Daily Saints

Saint Barnabas

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 Boniface

Daily Saints

Saint Boniface, known as the apostle of the Germans, was an English Benedictine monk who gave up being elected abbot to devote his life to the conversion of the Germanic tribes. Two characteristics stand out: his Christian orthodoxy and his fidelity to the pope of Rome.

How absolutely necessary this orthodoxy and fidelity were is borne out by the conditions Saint Boniface found on his first missionary journey in 719 at the request of Pope Gregory II. Paganism was a way of life. What Christianity he did find had either lapsed into paganism or was mixed with error. The clergy were mainly responsible for these latter conditions since they were in many instances uneducated, lax and questionably obedient to their bishops. In particular instances their very ordinations were questionable.

These are the conditions that Saint Boniface was to report in 722 on his first return visit to Rome. The Holy Father instructed him to reform the German Church. The pope sent letters of recommendation to religious and civil leaders. Boniface later admitted that his work would have been unsuccessful, from a human viewpoint, without a letter of safe-conduct from Charles Martel, the powerful Frankish ruler, grandfather of Charlemagne. Boniface was finally made a regional bishop and authorized to organize the whole German Church. He was eminently successful.

In the Frankish kingdom, he met great problems because of lay interference in bishops’ elections, the worldliness of the clergy and lack of papal control.

During a final mission to the Frisians, Boniface and 53 companions were massacred while he was preparing converts for confirmation.

In order to restore the Germanic Church to its fidelity to Rome and to convert the pagans, Boniface had been guided by two principles. The first was to restore the obedience of the clergy to their bishops in union with the pope of Rome. The second was the establishment of many houses of prayer which took the form of Benedictine monasteries. A great number of Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns followed him to the continent, where he introduced the Benedictine nuns to the active apostolate of education.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-hilary-of-arles/

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Saint Charles Lwanga

Daily Saints

Saint Charles Lwanga was a member of the Baganda tribe. He was born in the Kingdom of Buganda, the central and southern part of modern Uganda, and served as chief of the royal pages and later major-domo in the court of King Mwanga II of Buganda. He was baptised by Pere Giraud on 15 November 1885.

He was a Ugandan convert to the Catholic Church who was martyred with a group of his peers and is revered as a saint by both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. The persecution started after Mwanga, a ritual pedophile, ordered a massacre of Anglican missionaries, including Bishop James Hannington who was the leader of the Anglican community. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, the Catholic major-domo of the court and a lay catechist, reproached the king for the killings, against which he had counseled him.

The king called a court assembly in which he interrogated all present to see if any would renounce Christianity. Led by Lwanga, the royal pages declared their fidelity to their religion, upon which the king condemned them to death, directing that they be marched to the traditional place of execution. Three of the prisoners, Pontian Ngondwe, Athanasius Bazzekuketta, and Gonzaga Gonza, were murdered on the march there. Twelve Catholic boys and men and nine Anglicans were then burnt alive.

Sources:

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

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Saints Marcellinus and Peter

Daily Saints

Saints Marcellinus and Peter are venerated within the Catholic Church as martyrs who were beheaded. Little is known about the actual lives of these two men. Pope Damasus I claimed that he heard the story of these two martyrs from their executioner who went on to become a Christian. Pope Damasus states that they were killed at an out-of-the-way spot by the magistrate Severus or Serenus, so that other Christians would not have a chance to bury and venerate their bodies. The two saints happily cleared the spot chosen for their death: a thicket overgrown with thorns, brambles, and briers three miles from Rome.

Pope Damasus, who opened their catacombs, also remarks that he wrote a Latin epitaph with the details of their death with which he adorned their tomb. The martyrs were venerated by Christians in the centuries after their martyrdom. Their sepulcher is mentioned in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, which includes the information that Marcellinus was a priest and that Peter was an exorcist. From the 7th century onwards, their sepulcher became a site of pilgrimage, and their feast day is recorded in local liturgies and hagiographies. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Constantine the Great built a basilica in their honor, since a structure built by Damasus had been destroyed by the Goths.

They are generally represented as men in middle age, with tonsures and palms of martyrdom; sometimes they hold a crown each. In the catacombs named after them, a fresco dating from the 4th or 5th centuries, represents them without aureolae, with short beards, next to the Lamb of Christ. In another fresco from the 5th or 6th centuries, in the catacombs of Pontian, they are beardless and depicted alongside Saint Pollio.

Sources:

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

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Saint Justin Martyr

Daily Saints

Saint Justin never ended his quest for religious truth even when he converted to Christianity after years of studying various pagan philosophies.

As a young man, he was principally attracted to the school of Plato. However, he found that the Christian religion answered the great questions about life and existence better than the philosophers.

Upon his conversion he continued to wear the philosopher’s mantle, and became the first Christian philosopher. He combined the Christian religion with the best elements in Greek philosophy. In his view, philosophy was a pedagogue of Christ, an educator that was to lead one to Christ.

Saint Justin is known as an apologist, one who defends in writing the Christian religion against the attacks and misunderstandings of the pagans. Two of his so-called apologies have come down to us; they are addressed to the Roman emperor and to the Senate.

For his staunch adherence to the Christian religion, Saint Justin was beheaded in Rome in 165.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-justin-martyr/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr

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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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Saint Boniface

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Saint Charles Lwanga

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Saints Marcellinus and Peter

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Saint Justin Martyr

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