Gerelyn Hollingsworth's blog

Today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Aimee-Adele Le Bouteiller, who was born in 1816 in Percy, Manche, France, grew up "helping her widowed mother run the family farm and later working as a housemaid. She still found time to volunteer in her parish school, and she always joined in the parish's annual pilgrimage to the ancient shrine of Our Lady of Chappelle-sur-Vire."

--from The Big Book of Women Saints, by Sarah Gallick, HarperOne, 2007, p. 88. (Search term: Postel.)

"I am Patrick. I am a sinner: the most unsophisticated of people; the least among all the Christians; and, to many, the most contemptible. I am the son of the deacon Calpornius, as he was the son of the priest Potitus who belonged to the village on Bannavern Taburniae. Indeed, near it he had a small estate from where, when aged about sixteen, I was taken captive. I was then ignorant of the true God and, along with thousands upon thousands of others, was taken into captivity in Ireland."

--from The Confession of St. Patrick, as quoted in Discovering Saint Patrick, by Thomas O'Loughlin, Paulist Press, 2005.

On March 16, 1649, Fr. John de Brébeuf and his younger companion Gabriel Lalemant were taken prisoner by the Iroquois "and carried off to Saint-Ignace, where they suffered one of the most atrocious martyrdoms in the annals of Christianity. Brébeuf’s torture has been told us with moving simplicity by the donné Christophe Regnault, who saw his remains: 'Father de Brébeuf had his legs, thighs, and arms stripped of flesh to the very bone; I saw and touched a large number of great blisters, which he had on several places on his body, from the boiling water which these barbarians had poured over him in mockery of Holy Baptism. I saw and touched the wound from a belt of bark, full of pitch and resin, which roasted his whole body. I saw and touched the marks of burns from the Collar of hatchets placed on his shoulders and stomach. I saw and touched his two lips, which they had cut off because he constantly spoke of God while they made him suffer.

Today is the feast of St. Louise de Marillac, the 350th anniversary of her death.

Louise was born in 1591, the illegitimate daughter of Louis de Marillac, a well-connected widower. Her mother's name is not known. Her father acknowledged his "natural" daughter and placed her with her aunt, a Dominican nun at Poissy. When he died, his second wife removed Louise from the convent and placed her with a poor woman to learn household skills.

Today is the feast of Bl. Angela (Aniela) Salawa, born in Siepraw, Poland, in 1881.

At 15, she went to work as a servant for a family in Cracow. For almost twenty years, Angela was in domestic service.

"The city of Córdoba was the setting for an unusual historical drama that unfolded between the years 850 and 859, when forty-eight Christians were decapitated for religious offenses against Islam. More striking than the number of executions were the peculiar circumstances surrounding them. For one thing, as the sources unambiguously demonstrate, the majority of the victims deliberately invoked capital punishment by publicly blaspheming Muhammad and disparaging Islam. Moreover, though some Cordoban Christians applauded the executed Christians as martyrs, others regarded them as self-immolators whose unwarranted outbursts served only to expose the community as a whole to the emirs' suspicions."

--from the Introduction to Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain, by Kenneth Baxter Wolf, the John Sutton Miner Professor of History at Pomona College.

Today is the feast of St. Marie Eugenie Milleret, founder of the Religious of the Assumption.

She was born in Metz, France, in 1817. "When she was fifteen, Marie Eugenie’s parents separated and she moved to Paris with her mother and brother, only to see her mother die of cholera shortly afterwards. Her father then sent her to live with relatives whose great interests proved to be money and pleasure."

"Our Beginnings," Religious of the Assumption

Today is the feast of St. Frances of Rome, founder of the Benedictine Oblate Sisters of Tor de' Specchi, and patron of all Oblates of St. Benedict.

Frances was born in 1384 to Paul de Busso and his wife, Jacobella dei Roffedeschi, members of the Roman nobility. At fourteen, she was married to Lorenzo de Ponziano. For forty years Frances and Lorenzo were happy, enduring together the loss of two of their six children to plague, and the turmoil of the Western Schism, which brought the temporary banishment of Lorenzo, the taking of another of their children as a hostage, and the destruction of their estates.

"Good people have told me that my writing is crude and brutal. I would remind you that it is not, and it could not be as crude as war, or as brutal as a battle. The brutality of war is literally unutterable. There are no words foul and filthy enough to describe it. Yet I would remind you that this indescribably filthy thing is the commonest thing in history, and that if we believe in a God of love at all, then we must believe in the face of war and all it means."

-Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, quoted in Celebrating the Saints: Devotional Readings for Saints' Days, by Robert Atwell and Christopher L. Webber, Morehouse, 2001

Today is the feast of St. Ciaran (Kieran), "first-born of the saints of Ireland", founder of the monastery of Saighir, first bishop of Ossory.

"His father's name was Lubhaidh, and was descended from the nobility of Osraighe. The name of his mother was Liedania, and was a native of Corca-Laighe, in the western part of Munster. Before she conceived Ciaran she saw in a vision, as if a star had fallen into her mouth, and she revealed the same to the Druids and learned men of her time, who informed her that she would bring forth a son who would be the greatest prodigy of his age."

--St. Ciaran, Patron of Ossory: A Memoir of His Life and Times, by John Hogan, Kilkenny, 1876

Today is the feast of St. Casimir, patron of Lithuania and Poland, 1458-1484.

In the famous Carlo Dolci painting, he is holding a paper inscribed with the words of his favorite hymn: Omni die dic Mariae, which we know as Daily, Daily Sing to Mary. Casimir was buried with a copy of the hymn.

Today is the feast of St. Katharine Drexel, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Katharine was born in Philadelphia in 1858 to Francis Drexel, financier and philanthropist, and his wife, Hannah Langstroth.

(Drexel & Co., the source of Francis Drexel's fortune, would eventually be part of Drexel Burnham Lambert.)

Hannah Langstroth Drexel died a month after Katharine's birth. In 1860, Katharine's father married Emma Bouvier.

Today is the feast of St. Chad (Ceadda), Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Mercia.

He was an Angle, born in Northumbria, "the youngest of four sons, all of whom became both priests and monks. They entered the monastery on the isle of Lindisfarne and were taught by Saint Aidan."

--Celebrating the Saints, by Robert Atwell and Christopher L. Webber, Morehouse, 2001

Today is Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant, the feast of St. David of Wales, a sixth-century monastic founder and bishop. St. David is venerated in the Catholic Church, in the Anglican Communion, and in the Orthodox Church.

It is a day to wear a leek or a daffodil, to eat cawl and drink water.

David was known as the Waterman because he and his monks drank only water, no beer, no wine. And they plowed without oxen. Every man his own ox, was one of St. David's rules.

Today is the feast of Bl. Robert Drury, a priest who was martyred at Tyburn in 1607.

Robert Drury was born in Buckinghamshire c.1567. He went to Rheims to study for the priesthood and then to Valladolid. In 1593, he was ordained and returned to England.

He ministered in secret in London for a number of years, often staying at a safe house where St. Anne Line (whose feast day is tomorrow) sheltered priests.

Today is the feast of St. Walburga, born in Devonshire in 710 to St. Richard, a Saxon king, and Winna, a sister of St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany.

When Walburga was eleven, her father placed her with the abbess of Wimbourne.

Today is the feast of St. Ethelbert, King of Kent, a descendant of Hengist, who led the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes into England.

Ethelbert was born in 560. He was a worshipper of Odin, but in 588, when he married Bertha, a daughter of King Charibert of Paris, as part of the nuptial agreement, he agreed to permit her to continue practicing her Christian faith. Bertha brought a chaplain to England with her, and King Ethelbert gave him an old church at Canterbury.

Today is the feast of St. Polycarp, c. 69 - c.155, "one of the 'Apostolic Fathers,' the generation of bishops who received their teaching direct from the apostles or disciples themselves."

"It was the commemoration of his martyrdom that established the custom of celebrating the anniversary of a martyr's death, seen as the dies natalis, the 'birthday into heaven.'"

--Butler's Lives of the Saints

Today is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. This picture shows the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter, by Bernini. Today, 110 candles illuminate the altar.

This picture shows a copy of the Chair that "was placed in the Cathedra Petri monument built in the basilica by Bernini between 1658 and 1666".

Today is the feast of Bl. Alvaro of Zamora, "a major figure in the reform of the Dominican Order in Spain".

"He also built 'station' chapels, each representing a scene from Our Lord's passion, and has therefore been credited with originating devotion to the Stations of the Cross in the West, but this had become widespread with the popularity of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, encouraged by indulgences being attached to them in the fourteenth century."

"Fra Giovanni was a simple and most holy man in his habits, and it is a sign of his goodness that one morning, when Pope Nicholas V. wished him to dine with him, he excused himself from eating flesh without the permission of his prior, not thinking of the papal authority."

"He never retouched or repaired any of his pictures, always leaving them in the condition in which they were first seen, believing, so he said, that this was the will of God. Some say that Fra Giovanni never took up his brush without first making a prayer. He never made a crucifix when the tears did not course down his cheeks, while the goodness of his sincere and great soul in religion may be seen in the faces and attitudes of his figures."

--from The Lives of the Artists, by Giorgio Vasari, the man who coined the term "Renaissance".

Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

(What are you giving up for Lent?)

Anthony Scammacca was born in 1430 to a noble family of Catania, Sicily. As was typical of young men at that time, he fought duels. In one of them, his leg was badly wounded.

Accomplish your will within me--
even in spite of me.

--from Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits, by Michael G. Harter, S.J., Loyola Press, 2005, a collection of prayers written by St. Claude la Colombière, Daniel Berrigan, Pedro Arrupe, Bl. Peter Faber, Joseph Tetlow, St. Robert Southwell, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, St. Peter Canisius, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Daniel A. Lord, et al.

Today is the feast of Bl. Humbeline, the sister of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. She was born at Dijon, c. 1092, and died at Jully-les-Nonnais, c. 1136.

Her parents, Burgundian nobles, had seven children, six boys and one girl. Her mother died when Humbeline was eighteen. After her father and all her brothers had become monks at Clairvaux, Humbeline, heir to the family fortune, married Guy de Marcy, a nobleman of the house of Lorraine.

"Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou."

"Four years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Blessed Pius IX, Mary appeared for the first time on February 11, 1858 to St. Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto at Massabielle. After successive apparitions accompanied by extraordinary events, the Holy Virgin revealed to the young visionary in the local language, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’”

--Pope Benedict XVI, Feb. 10, 2008

In the Office of Readings for the Feast of St. Scholastica we find St. Gregory's famous account of the last meeting of Scholastica and Benedict.

"She was accustomed to visiting her brother once a year. He would come down to meet her at a place on the monastery property, not far outside the gate.

"One day she came as usual and her saintly brother went with some of his disciples; they spent the whole day praising God and talking of sacred things. As night fell they had supper together.

Today is the feast of St. Miguel Febres Cordero, FSC.

Francisco Febres Cordero Muñoz was born at Cuenca, Ecuador, on Nov. 7, 1854. He died at Premià de Mar, Spain, one hundred years ago today.

In 1868 he entered The Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the first Ecuadorian to do so. He became Brother Miguel.

St. Francis of Assisi asked that a letter be sent to "the beloved Lady Jacoba of Settesoli," informing her of his impending death and asking her to bring "a shroud of hair-cloth in which to wrap my body, and wax for the burial. I pray thee, likewise, that thou bring to me some of that food which thou wast wont to give me when I was in Rome."

But God had already revealed to Jacoba that Francis was dying, and now God revealed to Francis that Jacoba knew. "Do not write more, for it is not necessary."