Daily Saints

Saint Lutgardis

Saint Lutgardis, also known as Lutgardis of Aywieres, was born in Tongeren (Tongren) and entered monastic life at the age of twelve. She is a saint from the medieval Low Countries. She is considered as one of the leading mystics of the 13th century.

She was admitted into the Benedictine monastery of St. Catherine near Sint-Truiden at the age of twelve. She lived in the convent for several years without having much interest in religious life. She could come and go and receive visitors as she pleased.

She was visited with a vision of Jesus Christ showing her his wounds, and at age twenty she made her solemn vows as a Benedictine. Over the next dozen years, she had many visions of Christ, Mary and St. John the Evangelist. Accounts of her life state that she experienced ecstasies, levitated, and dripped blood from her forehead and hair when entranced. She refused the honor of serving as abbess. However, in 1205, she was chosen to be prioress of her community.

Saint Lutgardis was one of the great precursors of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first recorded mystic revelation of Christ’s heart is that of Saint Lutgardis. During this time she is known to have shown gifts of healing and prophecy, and was an adept at teaching the Gospels. She was blind for the last eleven years of her life, and died of natural causes at Aywières. According to tradition, she experienced a vision in which Christ informed her of her forthcoming death. She died on June 16, 1246, the day after the Feast of the Holy Trinity, at the age of 64.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutgardis

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Saint Methodius I

Daily Saints

Saint Methodius I of Constantinople was born to wealthy parents. Methodios was sent as a young man to Constantinople to continue his education and hopefully attain an appointment at court. But instead he entered a monastery in Bithynia, eventually becoming abbot.

In 815, Methodios went to Rome, perhaps as an envoy of the deposed Patriarch Nikephorοs. Upon his return in 821 he was arrested and exiled as an iconodule by the Iconoclast regime of Emperor Michael II. Methodios was released in 829 and assumed a position of importance at the court of the even more fervently iconoclast Emperor Theophilos.

The influential minister Theoktistos secured the appointment of Methodios as his successor, bringing about the end of the iconoclast controversy. A week after his appointment and after the Council of Constantinople (843), Methodios made a triumphal procession from the church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia on March 11, 843, restoring the icons to the church. This heralded the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy, and became a holiday in the Byzantine Church, celebrated every year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, and known as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”.

Throughout his short patriarchate, Methodios tried to pursue a moderate line of accommodation with members of the clergy who were formerly Iconoclasts. This policy was opposed by extremists. To rein in the extremists, Methodios was forced to excommunicate and arrest some of the more persevering monks.

Methodios was indeed well-educated; engaged in both copying and writing of manuscripts. His individual works included polemica, hagiographical and liturgical works, sermons and poetry.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodios_I_of_Constantinople#:~:text=St.,the%20East%20and%20the%20West.

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Saint Anthony of Padua

Daily Saints

Saint Anthony of Padua was born and raised by a wealthy family in Lisbon, Portugal. His wealthy and noble family arranged for him to be instructed at the local cathedral school. At the age of 15, he entered the Augustinian community of Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross at the Abbey of Saint Vincent on the outskirts of Lisbon. In 1212, distracted by frequent visits from family and friends, he asked to be transferred to the motherhouse of the congregation, the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Coimbra, then the capital of Portugal.

After his ordination to the priesthood, Saint Anthony of Padua was named guestmaster at the age of 19, and placed in charge of hospitality for the abbey. While he was in Coimbra, some Franciscan friars arrived and settled at a small hermitage outside Coimbra dedicated to Anthony the Great. He was strongly attracted to the simple, evangelical lifestyle of the friars, whose order had been founded only 11 years prior. He obtained permission from church authorities to leave the Canons Regular to join the new Franciscan order. Upon his admission to the life of the friars, he joined the small hermitage in Olivais.

Occasionally, Saint Anthony took another post as a teacher at universities like University of Montpellier and University of Toulouse in southern France, but his preaching was considered to be his supreme gift. According to historian Sophronius Clasen, Anthony preached “the grandeur of Christianity”. His method included allegory and symbolical explanation of scripture.

In 1228, he served as envoy from the general chapter to Pope Gregory IX. At the papal court, his preaching was hailed as a “jewel case of the Bible” and he was commissioned to produce his collection of sermons, Sermons for Feast Days.

Saint Anthony became sick with ergotism in 1231 and went to the woodland retreat at Camposampiero with two other friars for a respite. There, he lived in a room built for him under the branches of a walnut tree. Anthony died on the way back to Padua on 13 June 1231 at the Poor Clare monastery at Arcella (now part of Padua), at the age of 35.

He is especially invoked and venerated all over the world as the patron saint for the recovery of lost items and is credited with many miracles involving lost people, lost things and even lost spiritual goods.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_of_Padua

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Blessed Jolenta of Poland

Daily Saints

Blessed Jolenta of Poland was the daughter of King Béla IV of Hungary and Maria Laskarina. As a young girl, Yolanda was sent to Poland to be tutored under the supervision of her sister, Kinga, who was married to the Duke of Poland.

During the time of her marriage, she was noted for her great services to the poor and needy of the country, as well as being a major benefactor of the monasteries, friaries and hospitals connected to them. Her husband gave her so much support in her charities that he earned the nickname “the Pious”. She was widowed in 1279.

Upon the death of her husband and the marriage of two of her daughters, Jolenta and her third daughter entered the convent of the Poor Clares. War forced Jolenta to move to another convent where despite her reluctance, she was made abbess.

So well did Jolenta serve her Franciscan sisters by word and example, that her fame and good works continued to spread beyond the walls of the cloister. Her favorite devotion was the Passion of Christ. Indeed, Jesus appeared to her, telling her of her coming death. Many miracles, down to our own day, are said to have occurred at her grave.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/blessed-jolenta-of-poland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yolanda_of_Poland

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Saint Barnabas

Daily Saints

Saint Barnabas was initially named as Joseph. But when recounting the story of how he sold his land and gave the money to the apostles in Jerusalem, the Book of Acts says the apostles called him Barnabas.

Barnabas’ story appears in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles. He and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled together making more converts and participated in the Council of Jerusalem. Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the “God-fearing” Gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia.

According to tradition an early Christian, he was one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem. Christian tradition holds that Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus. He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Orthodox Church. In 1538, the Catholic religious order officially known as “Clerics Regular of St. Paul” (Clerici Regulares Sancti Pauli), gained the grand old Monastery of Saint Barnabas by the city wall of Milan as their main seat. The Order was known by the popular name of Barnabites.

St. Barnabas is venerated as the patron saint of Cyprus. He is also considered a patron saint in many other places in the world, highlighting Milan in Italy. On the island of Tenerife (Spain), St. Barnabas was invoked in historical times as patron saint and protector of the island’s fields against drought, together with St. Benedict of Nursia.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnabas#:~:text=The%20feast%20day%20of%20Barnabas,the%20connotation%20of%20%22cousin.%22

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Saint Getulius

Daily Saints

Saint Getulius was a native of Gabii in Sabina. Getulius was an officer in the Roman army who resigned when he became a Christian. According to tradition, Saint Getulius was the husband of Saint Symphorosa.

Some say Getulius was killed on the Via Salaria and is called the father of the Seven Martyrs and the husband of Symphorosa. Their seven sons, according to their legend, suffered a different kind of martyrdom. Crescens was pierced through the throat, Julian through the breast, Nemesius through the heart, Primitivus was wounded at the navel, Justinus was pierced through the back, Stracteus (Stacteus, Estacteus) was wounded at the side, and Eugenius was cleft in two parts from top to bottom.

He is venerated venerated together with Amantius, Cerealus, and Primitivus as a Christian martyr and saint. They were imprisoned, thrown into the flames but emerged unharmed, and then beaten to death with clubs. The legend further states that Saint Symphorosa buried them in an arenarium on her estate.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getulius

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Saint Ephrem

Daily Saints

Saint Ephrem, also referred to as Saint Ephrem the Syrian, he was born in Nisibis, served as a deacon and later lived in Edessa. He was a prominent Christian theologian and writer, who is revered as one of the most notable hymnographers of Eastern Christianity.

He was born around the year 306 in the city of Nisibis. Internal evidence from Ephrem’s hymnody suggests that both his parents were part of the growing Christian community in the city, although later hagiographers wrote that his father was a pagan priest. Saint Ephrem was baptized as a youth and almost certainly became a son of the covenant, an unusual form of Syriac proto-monasticism. He was appointed as a teacher and eventually ordained as a deacon.

He began to compose hymns and write biblical commentaries as part of his educational office. The most important of his works are his lyric, teaching hymns. These hymns are full of rich, poetic imagery drawn from biblical sources, folk tradition, and other religions and philosophies. Particularly influential were his Hymns Against Heresies. Ephrem used these to warn his flock of the heresies that threatened to divide the early church.

Saint Ephrem is popularly credited as the founder of the School of Nisibis, which, in later centuries, was the centre of learning of the Church of the East. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in the Roman Catholic Church in 1920.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephrem_the_Syrian

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Saint Medardus

Daily Saints

Saint Medardus, also known as Medard, was the Bishop of Noyon. He was born around 456. He lived during the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The last Western Roman emperor was deposed in 476.

At the age of 33, he was ordained. His piety and knowledge, considerable for that time, caused Bishop Alomer of Vermand to confer on him Holy Orders. At the death of Alomer in 530, Medardus was chosen to succeed him as bishop of Vermand. Despite his objections, he found himself obliged to accept the heavy responsibilities of the position, to which he devoted himself zealously.

He is held to have removed the seat of his bishopric from Vermand, a little city with no defences, to Noviomagus Veromanduorum (modern Noyon), the strongest place in that region of Neustria, in 531. In 532, at the death of Eleutherius, bishop of Tornacum, Medardus was invited to assume the direction of that diocese also. He refused at first, but being urged by King Clotaire himself, he at last accepted. The union of the two dioceses of Noviomagus/Noyon and Tornacum/Tournai lasted until 1146, when they were again separated.

Medardus was one of the most honored bishops of his time. His memory has always been popularly venerated, first in the north of France, then in Cologne and extending to western Germany. He became the hero of numerous legends. He was often depicted laughing, with his mouth wide open, therefore he was invoked against toothache. He is also invoked against bad weather (but also for rain), sterility and imprisonment. He is patron saint of vineyards, brewers, captives and prisoners, the mentally ill, and peasants.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medardus

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Saint Robert of Newminster

Daily Saints

Saint Robert of Newminster was born in Gargrave in Yorkshire, England. He studied at the University of Paris, where he is said to have composed a commentary – since lost – on the Psalms. He became a parish priest, returning to serve Gargrave where he was made rector. He became a Benedictine joining the monks of Saint Mary’s Abbey in York.

About 1138, Saint Robert headed a group of monks sent out from Fountains to establish Newminster Abbey near the castle of Ralph de Merlay and his wife, Juliana, daughter of Gospatric II, Earl of Lothian, west of Morpeth in Northumberland. Abbot Robert was said to be was favoured with the gift of prophecy and miracles. During his abbacy three colonies of monks were sent to found new monasteries at Pipewell in Northamptonshire (1143), Roche in South Yorkshire (1147), and Sawley in Lancashire (1148).

Saint Robert ruled and directed the monks at Newminster for 21 years. The small monastery of only 17 monks was one of the first to be dissolved in 1535 by Henry VIII, and the site has been privately owned since.

Saint Robert was described as a devout, prayerful, and gentle man. He is known for being merciful in his judgment of others and a warm and considerate companion. He was zealous regarding his own vows of poverty.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_of_Newminster

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Saint Norbert of Xanten

Daily Saints

Saint Norbert of Xanten, also known as Norbert Gennep, was a bishop of the Catholic Church and founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular.

He adopted such strict discipline that it killed his first three disciples. This may be why he failed to reform the canons of Xanten, who denounced him as an innovator at the Council of Fritzlar in 1118. He then resigned his benefice, sold all his property and gave the proceeds to the poor. In settlement after settlement he encountered a demoralized clergy, lonely, often practicing concubinage and feeling that the official Church cared little about them.

He also became acquainted with the Cistercian administrative system that created an international federation of monasteries with fair amount of centralized power, though local houses had a certain amount of independence. These reforms, written up in their “Charter of Charity” would affect him significantly in his own future work.

In 1126 Pope Honorius II appointed Norbert to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, where he put into practice the precepts he instituted at Prémontré. Several assassination attempts were made as he began to reform the lax discipline of his see. He was instrumental in protecting the Church’s rights against the secular power during the Investiture Controversy.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_of_Xanten

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Saint Lutgardis

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Saint Methodius I

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Saint Anthony of Padua

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Blessed Jolenta of Poland

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Saint Barnabas

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Saint Getulius

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Saint Ephrem

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Saint Medardus

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Saint Robert of Newminster

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Saint Norbert of Xanten

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