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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Auteur(s): Fr. Michael Black
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 "Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black Christianisme Pastorale et évangélisme Spiritualité
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  • August 1: Saint Alphonsus Ligouri, Bishop and Doctor

    August 1: Saint Alphonsus Ligouri, Bishop and Doctor
    Jul 31 2025
    August 1: Saint Alphonsus Ligouri, Bishop and Doctor
    1696–1787
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of moral theologians and confessors

    A lawyer becomes holy

    Today’s saint was given the gift of a comprehensive education by his parents from a young age. He finished his university studies with degrees in civil and canon law when he was just sixteen years old. After practicing law for eight years, and declining a marriage arranged by his father, the noble, highly educated, and intelligent Alphonsus made a mistake. A bad mistake. He overlooked a simple matter of fact in a legal proceeding and lost an important case for his client. Alphonsus was crushed by the embarrassment. He had never made such a galling, avoidable, public error before. But this one mistake would redound to the great benefit of the Church. Alphonsus decided to abandon the practice of law and his lust for vanity, wealth, and earthly glory. Shortly afterward, he heard an inner voice speak to him, on two separate occasions, while visiting the deathly ill at a hospital: “Leave the world and give yourself to me.” This was the turning point. Alphonsus made a dramatic gesture. He went to a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, placed his sword on the altar, and petitioned acceptance to a local religious Order.

    He was ordained a priest in 1726 and travelled throughout the region of Naples as a missionary, becoming well known as a lion in the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional. In 1732, after forming various friendships with local clergy and convents of nuns, he founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. The rest of Alphonsus’ long life was spent building up this Order. Like so many nascent Orders, it struggled with internal divisions over its identity, matters of authority, and its specific mission in the Church. These struggles caused our saint no end of spiritual torment, especially after a deep division resulted from an act of forgery and betrayal by one of Alphonsus’ closest priest collaborators.

    Saint Alphonsus took a personal vow to never waste a moment of time. It showed. He did everything, and he did it well. Amidst all of his duties as a founder and priest, he stole an hour hour here and an hour there to write a page or two, to dictate a few lines, or to take rough notes on a train of thought that had just crossed his mind. Over time, these stolen hours accumulated, and Alphonsus composed volume after volume on theology and devotion. He became particularly well known as a moral theologian. In that sensitive field of study, he acquired just the right balance. He was clear on the Church’s teachings and demanding of its faithful but was not overly rigorous. His razor-thin moral distinctions clarified correct behavior on contentious topics but may seem belabored and overly detailed from a post-modern perspective. Alphonsus was personally scrupulous but aware of it. He never imposed his finely tuned conscience on the morally deaf. A Pontifical University in Rome dedicated to moral theology was founded by the Redemptorists and is named the Alphonsianum in his honor.

    Saint Alphonsus was made a bishop, over his objections, when he was sixty-six years old. He brought his typical energy and zeal to his diocesan responsibilities, demanding his priests celebrate Mass with true devotion or not at all. He maintained contact with every class of society as a bishop, no matter how downtrodden, poor, or forgotten a group was. His works on the Blessed Sacrament, the Virgin Mary, and Prayer became widely read. His reflections on the Stations of the Cross are still used in many parishes over two hundred years after his death. Alphonsus was also a talented musician and composed the music and words for a beloved Italian Christmas carol. After a long and holy life, he died at the age of ninety-one, an image of the Virgin Mary resting in his hands.

    Saint Alphonsus, may your life of spiritual suffering, writing, dedication to the truth, and apostolic energy provide sufficient witness for all priests and religious to do half as much as you did, laboring without cease for the good of the Church and the world.
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    6 min
  • July 31: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Priest

    July 31: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Priest
    Jul 30 2025
    July 31: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Priest
    1491–1556
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of soldiers, retreats, and the Basque country

    A soldier reads, becomes holy, and founds a mighty company

    Like so many other male saints, today’s saint began his adult life as a knight and soldier. In the service of a local noble, he learned the male sins that armies and royal courts excel in teaching: gambling, fighting, treachery, and womanizing. When courageously defending a fortress in Pamplona, Spain, Ignatius was hit by a cannonball. One leg was shattered and the other badly damaged. A long and painful recovery ensued. During this convalescence, he consciously decided to exchange his service from an earthly to a divine Lord. Yet Ignatius’ initial conversion developed, over time, into something far more subtle. As he moved toward the Priesthood, Ignatius engaged in profound reflection on the nature of Christian self-awareness, on prayer, and on what it meant to be radically committed to Christ and the Church.

    For all of his worldliness and martial experience, Ignatius’ conversion started, ironically, with books. To counter the endless boredom of his recovery, he began to read about Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, and other saints. He wondered if he could be like them. And then he wondered, a minute later, if he could court and marry a beautiful woman he desired. And then he was carried away thinking about new military expeditions. And on and on his mind wandered, as most minds do. But then came a spiritual breakthrough.

    Ignatius reflected on reflection and thought about his thoughts. He plumbed his own depths, in the tradition of Saint Augustine, and analyzed the “shelf life” and quality of his emotions and mental experiences long after they had passed. He observed that reading the lives of the saints and thinking about earthly adventures were both pleasurable. But as time passed, reflection on holy things did not dissipate, while thoughts of earthly pleasures did. Saint Ignatius’ astute spiritual self-reflections spurred him to change the entire trajectory of his life. He wanted permanent happiness. He wanted joy. He repented of his past sins and decided to walk the way of the saints.

    Saint Ignatius documented his spiritual progress, eventually publishing his insights in his classic, the Spiritual Exercises. Other saints and mystics had previously written sophisticated reflections on the normal objects of Catholic devotion. But Ignatius focused on the subject of prayer—the human person—as well as on the object of prayer—God. The mystery of God was equalled by the mystery of man. Ignatius was an innovator in describing the psychological process of praying, in advocating for a systematic examination of conscience, and in encouraging a planned method of introducing into the imagination specific biblical scenes or other objects of Christian faith for reflection. The Spiritual Exercises taught the Christian to profit from himself.

    Saint Ignatius had an eventful life of wide travel, study, and apostolic activity after his conversion. His high ideals and creative leadership drew throngs of impressive followers. He chose a military name for his new order—the Company of Jesus. By the time of his death, this Company was widespread and continued its meteoric growth long after his passing to become the preeminent Catholic Order of men in the world. It is not too much to say that the Jesuits saved Europe from Protestantism, evangelized entire countries by themselves, educated the higher classes of many nations for centuries, and taught a Catholic humanism of the highest caliber. “One man and God make an army,” a saint once said. Ignatius supplied the soldiers, and God did the rest.

    Saint Ignatius, may your method and example of prayer, mortification, and study inspire all modern apostles to make Christ the destination and the path, the end and the means, the way, the truth, and the life.
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    6 min
  • July 30: Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor

    July 30: Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor
    Jul 29 2025
    July 30: Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor
    c. 380–c. 450
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Imola, Italy, invoked against fever and mad dogs

    A golden tongued bishop preaches to a golden city

    In 330 A.D., the Emperor Constantine transferred his capital from Rome to a newly constructed city he named after himself in present day Turkey. The Roman Empire and its ancient traditions continued but under a new guise. The Empire slowly oriented itself toward Greek, not Western, art and culture; adopted Orthodoxy, not Catholicism, as its religion; and communicated in the Greek, not the Latin, language. Contantinople’s walls were finally breached in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks, bringing a definitive end to Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, after more than a millennium. Due to the capital’s transfer in the fourth century, Italy was in disarray at the time of today’s saint in the fifth century. Weeds pushed through the cracked marble of Rome’s ruined temples. The Western emperors, more warlords than kings, migrated back and forth throughout the 400s between disintegrating Rome and a newly fortified city on the Adriatic Sea. It was imperial Ravenna, Byzantium’s sole toehold in Italy. It was a jewel box of a city sparkling with mosaics. Ravenna throughout the 400s and 500s was a mini-Constantinople, Byzantine to its fingertips, basking in the glow of imperial splendor, and abuzz with the construction of palaces, churches, and mausoleums. And it was of vibrant fifth-century Ravenna that Saint Peter Chrysologus was appointed archbishop in about 425 A.D. He served the city well for the next twenty-five years.

    Saint Peter preached his first episcopal homily to the empress and is depicted alongside her and the emperor in a contemporary mosaic, proving Peter mingled with the elites and enjoyed their support. Peter developed a reputation as a skilled preacher. One-hundred-and-seventy-six of his sermons still survive. In later centuries Peter would be given the moniker Chrysologus, the “Golden Worded,” in recognition of his oratorical skills. The name may also have been given by Western theologians to purposefully rival the Eastern world’s famous Saint John Chrysostom, the “Golden Mouthed.”

    Apart from his homilies, the only surviving document of Peter’s is a letter he wrote to Eutyches, a central figure in the complex, and sometimes vicious, Christological and Marian debates of the fifth century. Peter vigorously supported Pope Saint Leo the Great’s teachings on the Incarnation, while Eutyches and others in the East had drifted into monophysitism or versions of it. Monophysitism held that Christ possessed one mixed nature which mingled both human and divine elements. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 would formally adopt Leo’s teaching, condemn monophysitism, and teach forever and always that a fully divine nature and a fully human nature dwelled inside the one person of Jesus Christ without confusion, co-mingling, or alteration. This complex reality, called the hypostatic union, is precisely what gives such meaning, color, and richness to all that Christ said and did.

    During the burning theological controversies preceding the Council of Chalcedon, just after Pope Saint Leo clarified orthodox teaching on Christ’s one person and two natures, Chrysologus wrote his letter to the very confused Eutyches. Concisely and charitably, Chrysologus encouraged the heretic to submit to the Bishop of Rome: “Obediently heed these matters of which the most blessed Pope of the city of Rome has written, because Blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his own See, proffers the truth of faith to those who seek it…we cannot decide upon cases of faith without the harmonious agreement of the Bishop of Rome.” Peter’s letter proves just how widespread early Christianity knew that the Bishop of Rome was the one hub where all of Christianity’s many spokes were joined.

    Although much is known of Peter’s time and place, both theologically and culturally, few details remain of his life or ministry apart from his sermons. These sermons show rhetorical flair in expounding on the Incarnation, Mary’s role in mankind’s redemption, and in the need for penance and conversion. Saint Peter’s golden words impressed the populace of a golden city for decades. We can assume that our saint lived as elegantly as he preached. Saint Peter Chrysologus was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1729.

    May all priests and deacons be graced with your passion, clarity, and eloquence, Saint Peter. Help the faithful who seek the fullness of the Word of God to find Him and aid those who are distracted and apathetic to pay heed to God’s interventions in their lives.
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    6 min
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