26 June: Feast of Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer

26 June: Feast of Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer

by | Jun 14, 2021 | CIC Saint Writeups

26 June: Feast of Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. St. Josemaria Escriva was born in Barbastro, Spain, in 1902. Of his five siblings, the three youngest died young. His parents, José and Dolores, raised their children to be devout Catholics. His mother taught Josemaria many prayers he would recite his entire life. In 1915, his father’s business failed and they had to move to find work. The family struggled to get by. It was as a teenager that Josemaria first sensed his vocation. Moved by the sight of footprints left in the snow by a barefoot friar, he felt God was asking something of him. He thought becoming a priest would help him discover this calling from God. He prayed fervently, “Lord, let me see what you want.” Josemaria’s father died in 1924, leaving him as head of the family. He was then ordained in 1925 and began his ministry in a rural parish. In 1927, Fr. Josemaria’s bishop gave him permission to move to Madrid to obtain his doctorate in law. In 1928, during a spiritual retreat, Fr. Josemaria saw what it was that God was asking of him: to found Opus Dei, a way of sanctification in daily work and through a Christian’s ordinary duties. The name “Opus Dei” is Latin for “Work of God”. (Opus Dei’s mission is to spread the Christian message that every person is called to holiness in ordinary life; the idea that every honest work can be sanctified.) From then on, Josemaria worked to spread the ministry of Opus Dei, while also continuing his priestly ministry. He was also studying at the University of Madrid and teaching classes in order to support his family. When war broke out in Madrid, religious persecution forced Fr. Josemaria to exercise his priestly ministry secretly. Eventually, he was able to leave via a harrowing escape across the Pyrenees, and took up residence in Burgos. In 1939, he returned to Madrid and finally obtained his doctorate in law. In the years that followed he gave retreats to laity, priests, and religious, and continued working to develop Opus Dei. In 1946 Fr. Josemaria moved to Rome and obtained a doctorate in Theology from the Lateran University. He was appointed by Pope Pius XII as a consultor to two Vatican Congregations, as an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, and as an honorary prelate. He traveled frequently, working to grow Opus Dei. In 1974 and 1975, he traveled through Latin America, speaking to people about their Christian vocation to holiness. Msgr. Escriva died suddenly of a heart attack on June 26, 1975. By the time of his death, Opus Dei was in dozens of countries and had touched countless lives. After his death, thousands of people (including more than a third of the world’s bishops), sent letters to Rome asking the Pope to open his cause of beatification and canonization. Pope St. John Paul II beatified Msgr. Escriva on May 17, 1992, in St. Peter’s Square. The ceremony was attended by 300,000 people. “With supernatural intuition,” said the Pope in his homily, “Blessed Josemaria untiringly preached the universal call to holiness and apostolate.” Ten years later, on October 6, 2002, John Paul II canonized the founder of Opus Dei in St. Peter’s Square before a multitude of people from more than 80 countries, saying, “St. Josemaria was chosen by the Lord to proclaim the universal call to holiness and to indicate that everyday life, its customary activities, are a path towards holiness. It could be said that he was the saint of the ordinary.”

Ideas for celebrating this feast at home:

  • Read a longer biography of St. Josemaria here.
  • Read Pope St. JP II’s Apostolic Brief on Josemaria Escriva here.
  • Visit this site to find St. Josemaria Escriva’s writings.
  • See a video about St. Josemaria Escriva here.
  • Visit Opus Dei‘s official US website.
  • For a feast day meal, make something Spanish. Often involving rice, Spanish dishes are hearty and satisfying, making them ideal for sharing. Invite family or friends over for a Spanish feast in honor of St. Josemaria! Ideas: Spanish rice, paella, gazpacho soup, Arroz con pollo, Spanish flan, sangria.

(sources: catholicculture.org; opusdei.org)

19 June: Feast of Saint Romuald

19 June: Feast of Saint Romuald

by | Jun 7, 2021 | CIC Saint Writeups

19 June: Feast of Saint Romuald. St. Romuald was born in Ravenna, Italy, to a noble family. No one could have imagined that a descendent of the Dukes of Onesti would have left his stately home for the most absolute austerity, entering history as a great reformer of the Benedictine Order and as Founder of the Congregation of Monk Hermits of Camaldolese, an Order that has given the Church two great Pontiffs, Pius VII and Gregory XVI, as well as a whole array of blesseds and saints. Yet from his youth, Romuald had been attracted to the consecrated life. He sought silence and sacrifice. A turning point in Romuald’s life was when his father killed a relative in a duel at which Romuald was forced to be present. He then fled to the monastery of St. Apollinaris and did penance and fasting for forty days, assuming responsibility for the sins of his father and begging for forgiveness. He prayed and wept almost without ceasing. So was the purity of his heart, and sincerity of repentance, that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and his faith deepened. He eventually became a monk at the Abby, later becoming Abbot. Romuald went on to found several monasteries throughout Italy, but he longed for an even more austere life than that of the Benedictines. He founded an order of hermits known as the Camaldolese monks (an Italian branch of the Benedictine Order). Romuald’s was one of the strictest orders for men in the West. Members lived isolated in small huts, observing strict silence and perpetual fasting, constantly praying or doing manual labor. The Life of St Romuald notes that the saint was totally enraptured by silence and solitude with God: “Contemplation of God enraptured him so forcefully that, almost blinded by tears and burning with an indescribable fire of love for God, he would cry out, `Dear Jesus, peace of my heart, ineffable desire, sweetness and gentleness of the angels and saints…’” St. Romuald brought many sinners, particularly those of rank and power, back to God. He died in 1027, having lived a life of prayer and rigorous penance. He had never used a bed and had found countless ways to practice severe penances, such as wearing a shirt of hair and eating only gruel. 15 years later, his pupil, St. Peter Damian, wrote in his biography: “His greatness lies in the rigorous and austere character of his interpretation of monastic life-an approach that was quite singular and unique. In the deepest recesses of his being, Romuald was an ascetic, a monk …He reminds us of the stolid figures inhabiting the Eastern deserts, men who by most rigorous mortification and severest self-inflicted penances gave a wanton world a living example of recollection and contemplation. Their very lives constituted the most powerful sermon.” Saint Romuald’s body was buried at the monastery in Paranzo. Three decades later, his incorrupt body was transferred to Fabriano in 1481. Many miracles have been reported at his tomb in the Cathedral of Fabriano. The Order he founded continues to operate today, with five congregations. The most austere of those, the hermits, continue to live like St. Romuald—strict adherence to silence and prayer for the reparation of the sins of mankind.

“Destroy yourself and live only in God.” – Saint Romuald

Ideas for celebrating this feast at home:

  • In honor of the place (Tuscany) where St. Romuald founded an order of hermits, make a Tuscan White Bean & Garlic Soup for dinner tonight (recipe here). Perhaps give up dessert as a small penance, in honor of this saint who is known for living a life full of penance.
  • Read more about St. Romuald here.
  • Spend some time reading the Psalms in silence like St. Romuald. When we pray, St. Romuald said that our bodies, hearts, souls, and minds should be focused solely on God: “Better to pray one psalm with devotion and compunction than a hundred with distraction.”
  • Write or print out your favorite passage from Psalms. Tape it on your bathroom mirror, in your car, or someplace you’ll see it every day to ponder and meditate upon.

(sources: catholicculture.org; excerpts from The Church’s Year of Grace by Pius Parsch)

11 June: Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus & 12 June: Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

by | Jun 1, 2021 | CIC Saint Writeups

11 June: Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. This Solemnity is celebrated on the Friday after the Feast of Corpus Christi. The Sacred Heart is depicted as a flaming heart surrounded by a crown of thorns, with a cross on top and bleeding from a wound. (It is often displayed with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is also on fire, surrounded by a crown of flowers and pierced by a sword.) This feast was celebrated in seventeenth century France at the request of St. John Eudes. But the history of this devotion goes much farther back; it was highlighted by the fathers of the Church, including Origen, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Hippolytus, St. Irenaeus, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Cyprian. This devotion was also given form in the 12th century by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in his famous “O Sacred Head Surrounded.” In 1673, Jesus appeared to a French nun, St. Margaret Mary­­ Alacoque. He told her that he wished to be honored in Eucharistic adoration during a holy hour on Thursdays, that he desired a feast day devoted to his Sacred Heart, and that he desired the faithful to receive Holy Communion on first Fridays. It took years, but eventually devotion to the Sacred Heart spread throughout the world. In 1856, Pope Pius IX established the Feast of the Sacred Heart as obligatory for the whole Church.

12 June: Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In the midst of WWII, Pope Pius XII put the whole world under the protection of our Savior’s Mother by consecrating it to her Immaculate Heart. He decreed that the Church should celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary so as to obtain by her intercession “peace among nations, freedom for the Church, the conversion of sinners, the love of purity and the practice of virtue” (Decree of May 4, 1944). This is not a new devotion; in the seventeenth century, St. John Eudes preached it together with that of the Sacred Heart; in the nineteenth century, Pius VII and Pius IX allowed a feast of the Pure Heart of Mary. In Scripture, Simeon’s prophecy portrayed Mary with her heart pierced with a sword; and at the foot of the Cross, we are shown the Heart of Mary. Mary was not merely passive at the crucifixion, “she cooperated through charity” as St. Augustine says, “in the work of our redemption.”

Both of these feasts use the heart as a symbol of love. In the Sacred Heart, the emphasis is on God’s love and mercy. Love so intense that the symbol is a human heart encircled with a crown of thorns, crowned with a cross, and radiating flames: this is how much Christ loves us. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart stems from Mary’s privileged status as the Mother of God. She provides a model for what our own hearts should look like. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is one of gratitude for Jesus’ great love for us; devotion to the Immaculate Heart indicates our desire to emulate the way in which Mary loves Jesus.

Ideas for celebrating these feast days at home:

(sources: teachingcatholickids.com; The Catholic All Year Compendium; Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913 ed.; catholicculture.org)