the clandestine Catholic mission. Fr. Robert did not betray a single name.
Transferred to the infamous Tower of London, Southwell endured cold and solitude for two and a half years, reading the Bible, the works of St. Bernard and praying the Breviary. During that time he also wrote the most important portion of his poetry.
In 1595, Southwell was finally put on trial accused of treason. During the trial, he admitted being a Jesuit to minister to Catholics, but strongly denied ever being involved in “designs or plots against the queen or kingdom.”
After the predictable guilty verdict, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
On 21 February 1595, in Tyburn, the Jesuit was allowed to address the crowd about his mission as a Catholic priest, then pronounced the words of Psalm 30 prayed in Complines: in manus tuas commendabo spiritum meum (Into your hands i commend my spirit) and made the sign of the cross.
After he was hanged and his severed head presented to the crowd, the traditional shout of “traitor” was replaced by utter silence.
Soon after his martyrdom, his body of poetry started to circulate in manuscripts among Catholics, and later in 1595 his “St Peter’s Complaint” and other poems were printed. By 1636, 14 editions had been printed, and other collections of poems, including “Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears” and Maeoniae.
Southwell was canonized in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Many critics believe that the poem that expresses the best of his dramatic message to his fellow persecuted Catholics in England is “Life is But Losse,” which he wrote in prison:
By force I live, in will I wish to dye;
In playnte I passe the length of lingring dayes;
Free would my soule from mortall body flye,
And tredd the track of death’s desyred waies:
Life is but losse where death is deemed gaine,
And loathed pleasures breed displeasinge payne.
…..
Come, cruell death, why lingrest thou so longe?
What doth withould thy dynte from fatall stroke?
Nowe prest I am, alas! thou dost me wronge,
To lett me live, more anger to provoke:
Thy right is had when thou hast stopt my breathe,
Why shouldst thoue stay to worke my dooble deathe?
…..
Avaunt, O viper! I thy spite defye:
There is a God that overrules thy force,
Who can thy weapons to His will applie,
And shorten or prolonge our brittle course.
I on His mercy, not thy might, relye;
To Him I live, for Him I hope to die.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
Feast date: Aug 05
St. Emygdius lived during the second century. He was consecrated as bishop by Pope St. Marcellus, and sent forth to preach the Gospel. He received the crown of martyrdom for the confession of Christ under the persecution of Emperor Diocletian.
Emygdius was a very successful missionary to Trier, Germany. However, when he began to smash pagan idols, the non-converts revolted, and he had to flee to Rome for safety. When he returned to his mission, he was martyred by pagans before he could convert anyone else.
He was beheaded in the year c.303. Emygdius’ relics are at Ascoli Piceno, Italy.
He is a patron against earthquakes.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
Feast date: Aug 05
The greatest desire and prayer of Blessed Frederic Janssoone was to help others come closer to God. His ministry as a Franciscan help him to do that, and took him to many places, from Europe, to the Holy Land and then to North America, where he died.
He was born in Flanders in 1838 as the youngest of 13 children in a wealthy farming family. Frederic was nine when his father died, and he dropped out of school to work as a traveling salesman in order to help support his family. His mother died when he was 23. He completed his studies and then entered the Franciscans. He was ordained in 1870, and served as a military chaplain during the Franco-Prussian War.
He was then sent to the Holy Land, where he reinstated the Stations of the Cross in the streets of Jerusalem, built a church in Bethlehem, and negotiated an accord among the Roman, Greek and Armenian Christian churches concerning the sanctuaries of Bethlehem.
He first came to Canada in 1881 on a fundraising tour, but eventually moved permanently to the country seven years later. He helped to develop the popular shrine of Our Lady at Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec. He wrote biographies of the saints, newspaper articles and sold religious books door to door.
He died of stomach cancer in Montreal in 1916 and is buried in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, a city close to the Marian shrine he helped to develop. Pope John Paul II beatified Frederic in 1988.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
The Nativity of The Lord – Christmas Feast date: Dec 25
The word for Christmas in late Old English is Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, first found in 1038, and Cristes-messe, in 1131; in Latin Dies Natalis.
Early Celebration
Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Sts. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts, and Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday. Arnobius can still ridicule the “birthdays” of the gods.
The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt. About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria says that certain Egyptian theologians “over curiously” assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ’s birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (May 20) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. The December feast therefore reached Egypt between 427 and 433.
In Rome the earliest evidence is in the Philocalian Calendar, compiled in 354, which contains three important entries. In the civil calendar December 25 is marked “Natalis Invicti.” In the “Depositio Martyrum” a list of Roman or early and universally venerated martyrs, under December 25 is found “VIII kal. ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudæ.”
De Santi (L’Orig. delle Fest. Nat., in Civiltæ Cattolica, 1907), following Erbes, argues that Rome took over the Eastern Epiphany, now with a definite Nativity colouring, and, with as increasing number of Eastern Churches, placed it on December 25. Later, both the East and West divided their feast, leaving Ephiphany on January 6, and Nativity on December 25, respectively, and placing Christmas on December 25 and Epiphany on January 6. The earlier hypothesis still seems preferable.
Origin of Date
Concerning the date of Christ’s birth the Gospels give no help; upon their data contradictory arguments are based. The census would have been impossible in winter: a whole population could not then be put in motion. Again, in winter it must have been; then only field labour was suspended, but Rome was not thus considerate. Authorities moreover differ as to whether shepherds could or would keep flocks exposed during the nights of the rainy season.
Natalis Invicti
The well-known solar feast, however, of Natalis Invicti, celebrated on December 25, has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date. For the history of the solar cult, its position in the Roman Empire, and syncretism with Mithraism, see Cumont’s epoch-making “Textes et Monuments” etc., I, ii, 4, 6, p. 355. Mommsen (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 12, p. 338) has collected the evidence for the feast, which reached its climax of popularity under Aurelian in 274. Filippo del Torre in 1700 first saw its importance. It is marked, as has been said, without addition in Philocalus’ Calendar. It would be impossible here even to outline the history of solar symbolism and language as applied to God, the Messiah, and Christ in Jewish or Chrisian canonical, patristic, or devotional works. Hymns and Christmas offices abound in instances; the texts are well arranged by Cumont.
Liturgy and Custom
The fixing of this date fixed those too of Circumcision and Presentation, of Expectation and, perhaps, Annunciation B.V.M., and of Nativity and Conception of the Baptist (cf. Thurston in Amer. Eccl. Rev., December, 1898). Till the tenth century Christmas counted, in papal reckoning, as the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, as it still does in Bulls. Boniface VIII (1294-1303) restored temporarily this usage, to which Germany held longest.
The Crib (creche) or Nativity Scene
Saint Francis of Assisi in 1223 originated the crib of today by laicizing a hitherto ecclesiastical custom, henceforward extra-liturgical and popular. The presence of ox and ass is due to a misinterpretation of Isaias 1:3, and Habakkuk 3:2 (“Itala” version), though they appear in the unique fourth-century “Nativity” discovered in the Saint Sebastian catacombs in 1877. The ass on which Balaam rode in the Reims mystery won for the feast the title Festum Asinorum (Ducange, op. cit., s.v. Festum).
Hymns and Carols
The degeneration of these plays in part occasioned the diffusion of noels, pastorali, and carols, to which was accorded, at times, a quasi-liturgical position. Prudentius, in the fourth century, is the first (and in that century alone) to hymn the Nativity, for the “Vox clara” (hymn for Lauds in Advent) and “Christe Redemptor” (Vespers and Matins of Christmas) cannot be assigned to Ambrose. “A solis ortu” is certainly, however, by Sedulius (fifth century). The earliest German Weihnachtslieder date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the earliest noels from the eleventh, the earliest carols from the thirteenth. The famous “Stabat Mater Speciosa” is attributed to Jacopone da Todi (1230-1306); “Adeste Fideles” is, at the earliest, of the seventeenth century. These essentially popular airs, and even words, must, however, have existed long before they were put down in writing.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
Vigil of Christmas Feast date: Dec 24
In the first ages, during the night before every feast, a vigil was kept. In the evening the faithful assembled in the place or church where the feast was to be celebrated and prepared themselves by prayers, readings from Holy Writ (now the Offices of Vespers and Matins), and sometimes also by hearing a sermon. On such occasions, as on fast days in general, Mass also was celebrated in the evening, before the Vespers of the following day. Towards morning the people dispersed to the streets and houses near the church, to wait for the solemn services of the forenoon.
This vigil was a regular institution of Christian life and was defended and highly recommended by St. Augustine and St. Jerome (see Pleithner, “Aeltere Geschichte des Breviergebetes”, pp. 223 sq.). The morning intermission gave rise to grave abuses; the people caroused and danced in the streets and halls around the church (Durandus, “Rat. Div. off.”, VI, 7), and St. Jerome speaks of these improprieties (Epist. ad Ripuarium).
The Synod of Seligenstadt (1022) mentions vigils on the eves of Christmas, Epiphany, the feast of the Apostles, the Assumption of Mary, St. Laurence, and All Saints, besides the fast of two weeks before the Nativity of St. John. After the eleventh century the fast, Office, and Mass of the nocturnal vigil were transferred to the day before the feast, and even now [1909] the liturgy of the Holy Saturday (vigil of Easter) shows, in all its parts, that originally it was not kept on the morning of Saturday, but during Easter Night. The day before the feast was henceforth called vigil.
A similar celebration before the high feast exists also in the Orthodox (Greek) Church, and is called pannychis or hagrypnia. In the Occident only the older feasts have vigils, even the feasts of the first class introduced after the thirteenth century (Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart) have no vigils, except the Immaculate Conception, which Pope Leo XIII (Nov. 30 1879) singled out for this distinction. The number of vigils in the Roman Calendar besides Holy Saturday is seventeen, viz., the eves of Christmas, the Epiphany, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the eight feasts of the Apostles, St. John the Baptist, St. Laurence, and All Saints. Some dioceses and religiousorders have particular vigils, e.g. the Servites, on the Saturday next before the feast of the Seven Dolours of Our Lady; the Carmelites, on the eve of the feast of Mount Carmel. In the United States only four of theses vigils are feast days: the vigils of Christmas, Pentecost, the Assumption, and All Saints.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
St. Thorlak of Iceland Feast date: Dec 23
The Scandinavian island nation of Iceland celebrates its national patron, St. Thorlak Thorhallsson, on Dec. 23.
Although Iceland’s national assembly declared him a saint in 1198, only five years after his death, this “unofficial” canonization did not become an official part of the Church’s liturgical calendar until Pope John Paul II confirmed him as the country’s patron in January 1984.
Thorlak was born in 1133, less than two centuries after German and Norwegian missionaries began the first effective evangelization of Iceland. The pagan nation’s conversion had involved a dramatic national struggle, as many Icelanders clung fiercely to their ancestral religion despite its customs of idol worship and infanticide.
The Catholic Church in Iceland had solidly established its presence by the time of Thorlak’s birth. However, it had fallen into some disarray, particularly due to local clergy disregarding the rule of clerical celibacy, selling church positions for personal gain, and engaging in other breaches of discipline.
Thorlak’s parents, barely able to earn a living as farmers, took note of their son’s talents and made sure he received extensive religious instruction from a local priest. His gifts must have attracted wider notice, since Thorlak received ordination as a deacon before the age of 15 and became a priest at age 18.
Afterward, he left Iceland for a period of time to study theology in France and possibly England. During this time he committed himself to living by the monastic rule of St. Augustine, an important part of the Western Church’s tradition. This rule committed a priest not only to celibacy, but also to a life in community without personal possessions, after the manner of the apostles in the Church’s earliest days.
Inspired by this vision of radical discipleship, he held fast to the discipline of clerical celibacy, even after returning to Iceland and being pressured to marry a wealthy widow. Instead, he ended up founding a monastery according to the Augustinian rule, which became renowned as a place of prayer and study.
Ten years after the founding of the monastery, the Norwegian Archbishop Augustine Erlendsson, another follower of the ancient Augustinian rule of life, called on Thorlak to become bishop of the Icelandic diocese of Skalholt. Although he was deeply attached to his monastic way of life, Thorlak recognized the pressing need for reform and guidance among the clergy.
As a bishop, he was deeply dedicated to implementing the reforms of the Western Church that Pope Gregory VII had begun during the past century, which envisioned not only a strict discipline of clerical celibacy, but also the independence of the Church against intrusion by secular authorities.
Thorlak also sought to improve public morality, and dared to confront even the most popular and powerful chieftain in Iceland, who was said to have had an extramarital affair with the bishop’s own sister. Understandably, he often longed to put aside these kinds of burdens and return to the monastic life.
Before he could do so, he died on December 23, 1193.
St. Thorlak was undoubtedly Iceland’s most popular native saint during the country’s Catholic period. Over 50 churches were dedicated to his memory before Iceland became officially Lutheran during the 16th century.
Today, St. Thorlak’s former diocese of Skalholt is a part of the Diocese of Reykjavik, which was only established in its present form in 1968.
Although the Catholic Church no longer has a large presence in Iceland, celebration of St. Thorlak’s feast has persisted as a widespread national custom. Icelanders celebrate on Dec. 23 as the final day of preparation before Christmas, and have maintained the custom of gathering to eat cured fish.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
St. Chaeromon Feast date: Dec 22
Not much is known about the life of St. Chaeromon except that he was a bishop of Nilopolis in Egypt who was already advanced in age when Emperor Trajanus Decius began the intense persecution of Christians.
Chaeromon and his companions fled to Arabia, and are believed to have been martyred there.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
St. Dominic of Silos Feast date: Dec 20
Saint Dominic was born in 1000 in Cañas, Navarre, Spain. He was born a peasant, and as a youth worked as a shepherd until he entered the Benedictine monastery in Navarre. When Dominic refused to hand over the monastery lands at the King of Navarre’s demands, he was forced to leave the house with two other monks.
He fled to Old Castile and was welcomed by the king. He then entered the monastery of San Sebastian in Silos, an almost dilapidated abbey with a mediocre physical and spiritual regimen.
Within very little time, Dominic, who had been elected abbot, renewed the spirit of the monastery and rebuilt it’s structure, it’s finances, and it’s works of charity. Dominic was known for miracles of healing, which he obtained through prayer and for his work of ransoming Christian prisoners from the moors.
He died on December 10, 1073 in Silos, Spain.
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
Blessed Pope Urban V Feast date: Dec 19
Blessed Pope Urban V was born Guillaume de Grimoard at Grisac in Languedoc, 1310. He studied canon law and theology in Avignon and became a Benedictine monk. He was named abbot of his monastery in 1352, and served as a papal diplomat and was eventually sent as an ambassodor to various locations. He also served as a bishop around Italy and throughout Europe. He was elected pope in 1362 while on diplomatic business, even though he was not a cardinal. His reign was blessed by his peacekeeping activity between the French and Italian kings, the founding of many universities, his zeal for the crusades and his decision to return the papacy to Rome and end the Avignon exile of the popes. However, the breakout of war between England and France forced him to return to Avignon on a peacekeeping mission
He died on his return to Avignon, and his body, which had been buried at Avignon, was then transferred to Marseille according to his own wishes, and his tomb became the site of many miracles. He died on December 19, 1370. He always had a Benedictine spirit, and even wore his monk’s habit as Pope. His virtue and honesty were noted, especially in a Europe plagued by scandal and corruption.
It is said that as he lay dying he called the people to surround his deathbed, saying “the people must see how popes die.”
Saint of the Day – rosary.team
