Daily Saints

Saint Anastasia the Patrician

Saint Anastasia the Patrician, also referred to as Anastasia Patricia, was a lady-in-waiting to the Byzantine empress. She later on left for Alexandria in Egypt.

She founded a monastery in Pempton. She then left for Scetis, looking for help from Abba Daniel, hegumen of the monastery at that time. She took up the life of a hermit at a time when this was only permitted of men. Abba Daniel visited her every week and ensured that one of his disciples supplied her with jugs of water. Anastasia dwelt in seclusion for twenty-eight years.

In 576, aware of her approaching death, she wrote several words for Abba Daniel on a piece of broken pottery and placed it at the entrance to the cave. The disciple found an ostracon with the words “Bring the spades and come here.” When Daniel heard this, he knew Anastasia was near death. He went to visit her with his disciple and to give her communion and hear her last words. Daniel revealed the full details of her story to his disciple after her death.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia_the_Patrician
Coptic Orthodox Church Network. 'Commemorations For Toba 26,' Lives Of The Saints.
Laura Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers (2001, ISBN 0809140160), pages 72-73
Anne Commire, Deborah Klezmer. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia (1999, ISBN 0787640808), page 274.
Coquin, Rene Georges. "Anastasia, Saint", The Coptic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, MacMillan (1991)

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Saint Frances of Rome

Daily Saints

Frances’ life combines aspects of secular and religious life. A devoted and loving wife, she longed for a lifestyle of prayer and service, so she organized a group of women to minister to the needs of Rome’s poor.
Born of wealthy parents, Frances found herself attracted to the religious life during her youth. But her parents objected and a young nobleman was selected to be her husband.
As she became acquainted with her new relatives, Frances soon discovered that the wife of her husband’s brother also wished to live a life of service and prayer. So the two, Frances and Vannozza, set out together—with their husbands’ blessings—to help the poor.
Frances fell ill for a time, but this apparently only deepened her commitment to the suffering people she met. The years passed, and Frances gave birth to two sons and a daughter. With the new responsibilities of family life, the young mother turned her attention more to the needs of her own household.
The family flourished under Frances’ care, but within a few years a great plague began to sweep across Italy. It struck Rome with devastating cruelty and left Frances’ second son dead. In an effort to help alleviate some of the suffering, Frances used all her money and sold her possessions to buy whatever the sick might possibly need. When all the resources had been exhausted, Frances and Vannozza went door to door begging. Later, Frances’ daughter died, and the saint opened a section of her house as a hospital.
Frances became more and more convinced that this way of life was so necessary for the world, and it was not long before she requested and was given permission to found a society of women bound by no vows. They simply offered themselves to God and to the service of the poor. Once the society was established, Frances chose not to live at the community residence, but rather at home with her husband. She did this for seven years, until her husband passed away, and then came to live the remainder of her life with the society—serving the poorest of the poor.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-frances-of-rome/

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Saint John of God

Daily Saints

Having given up active Christian belief while a soldier, John was 40 before the depth of his sinfulness began to dawn on him. He decided to give the rest of his life to God’s service, and headed at once for Africa where he hoped to free captive Christians and, possibly, be martyred.

He was soon advised that his desire for martyrdom was not spiritually well based, and returned to Spain and the relatively prosaic activity of a religious goods store. Yet he was still not settled. Moved initially by a sermon of Saint John of Avila, he one day engaged in a public beating of himself, begging mercy and wildly repenting for his past life.

Committed to a mental hospital for these actions, John was visited by Saint John, who advised him to be more actively involved in tending to the needs of others rather than in enduring personal hardships. John gained peace of heart, and shortly after left the hospital to begin work among the poor.

He established a house where he wisely tended to the needs of the sick poor, at first doing his own begging. But, excited by the saint’s great work and inspired by his devotion, many people began to back him up with money and provisions. Among them were the archbishop and marquis of Tarifa.

Behind John’s outward acts of total concern and love for Christ’s sick poor was a deep interior prayer life which was reflected in his spirit of humility. These qualities attracted helpers who, 20 years after John’s death, formed the Brothers Hospitallers, now a worldwide religious order.

John became ill after 10 years of service, but tried to disguise his ill health. He began to put the hospital’s administrative work into order and appointed a leader for his helpers. He died under the care of a spiritual friend and admirer, Lady Ana Ossorio.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-john-of-god/

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Saints Perpetua and Felicity

Daily Saints

“When my father in his affection for me was trying to turn me from my purpose by arguments and thus weaken my faith, I said to him, ‘Do you see this vessel—water pot or whatever it may be? Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘So also I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am—a Christian.’”

So writes Perpetua: young, beautiful, well-educated, a noblewoman of Carthage in North Africa, mother of an infant son and chronicler of the persecution of the Christians by Emperor Septimius Severus.

Perpetua’s mother was a Christian and her father a pagan. He continually pleaded with her to deny her faith. She refused and was imprisoned at 22.
In her diary, Perpetua describes her period of captivity: “What a day of horror! Terrible heat, owing to the crowds! Rough treatment by the soldiers! To crown all, I was tormented with anxiety for my baby…. Such anxieties I suffered for many days, but I obtained leave for my baby to remain in the prison with me, and being relieved of my trouble and anxiety for him, I at once recovered my health, and my prison became a palace to me and I would rather have been there than anywhere else.”

Despite threats of persecution and death, Perpetua, Felicity–a slavewoman and expectant mother–and three companions, Revocatus, Secundulus and Saturninus, refused to renounce their Christian faith. For their unwillingness, all were sent to the public games in the amphitheater. There Perpetua and Felicity were beheaded, and the others killed by beasts.

Felicity gave birth to a daughter a few days before the games commenced.
Perpetua’s record of her trial and imprisonment ends the day before the games. “Of what was done in the games themselves, let him write who will.” The diary was finished by an eyewitness.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saints-perpetua-and-felicity/

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Saint Colette

Daily Saints

Saint Colette was born Nicole Boellet (or Boylet) in the village of Corbie, in the Picardy region of France. She was affectionately called Nicolette by her parents, which soon came to be shorted to Colette, by which name she is known.

She was a French abbess and the foundress of the Colettine Poor Clares, a reform branch of the Order of Saint Clare, better known as the Poor Clares.

In 1410, she opened her first monastery at Besançon, in an almost-abandoned house of Urbanist Poor Clares. From there, her reform spread to Auxonne (1412), to Poligny (1415), to Ghent (1412), to Heidelberg (1444), to Amiens, to Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, and to other communities of Poor Clares. During her lifetime 18 monasteries of her reform were founded. For the monasteries which followed her reform, she prescribed extreme poverty, going barefoot, and the observance of perpetual fasting and abstinence.

She is honored as a saint in the Catholic Church. Due to a number of miraculous events claimed during her life, she is venerated as a patron saint of women seeking to conceive, expectant mothers, and sick children.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette_of_Corbie
David Farmer,Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford University Press, 1996), p105.
Roest 2013, p. 169.

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Saint John Joseph of the Cross

Daily Saints

Self-denial is never an end in itself but is only a help toward greater charity—as the life of Saint John Joseph shows.

John Joseph was very ascetic even as a young man. At 16, he joined the Franciscans in Naples; he was the first Italian to follow the reform movement of Saint Peter Alcantara. John Joseph’s reputation for holiness prompted his superiors to put him in charge of establishing a new friary even before he was ordained.
Obedience moved John Joseph to accept appointments as novice master, guardian and, finally, provincial. His years of mortification enabled him to offer these services to the friars with great charity. As guardian he was not above working in the kitchen or carrying the wood and water needed by the friars.
When his term as provincial expired, John Joseph dedicated himself to hearing confessions and practicing mortification, two concerns contrary to the spirit of the dawning Age of Enlightenment. John Joseph of the Cross was canonized in 1839.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-john-joseph-of-the-cross/

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Saint Giovanni Antonio Farina

Daily Saints

Saint Giovanni Antonio Farina was born in Gambellara in the Venetian Province. At the age of 21, Farina began teaching at the seminary, where he continued to serve for 18 years, and he taught grammar. He was ordained to the priesthood on 15 January 1827 and remained as a teacher at the seminary and even served as a librarian for a brief period and the canon of the local cathedral.

In 1831, he founded the first school for poor girls in Vicenza, and on 11 November 1836, the Institute of the Sisters Teachers of Saint Dorothy, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts.

He was known for his compassionate treatment of the poor and for his enlightened views of education; he was sometimes dubbed as the “Bishop of the Poor”. He remains the patron saint of his religious order and of his hometown as well as the dioceses in which he served.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Antonio_Farina#:~:text=His%20liturgical%20feast%20day%20is,the%20date%20of%20his%20death.
"Giovanni Antonio Farina". The Holy See
"Saint Giovanni Antonio Farina". Santi e Beati
"Homily of John Paul II". The Holy See. November 4, 2001.

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1 John 5:21

Daily Saints, Verse

Verse:

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” - 1 John 5:21

Prayer for the Sick

Omnipotent and eternal God, the everlasting Salvation of those who believe, hear us on behalf of Thy sick servant, (name), for whom we beg the aid of Thy pitying mercy, that, with his bodily health restored, he/she may give thanks to Thee in Thy church. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Sources:

https://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=2400

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Saint Katharine Drexel

Daily Saints

Saint Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia in 1858, she had an excellent education and traveled widely. As a rich girl, Katharine also had a grand debut into society. But when she nursed her stepmother through a three-year terminal illness, she saw that all the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death, and her life took a profound turn.

Katharine had always been interested in the plight of the Indians, having been appalled by what she read in Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. While on a European tour, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend Bishop James O’Connor. The pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?” His answer shocked her into considering new possibilities.

Back home, Katharine visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began her systematic aid to Indian missions.

Katharine Drexel could easily have married. But after much discussion with Bishop O’Connor, she wrote in 1889, “The feast of Saint Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” Newspaper headlines screamed “Gives Up Seven Million!”

After three and a half years of training, Mother Drexel and her first band of nuns—Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored—opened a boarding school in Santa Fe. A string of foundations followed. By 1942, she had a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania. In all, she established 50 missions for Indians in 16 states.

Two saints met when Mother Drexel was advised by Mother Cabrini about the “politics” of getting her order’s Rule approved in Rome. Her crowning achievement was the founding of Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic university in the United States for African Americans.
At 77, Mother Drexel suffered a heart attack and was forced to retire. Apparently her life was over. But now came almost 20 years of quiet, intense prayer from a small room overlooking the sanctuary. Small notebooks and slips of paper record her various prayers, ceaseless aspirations, and meditations. She died at 96 and was canonized in 2000.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-katharine-drexel/

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Saint Agnes of Bohemia

Daily Saints

Saint Agnes had no children of her own but was certainly life-giving for all who knew her.

Agnes was the daughter of Queen Constance and King Ottokar I of Bohemia. She was betrothed to the Duke of Silesia, who died three years later. As she grew up, she decided she wanted to enter the religious life.

After declining marriages to King Henry VII of Germany and King Henry III of England, Agnes was faced with a proposal from Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. She appealed to Pope Gregory IX for help. The pope was persuasive; Frederick magnanimously said that he could not be offended if Agnes preferred the King of Heaven to him.

After Agnes built a hospital for the poor and a residence for the friars, she financed the construction of a Poor Clare monastery in Prague. In 1236, she and seven other noblewomen entered this monastery. Saint Clare sent five sisters from San Damiano to join them, and wrote Agnes four letters advising her on the beauty of her vocation and her duties as abbess.

Agnes became known for prayer, obedience and mortification. Papal pressure forced her to accept her election as abbess, nevertheless, the title she preferred was “senior sister.” Her position did not prevent her from cooking for the other sisters and mending the clothes of lepers. The sisters found her kind but very strict regarding the observance of poverty; she declined her royal brother’s offer to set up an endowment for the monastery.

Devotion to Agnes arose soon after her death on March 6, 1282. Canonized in 1989, her liturgical feast is celebrated on March 6.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-agnes-of-bohemia/

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Prayer for the Sick

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