Daily Saints

Saint Gregory of Nyssa

The son of two saints, Basil and Emmilia, young Gregory was raised by his older brother, Saint Basil the Great, and his sister, Macrina, in modern-day Turkey. Gregory’s success in his studies suggested great things were ahead for him. After becoming a professor of rhetoric, he was persuaded to devote his learning and efforts to the Church. By then married, Gregory went on to study for the priesthood and become ordained (this at a time when celibacy was not a matter of law for priests).

He was elected Bishop of Nyssa in 372, a period of great tension over the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ. Briefly arrested after being falsely accused of embezzling Church funds, Gregory was restored to his see in 378, an act met with great joy by his people.

It was after the death of his beloved brother Basil, that Gregory really came into his own. He wrote with great effectiveness against Arianism and other questionable doctrines, gaining a reputation as a defender of orthodoxy. He was sent on missions to counter other heresies and held a position of prominence at the Council of Constantinople. His fine reputation stayed with him for the remainder of his life, but over the centuries it gradually declined as the authorship of his writings became less and less certain. But, thanks to the work of scholars in the 20th century, his stature is once again appreciated. Indeed, Saint Gregory of Nyssa is seen not simply as a pillar of orthodoxy but as one of the great contributors to the mystical tradition in Christian spirituality and to monasticism itself.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-gregory-of-nyssa/

https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=989

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Saint Adrian of Canterbury

Daily Saints

Though Saint Adrian turned down a papal request to become Archbishop of Canterbury, England, Pope Saint Vitalian accepted the rejection on the condition that Adrian serve as the Holy Father’s assistant and adviser. Adrian accepted, but ended up spending most of his life and doing most of his work in Canterbury.

Born in Africa, Adrian was serving as an abbot in Italy when the new Archbishop of Canterbury appointed him abbot of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul in Canterbury. Thanks to his leadership skills, the facility became one of the most important centers of learning. The school attracted many outstanding scholars from far and wide and produced numerous future bishops and archbishops. Students reportedly learned Greek and Latin and spoke Latin as well as their own native languages.
Adrian taught at the school for 40 years. He died there, probably in the year 710, and was buried in the monastery. Several hundred years later, when reconstruction was being done, Adrian’s body was discovered in an incorrupt state. As word spread, people flocked to his tomb, which became famous for miracles. Rumor had it that young schoolboys in trouble with their masters made regular visits there.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-adrian-of-canterbury/

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Saint Pega

Daily Saints

Saint Pega is a Christian saint who was an anchoress in the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, and the sister of St Guthlac. She is referred to as ‘the holy virgin of Christ Pega’.

She lived as an anchoress at what is now Peakirk (“Pega’s church”) near Peterborough, not far from Guthlac’s hermitage at Crowland. When Guthlac realised that his end was near in 714, he summoned Pega, who travelled by boat to her brother’s oratory to bury him. One year later, she presided over the translation of his remains into a new sepulchre, when his body was found to be incorrupt. At this time, Pega also used a piece of glutinous salt, which had been previously consecrated by Guthlac, to cure the eyesight of a blind man who had travelled to Crowland from Wisbech.

Pega went on pilgrimage to Rome after Guthlac’s death and died there on 8 January 719, according to a 12th-century account by Orderic Vitalis. Orderic claims that her remains were kept at a church built in Rome in her honour, and that miracles took place there.

Sources:

Bertram Colgrave. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press. pp. 161–163. ISBN 0-521-30926-3. OCLC 12262183.
Saints' lives. David Townsend. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 978-0-674-05128-7. OCLC 856879271.
Ingulf; Peter, of Blois; Riley, Henry T. (1854). Ingulph's chronicle of the abbey of Croyland with the continuations by Peter of Blois and anonymous writers. University of California. London, H. G. Bohn.
Vitalis, Orderic (1990). The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. Marjorie Chibnall. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-822243-2. OCLC 21520544.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pega

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Saint Canute Lavard

Daily Saints

Saint Canute Lavard was a Danish prince. Later he was the first Duke of Schleswig and the first border prince who was both a Danish and a German vassal, a position leading towards the historical double position of Southern Jutland.

He grew up in close contact with the noble family of Hvide, who were later on to be among his most eager supporters. In 1115, his uncle, King Niels of Denmark, placed him in charge of the Duchy of Schleswig (jarl af Sønderjylland) in order to put an end to the attacks of the Slavic Obotrites. During the next fifteen years, he fulfilled his duty of establishing peace in the border area so well that he was titled Duke of Holstein (Hertug af Holsten) and became a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire.

On 7 January 1131, Canute was trapped in the Haraldsted Forest (Haraldsted Skov) near Ringsted in Zealand and murdered by Magnus.

Sources:

Danmarks Konger. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Retrieved May 1, 2018.
"Valdemarstiden 1157-1241". Aarhus University. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canute_Lavard

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Saint Peter of Canterbury

Daily Saints

Saint Peter of Canterbury was a native of Italy, like the other members of the Gregorian mission. Saint Peter became the abbot of the monastery that Æthelberht founded in Canterbury, originally dedicated to the saints Peter and Paul, but later rededicated as St Augustine’s, after the leader of the mission. Bede describes Peter as both abbot and presbyter, a word usually translated as priest.

Saint Peter drowned while crossing the English Channel on the way to Gaul, at a place called Ambleteuse, near Boulogne. Saint Peter’s death has traditionally been dated to around 607, but evidence suggests that he was present at a church council in Paris in 614, so he probably died after that date. He was the first abbot of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul in Canterbury (later St Augustine’s Abbey) and a companion of Augustine in the Gregorian mission to Kent. Augustine sent Peter as an emissary to Rome around 600 to convey news of the mission to Pope Gregory I.

Sources:

Walsh New Dictionary of Saints p. 482
Hunt "Petrus (St Petrus)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Blair World of Bede p. 87
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_of_Canterbury

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Saint John Neumann

Daily Saints

Saint John Neumann was born in what is now the Czech Republic. After studying in Prague, he came to New York at 25 and was ordained a priest. He did missionary work in New York until he was 29, when he joined the Redemptorists and became its first member to profess vows in the United States. He continued missionary work in Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, where he became popular with the Germans.
At 41, as bishop of Philadelphia, he organized the parochial school system into a diocesan one, increasing the number of pupils almost twentyfold within a short time.
Gifted with outstanding organizing ability, he drew into the city many teaching communities of sisters and the Christian Brothers. During his brief assignment as vice provincial for the Redemptorists, he placed them in the forefront of the parochial movement.
Well-known for his holiness and learning, spiritual writing and preaching, on October 13, 1963, John Neumann became the first American bishop to be beatified. Canonized in 1977, he is buried in St. Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia.

Sources:

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

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Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Daily Saints

Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a true daughter of the American Revolution, born August 28, 1774, just two years before the Declaration of Independence. By birth and marriage, she was linked to the first families of New York and enjoyed the fruits of high society. Reared a staunch Episcopalian, she learned the value of prayer, Scripture and a nightly examination of conscience. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, did not have much use for churches but was a great humanitarian, teaching his daughter to love and serve others.

At 19, Elizabeth was the belle of New York and married a handsome, wealthy businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children before his business failed and he died of tuberculosis. At 30, Elizabeth was widowed and penniless, with five small children to support.

While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. Three basic points led her to become a Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ. Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in March 1805. To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the beginning, her group followed the lines of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809.

The thousand or more letters of Mother Seton reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters) and the heartache of a wayward son. She died January 4, 1821, and became the first American-born citizen to be beatified (1963) and then canonized (1975). She is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-elizabeth-ann-seton/

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Saint Genevieve

Daily Saints

Saint Genevieve was born in Nanterre and moved to Paris (then known as Lutetia) after encountering Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes and dedicated herself to a Christian life.

In 451 she led a “prayer marathon” that was said to have saved Paris by diverting Attila’s Huns away from the city. When the Germanic king Childeric I besieged the city in 464, Genevieve acted as an intermediary between the city and its besiegers, collecting food and convincing Childeric to release his prisoners. Genevieve had frequent visions of heavenly saints and angels. She reported her visions and prophecies until her enemies conspired to drown her in a lake. Through the intervention of Germanus, their animosity was finally overcome. The Bishop of Paris appointed her to look after the welfare of the other Consecrated virgins, and by her instruction and example, she led them to a high degree of sanctity.

She is the patroness saint of Paris in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve
McNamara, Halborg, and Whatley 18.
McNamara, Halborg, and Whatley 4.

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Saint Basil the Great

Daily Saints

Saint Basil was on his way to becoming a famous teacher when he decided to begin a religious life of gospel poverty. After studying various modes of religious life, he founded what was probably the first monastery in Asia Minor. He is to monks of the East what Saint Benedict is to the West, and Basil’s principles influence Eastern monasticism today.
He was ordained a priest, assisted the archbishop of Caesarea—now southeastern Turkey—and ultimately became archbishop himself, in spite of opposition from some of the bishops under him, probably because they foresaw coming reforms.

Arianism, one of the most damaging heresies in the history of the Church which denied the divinity of Christ, was at its height. Emperor Valens persecuted orthodox believers, and put great pressure on Basil to remain silent and admit the heretics to communion. Basil remained firm, and Valens backed down. But trouble remained. When the great Saint Athanasius died, the mantle of defender of the faith against Arianism fell upon Basil. He strove mightily to unite and rally his fellow Catholics who were crushed by tyranny and torn by internal dissension. He was misunderstood, misrepresented, accused of heresy and ambition. Even appeals to the pope brought no response. “For my sins I seem to be unsuccessful in everything.”

Basil was tireless in pastoral care. He preached twice a day to huge crowds, built a hospital that was called a wonder of the world—as a youth he had organized famine relief and worked in a soup kitchen himself—and fought the prostitution business.
Basil was best known as an orator. Though not recognized greatly in his lifetime, his writings rightly place him among the great teachers of the Church. Seventy-two years after his death, the Council of Chalcedon described him as “the great Basil, minister of grace who has expounded the truth to the whole earth.

Sources:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-basil-the-great/

https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=261

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Saint Giuseppe Maria Tomasi

Daily Saints

Saint Giuseppe Maria Tomasi was an Italian Theatine Catholic priest, scholar, reformer and cardinal. His scholarship was a significant source of the reforms in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church during the 20th century. He was beatified by Pope Pius VII in 1803, and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1986.

His life was oriented toward God from his first years. Formed and educated in the family home, where they did not lack riches or moral training, he gave proofs of a spirit very open to study and to piety. His parents cared greatly for this and for his own Christian formation and his instruction in the classical and modern languages, above all in the Spanish language, because he was destined by the family for the royal court of Madrid, as he was bound to inherit from his own father, as his title of nobility, that of Grandee of Spain.

But Tomasi’s own spirit aspired, even from youth, to be small in the Kingdom of God, and to serve not the kings of the earth but the King of heaven. He cultivated his pious desire in his heart until he obtained the consent of his father to follow his vocation to the religious life.

Saint Giuseppe Maria Tomasi taught catechism to the children of the poor in his titular church, also introducing its congregants to the use of Gregorian chant. He died in 1713, mourned by all, especially by Pope Clement, who so admired his sanctity that he had consulted him before accepting the papacy. He was buried in his titular church. The relics of his body, transferred in 1971 from the Basilica of his title of Ss. Silvestro e Martini ai Monti, are presently exposed for the veneration of the faithful in the Basilica of San Andrea della Valle of the Theatine Fathers, in Rome.

Sources:

Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Bl. Giuseppe Maria Tommasi". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Biography at The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church

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Saint Gregory of Nyssa

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Saint Adrian of Canterbury

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Saint Pega

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Saint Canute Lavard

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Saint Peter of Canterbury

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Saint John Neumann

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Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

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Saint Genevieve

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Saint Basil the Great

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Saint Giuseppe Maria Tomasi

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