Catholic Saints & Feasts

August 12: Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, Religious
1572–1641
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of widows and parents separated from their children

An aristocratic widow’s grief is transformed into love of God

Today’s saint was well born and acted like it. She was educated, refined, beautiful, witty, and wealthy. She married a baron, lived in his castle, and together they raised four children. But then tragedy struck like lightning. Her husband was killed in a hunting accident. Jane was a widow at just twenty-eight. She found it nearly impossible to forgive the man who had caused her husband’s death. Grief and anger consumed her. But in 1604 she heard a homily that she needed to hear, from a wise, holy bishop who spoke with great erudition, passion, and eloquence. It was the great Saint Francis de Sales on one of his endless tours across Southern France. He was in Dijon, Jane’s homeland, and she saw in him the embodiment of the spiritual guide whom God had promised her in a mysterious vision. The two bonded in a holy friendship not unknown among the saints and remained close until de Sales’ death.

Jane de Chantal wanted to become a nun, but Francis dissuaded her…for the time being. Once she had provided for her children and taken care of various practical matters, she was finally ready to uproot herself and move to Annecy, near Geneva, Switzerland, to start a Congregation of religious sisters. Her fourteen-year-old son was rightly perplexed at his mother’s decision to leave him for God, even though Jane had arranged for the boy to be cared for by Jane’s brother, a bishop. In one of history’s most poignant, yet humorous, illustrations of Christ’s commandment to leave father and mother and wife and children for Him, the boy dramatically blocked his mother’s departure for the convent by lying on the floor across the threshold of the door. A priest in the room asked Jane if her son’s tears would change her mind. “No,” Jane replied, “but still, I am a mother.” She cried, and then stepped over her son’s supine body, and left. Moved? Yes, definitely. Deterred? No. Not in the least.

Jane Frances de Chantal founded the Congregation of the Visitation in 1610. Its sisters were often women who had been unwelcome in other religious congregations due to illness, age, or the inability to live the strict life of penance and fasting required in most convents. The Visitation nuns’ initial active apostolates were eventually curtailed in favor of a cloistered existence based on the traditional rule of Saint Augustine. Saints Francis and Jane prized two virtues in their nuns above all others: humility and gentleness. The Annecy Visitation Convent grew into a magnet for Catholic aristocrats, princes, and princesses attracted to Jane’s practical savoir-faire, charm, gentility, and holiness.

After the death of Saint Francis de Sales in 1622, Jane destroyed all of the correspondence they had exchanged over the years. They were truly co-founders of the Visitation order and spiritual twins. Incredibly, another spiritual giant, Saint Vincent de Paul, replaced Francis de Sales as Jane’s spiritual director. Jane grew in holiness behind the walls of her cloister and developed a reputation as a saint, one which she rejected. After many physical and interior sufferings, she died a holy death, was beatified in 1751, and canonized in 1767. She was indeed rewarded by Christ a hundredfold for having cut ties with her family. There were eighty-six Visitation convents established by the time of Jane’s death, and the Order continued to expand after she died. Visitation convents are still present in many countries throughout the world. Saint Jane Frances de Chantal is buried in a sumptuous golden tomb in the Visitandine church in Annecy, just a few feet from the tomb of her holy mentor, Saint Francis de Sales.

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, your commitment to God grew out of grief over your husband’s untimely death. May we convert every sadness, loss, and trial in our lives toward the good, redirecting our hurts into an ever more intense love of God.

August 11: Saint Clare, Virgin
c. 1193–1253
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

Patron Saint of embroiderers, goldsmiths, and laundry workers

She heard Francis, left comfort, and slept on the floor for forty-one years

Silicon Valley is not, topographically, a valley. The name is a contrivance dating from the 1970s and 80s. The actual valley is named after today’s saint. Santa Clara Valley, running southeast from the southern shores of San Francisco Bay, was named after its beating heart, Mission Santa Clara de Asís—a church, school, and farm—founded by Franciscan Friars in 1777. The current mission church, a beautiful twentieth-century idealization of mission architecture, sits on the site of the original Mission structure and is the iconic campus centerpiece of Santa Clara University, California’s oldest. It’s likely that Saint Clare never left her convent in Assisi, Italy, for the last forty years of her life. Yet a valley, city, and university in far away California are named in her honor. That a medieval, cloistered, Catholic nun is still so present to a hyper-modern portion of the world is a testament to the global reach and cultural impact of Catholicism and the Franciscan order.

Clare of Assisi was born about a decade after and in the same small town as Saint Francis. Many of Clare’s earliest friends became nuns in her community, survived her, and gave testimony in her canonization process, reporting interesting details about her early life. Clare was from an economically comfortable family in the upper part of Assisi, in the neighborhood of the nobility. She had two younger sisters. Her mother was pious and had gone on long pilgrimages to holy shrines. Her household included knights and soldiers. From an early age she was interested in religious life and gave religious instruction to the many servants and others in her vast household.

Clare was a prize to her father, as eligible daughters were like pawns whose marriages could seal alliances with other noble families. An Assisi marriage broker testified, after Clare’s death, that he had approached Clare various times with offers of marriage from interested suitors. She turned him down each time and instead challenged the broker about the quality of his own Christian commitment. If Clare had never met Saint Francis, she may well have become a Benedictine nun in a convent for noble women, putting her education to good use in the copying of sacred manuscripts.

But she did meet Saint Francis, so her natural religiosity turned more radical. At the age of eighteen, Clare heard Francis preach in a local church and was deeply moved, as so many were, by his presence as much as his words. She began to meet with him privately to talk about the things of God and a new plan for her life. On Palm Sunday in Assisi, there was a tradition that eligible young ladies would process down the aisle of the Cathedral to receive a blessed palm branch from the Bishop’s own hands. Interested local bachelors showed up to watch this kind of sacred debutante parade. Clare was in the Cathedral on Palm Sunday 1212, but she did not process with all the others. Instead, the Bishop, known to history as Guido, descended the sanctuary steps and extended a palm to her as she remained in her pew. Christ would be her spouse. Her plan was about to unfold.

That very night, Palm Sunday 1212, Clare secretly fled her family home and, with Francis’ help, entered behind the barred doors of a local convent. She donned a rough habit, and her hair was shorn. The men in her family were alarmed and rushed to bring her home and to her senses. Clare would not budge. As they tried to drag her out of the chapel, she grabbed the altar as an anchor and tore its linens to the floor. The men finally recognized the law of sanctuary and retreated. Clare never deviated from the path she chose that Palm Sunday night. Her close, holy relationship with Francis would endure until his death. He was the leader, the giver, the essential figure. She provided support and allegiance.

Clare would go on to become the first woman to write a rule for other women. She became the foundress of all female Franciscan religious, who number in the tens of thousands today. She had an iron will, a great capacity for physical suffering, and lived a cloistered life of intense and continual prayer. For Clare and her spiritual progeny, the Poor Clares, religion was not primarily an internal disposition. Religion cannot be reduced to mere feelings, pious thoughts, or holy words. It is not a truly great and religious thing to separate the paper from the plastic in the recycle bin. It is a truly great and religious thing to go barefoot, to fast, to abstain from meat, to remain chaste, to wear a coarse habit against the skin, to pray long hours on your knees, to sleep on the floor, and to spend the night shivering in the cold. Such a life is for the few. But there are such few in the world, even today. Of their lives, nothing is counterfeit. Of Saint Clare’s life, nothing was counterfeit either.

Saint Clare of Assisi, you chose a radical form of love of God as a cloistered nun. May your example and your prayers inspire all Catholics, especially female religious, to organize their entire lives around God, His Son, and His Church.

August 10: Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
c. Early Third Century–258
Feast; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of deacons, comics, and cooks

A Deacon heads the Church for four days, then perishes like his fellow deacons

The Church’s liturgy, like all public rituals whether sacred or secular, is inherently conservative. Its form is not easily altered. Its content shapes, more than is shaped by, the Church and the wider culture. The liturgy moves through time like a great river moves through the land. It plows its own path, carving the terrain, gradually and incontrovertibly forming a new landscape. One generation is too few to notice, but a few generations pass and, suddenly, a river separates two families, a valley turns into a lake, a dam submerges a city, water destroys what once had been, and the world is different. Feast days and solemnities, most notably Christmas and Easter, shape entire cultures too: their calendars, music, food, festivals, dress, dance, language, art, architecture, and on and on. There is almost nothing that the liturgy and its calendar do not touch. Liturgy creates worlds.

Besides being culture creators, liturgical Feast Days also preserve the past for the present and the future. A Feast Day freezes time and preserves the memory of the world’s oldest mind—that of the Catholic Church. The Church does not suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. She is rejuvenated with every baptism and so is perpetually young, impervious to the dementia typical of great age. Today’s saint, the Deacon Lawrence, is celebrated with a Feast on the Church’s calendar, not just a memorial or an optional memorial. This liturgical fact is revelatory and beautiful. He was martyred so long, long ago. He is not Christ, Mary, or a pope. Yet he has a Feast Day! What is the past telling us by this? What is the Church’s calendar communicating to the faithful by this interesting fact?

This Feast opens the curtains on the events of August 258 as if they were as fresh as buns right out of the oven. Look and see the cast of characters. Emperor Valerian is to the side, sitting on his marble throne. An official reads the Emperor’s decree aloud: “All bishops, priests, and deacons are to be summarily executed.” Pope Sixtus II is roughly taken away by Valerian’s soldiers during Mass in the candlelight of a catacomb on August 6. Six of Rome’s seven deacons are killed with Sixtus. In accord with the Church’s theology, they were closer to their bishop than to any priest, so they die with him. The Church has been almost decapitated. There is only one deacon left. The hunt is on for Lawrence, the ranking head of the Church. He is found. He is martyred. It is August 10. The curtain closes.

In a tradition already ancient by the third century, Rome had seven deacons to minister to the material needs of the impoverished, widows, and orphans of Rome. Lawrence excelled at this task, which he operated out of a house-church in Central Rome. When the popular and well-loved Lawrence died, he was venerated with a fervor unlike almost any other early martyr. His cult spread like the fire that tradition says roasted him alive. Devotion to him spread as far north as Scandinavia, England, and Germany. Traditions large and small abounded.

The details of his martyrdom are incomplete. But holy legends have supplied what documents could not, and none of them are illogical, mythic, or banal. They might contain the essential facts—he was burned alive on a gridiron. Lawrence was buried just outside the walls of ancient Rome, where a minor basilica, also the burial site of Pope Pius IX, still stands. Numerous other churches in Rome are dedicated to his memory, including the house-church where he ministered. The current church on the site is, to this day, still enclosed inside of a larger building just as the house-church was. The deacon-martyr Lawrence gave a witness so powerful to Rome that his death may have been the no-going-back-moment which proved that Christianity was here to stay, forever, in the capital of the world.

Saint Lawrence, may your example inspire all clergy, and especially deacons, to remain close to both their bishops and their people, providing faithful witness to the truths of our faith, which are worth living and dying for.

August 8: Saint Dominic, Priest
c. 1170–1221
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of the Dominican Republic, astronomers, and the falsely accused

A one-man army for God; long practice taught him how to preach the Truth

Today’s saint and Saint Francis of Assisi were close contemporaries. They both founded influential religious orders, collaborated with the same popes and cardinals, and were canonized soon after their deaths. Francis remains a rich, technicolor, three-dimensional figure even many centuries after his death. Dominic, on the contrary, is a shadow. Francis jumps off the page. Dominic is found between the lines. No cult of personality developed around Dominic as it did around Francis. Yet whereas Francis was unsuited to leadership and perplexed by organizational necessities, Dominic quietly excelled in every area. Because of Dominic’s skills, his well-structured order had none of the grave problems that almost doomed Franciscanism. Dominic’s personality retreats behind the hum and whistle of the order that embodied his vision.

Dominic, born in Spain, spent many years dedicated to his university studies before accompanying a local bishop on a royal errand that took them across Europe, including through Southern France. In the city of Toulouse, France, Dominic had his first encounter with the Cathars, a heretical sect of rigorist purists on the margins of Christianity. Dominic would spend the better part of ten years of his short life strategically contemplating and implementing a pastoral plan to bring the Cathars back into the arms of Mother Church.

Dominic concluded very early on in this missionary endeavor that the witness of priests had to be more authentic for them to be effective among the Cathars. No more traveling by horse. No more nice meals. No more inns. No more beds. No more shoes. The priests who went to the Cathars must beg like the Cathar holy men. They must walk, not ride, like the Cathar holy men. They must go barefoot, fast, pray, be humble, wear simple clothes, and live strict chastity and celibacy like the Cathar holy men. Then, and only then, would the Cathars listen to the priests. The Cathars listened to Dominic. He had been practicing these many disciplines rigorously and joyfully for many years. He was the very icon of a holy, authentic priest. Dominic, in short, had credibility, and his learning was self-evident in his preaching. Nonetheless, Dominic’s pastoral efforts, in the end, had to cede to the religious violence so common to the time. Church and state authorities ran out of patience, and the Cathars were ruthlessly crushed in their vice.

His many years of heading a band of educated preachers amidst a difficult pastoral situation equipped Dominic for leadership and gave him a strong sense of how sound theology impacted pastoral practice. Loving God was not like going on a blind date. The Church provided the faithful with the tools to know God, not just know about Him. The Church gave the faithful concrete means to love God, not just to talk vaguely about loving Him. Dominic knew the truth and how to present it, by word and example, effectively. By 1215 he had received papal permission to lead his own group of preachers. That same year, he attended the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome to solidify his canonical position.

From 1215 until his death, Dominic traveled, organized, recruited, and planned. He was driving the foundations of his order deep into theological and canonical bedrock. Amidst this tornado of activity, he lived perfect poverty, chastity, obedience, humility, and charity. He was known to often say “Whoever governs the passions is master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.”

He shared the fruits of his contemplation in every conversation and encouraged his brothers to do the same. His poverty was such that when he died in Bologna, in his early fifties, he lay in someone else’s bed, because he didn’t have one of his own, and was wearing another man’s habit, because his own had crumbled to pieces. The Dominican Order exploded with growth during Dominic’s lifetime. It is still today one of the Church’s preeminent, and truly global, Orders dedicated to scholarship, preaching, education, publishing, and evangelization. If causes are known by their effects, Saint Dominic was a relentless one-man army for God.

Saint Dominic, your dedication to the truths of the Catholic faith gives beautiful witness to the faithful. Help us to emulate your poverty, charity, and chastity in our daily lives and to strive to obtain your erudition and verve in evangelizing others in our words and deeds.

August 7: Saint Cajetan, Priest
1480–1547
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of Argentina, the unemployed, and gamblers

A reformer before his time

Gaetano di Conte di Thiene, today’s saint, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he spit it out. His father was a count, his family noblemen, and his status and wealth secure. Gaetano studied theology and law and became a senator of his city-state. When he went to Rome, he rose straight to the top and became a functionary in the curia of Pope Julius II. But he secretly desired more—meaning that he desired less. It was not his calling to use his education, position, and family contacts to rise ever higher in the church and society. He wanted a more intense encounter with God, so when Pope Julius died in 1513, Gaetano resigned his papally appointed office and studied for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1516, in his mid-thirties, a late vocation by the standards of his own time or even today.

After ordination, Father Cajetan returned to Northern Italy, his native land, and joined a confraternity of devout men. The men of the confraternity were from the lower rungs of society, signaling Cajetan’s break with his own family’s privileged background. He then began a life-time of service to the sick and poor in various hospitals and distinguished himself by caring for the most hopelessly ill patients. Father Cajetan’s negative personal experiences of the Church of his era, and of priests specifically, were, unfortunately, common. He was scandalized by the tepid spirituality and lax morals of some clerics and saw the need for an ecclesial cleansing.

Father Cajetan saw exactly, or even more of, what Father Martin Luther saw in the same span of years and in the same exact city—Rome—but Cajetan had a far different reaction than Luther. There was no reason to sever a limb from the body of Mother Church. Cajetan sought to transform, not to rupture. He desired purification, not reformation. A different Cajetan from Italy, an erudite Cardinal but not a saint, would debate Luther in Augsburg at a pivotal point in the early Reformation. Our saint didn’t debate the finer points of philosophy and theology like Cardinal Cajetan, although that was certainly needed. Saint Cajetan’s response to the need for purification in the Church was to purify himself and to invite other priests to join him.

In 1523 Father Cajetan went to Rome to dedicate himself to the renewal of the clergy along with some like-minded friends. They founded a small Congregation named after Theate, the city where one of the co-founders was a bishop. The four founding members of the Theatines were all well-educated noblemen, including one who would later become Pope Paul IV. In 1524 they exchanged their robes of honor for humble habits and professed vows in St. Peter’s Basilica. Their charism was to preach correct doctrine, to care for the sick, to encourage frequent reception of the Sacraments, and to restore love of poverty, knowledge of Scripture, and dignified liturgical practice among priests. The Theatines spread throughout Italy doing pastoral work and serving heroically among the sick. Cajetan also engaged in some creative pastoral ministry late in his life by establishing Christian pawnshops which granted loans to the poor, saving the vulnerable from rapacious money lenders.

Saint Cajetan and the Theatines were eventually eclipsed, however, by the more dynamic Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his powerhouse Order, the Jesuits. Saint Cajetan died disappointed at the lumbering pace of the on-again, off-again Council of Trent. He is among that second tier of lesser known saints of the early sixteenth century who spurred the Church to change by their ardor for God and their lives of high virtue. The Council of Trent would not have gathered except for Cajetan and numerous others like him. Great reformers are really purifiers, and they come before, not after, Councils. Our saint was canonized in 1671, and his Theatine Order continues, although only in pockets.

Saint Cajetan, you gave a powerful witness of moral rectitude and of creative apostolic effort. Inspire all priests to live their sacred callings to the full, to purify themselves before they purify others, and to be absolutely dedicated to the truths of the faith.

August 7: Saint Sixtus II, Pope; and Companions, Martyrs
Early Third Century–258
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saint of Bellegra, Italy

The Pope is murdered in cold blood

The sixth pope was named the “Sixth” or, in Latin, “Sixtus.” He reigned from 115–125 A.D. The next Sixtus was today’s martyr, who reigned from one August to the next in 257–258. Sixtus II (or Sixth, the Second) is listed in the Roman Canon’s select roll call of sainted popes: “Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian…” The preservation of his name in the liturgy is compelling proof of the lasting impact of his bloody witness. After the legalization of Christianity in 313, perhaps two popes were martyred, although various others died unnatural deaths. But throughout the 200s, solid historical evidence proves that more than a dozen popes were assassinated by Roman authorities just for being Christian leaders. Many of their remains were interred in an ornate burial chamber in the catacombs of Saint Callixtus, which was excavated in the 1850s.

Sixtus II succeeded to the Chair of Saint Peter at a difficult time. The on-again, off-again persecutions of the early Church were on-again in the 250s. The Roman Emperors Decius and Valerian sought the blood of Christians not only to try to decapitate the surging Church but also to confiscate the wealth and property of Christians. The tensions in Church-State relations were no less serious than internal Church tensions tearing at its unity. The persecution of Decius from 250–251 was wicked. Decius’ edict required everyone in the empire to sacrifice to a Roman god in the presence of a state official, with a signed libellus, or certificate, being issued afterward as proof that the sacrifice had been offered. Many Christians were weak and afraid and so sacrificed to gods they knew didn’t exist. Some Christians purchased a libellus, some fled to the safety of the countryside, and some refused to sacrifice and were cruelly martyred.

Christians’ divergent responses to the persecution—some heroic, some weak, some uncertain—were traumatic for the Church. Many in the African and Asiatic Church said that those who sacrificed (the lapsi) must be re-baptized. Pope Stephen I, Sixtus II’s predecessor, said that the lapsi must only repent to be reconciled with the Church. The theological positions of the two camps were each sincere and hardened over time. There was no easy answer. After Pope Stephen died, it seems that Pope Sixtus II was more diplomatic in seeking reconciliation with the African and Asiatic churches over this controversy, although it would not be theologically resolved until Saint Augustine wrote one hundred and fifty years later.

Sixtus II had to be consecrated as Pope in secret because of the times. In 257, the formerly peaceable Emperor Valerian issued an anti-Christian edict which forbade Christians from assembling in cemeteries. Sixtus avoided persecution for many months. But in early August 258, Valerian got serious. A new edict focused on essential targets. Bishops, priests, and deacons could be put to death without a trial. On August 6, 258, Pope Sixtus II was with his flock, seated and preaching the word of God, probably at Mass, in the catacombs. A small troop of soldiers was on the hunt. The Pope must die. With torches lighting the way, the soldiers scurried through the warren of dark and narrow passageways toward the underground chapel. Perhaps they heard some singing. They acquired their prize soon enough, and the deed was done.

Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, North Africa, received the news shortly afterward and, before being martyred himself, wrote a letter to his flock: “Valerian has issued an edict to the Senate to the effect that bishops, presbyters, and deacons shall suffer the death penalty without delay…I must also inform you that Sixtus was put to death in a catacomb on the sixth of August, and four deacons with him...Let all our people fix their minds not on death but rather on immortality...knowing that in this contest the soldiers of God and Christ are not slain but rather win their crowns.” An inscription placed on Sixtus II’s tomb over a hundred years after his death by Pope Saint Damasus, rediscovered in the 1800s, verifies the drama of Sixtus II’s last moments. It notes that the shepherd gave his life for his flock. The faithful with Sixtus that fateful day walked up the steps of the catacomb into the daylight totally unharmed, while their pastor lay dead. The companions martyred with Sixtus were the deacons Januarius, Vincentius, Magnus, and Stephanus. The deacons Felicissimus and Agapitus were martyred on the same day, but not with Pope Sixtus.

Pope Saint Sixtus II, you were a servant and a leader; a confident shepherd to a frightened flock; a central actor, not a bystander; a witness to truth, not an outside observer; a light generating others’ shadows. You are known because you were courageous. Make us faithful like you.

August 6: The Transfiguration of the Lord
First Century
Feast; Liturgical Color: White

A preview of coming attractions, our destination is a person more than a place

It was not a miracle that Jesus Christ transfigured Himself on Mount Tabor before the Apostles. It was a miracle that He maintained His common, earthly appearance for the whole of His life. It was a miracle that His face was not glowing like the sun as He walked the hills and valleys of the Holy Land. Christ’s normality, His sustained suppression of His divine radiance, was a miracle of humility, of slavish devotion to His vocation to incarnate, teach, suffer, and die for mankind.

The Christian believes in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting in that body. We believe this because of the appearances of the risen Christ after His resurrection, because of His bodily Ascension into heaven, because the gospels specifically mention the empty tomb, and because of the events of today’s feast. The Transfiguration shows the splendor of truth. It is a peek into the life of heaven, where we see that Christ will not shed His human skin. Christ will bring His humanity to heaven and glorify it. This exaltation of flesh and blood is one reason why the Church has such immense respect for the human body.

The Church’s understanding is contrasted by two extreme views on its flanks: one overly spiritualizing man, and the other overly materializing him. The religions of the Orient stress the inner life of man to such an extent that they see him as a pure spirit caged in the body, glad to escape the confining carcass at death. From this Oriental perspective, the body is a trap for the soul. On the other flank is the Western materialist view. It sees the body as having priority over the soul to such an extent that physical, sensory experience is the best, and only, path to knowledge. This Western lens sees the body as a sensory sponge meant to soak up as many external experiences—pleasure, music, travel, conversation, food—as possible. If you don’t experience something yourself, you can’t assess its truth or value. This personalizing of existence reduces all reality to “me” and leads to cultural breakdown.

But neither an excessively spiritual approach nor an excessively material understanding does the body justice. A balanced understanding of the relationship between the body and soul is a hallmark of traditional Christianity. When Christ reveals His glory, He doesn’t point a long, bony finger to a colorful rainbow on the horizon. He doesn’t puff His cheeks and blow a strong rush of wind on the Apostles’ faces. And He doesn’t sit down and start playing soothing melodies on a harp. Christ shows the Apostles the truth by showing them Himself. He shows them His arms and legs and torso and face and hair. It’s a real body. Jesus gives us a target to aim for. He shows us that the destination is Himself. We desire heaven because Jesus is there. If He were not there, then heaven would not be heaven. He, not a place, is the true destination.

A mystery is not something we can know nothing about but something we can’t know everything about. A comprehensible God would not be God, but an entirely opaque God would also be too remote for us to care. Catholicism’s theology of the body has a beautiful equilibrium because our God is knowable and yet mysterious. Food, drink, dancing, smoking, romance, music, and beauty are not sins. The body is good, and God took one Himself as proof of that. But while nature is the source of human operations, a person operates them. So the person prevails over the tools he uses. The body, then, must ultimately be a servant. We are enfleshed souls. In heaven, hopefully, we will be most truly us and have our ideal body. Every man and woman will be transfigured like Christ and radiate the glory of the Trinity in heaven, like a white sheet on the line radiates the sun shining behind it.

Lord of the Transfiguration, Your glorified body gives us hope of the glories to come in heaven, where You will be the destination. May Your glorified body inspire all Christians to live well their body-soul uniqueness on earth until they are perfected in heaven through You.

August 5: Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major
Fifth century
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

A venerable basilica preserves its ancient aura

A house is more than a building. When it personifies the family within, it is a home. Or at least it should be. That an office building contains businesses; a house—a family; a barracks—soldiers; and a hotel—guests, is merely to cite particular instances of the architectural credo that “form follows function.” Buildings look like what they do. When they don’t, everyone suffers from the incongruities. A modern sports stadium doesn’t look like a gothic cathedral, because the two architectural forms have two different functions: to entertain or to worship God. Today’s feast commemorates a building, not a person. It is a memorial to the “baptism,” or dedication, of one of the oldest churches in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Basilica of St. Mary Major (meaning the “greater” or “larger” church of St. Mary) was first built in the 350s, in the decades after the legalization of Christianity in 313, when the Church could finally build big. After the Council of Ephesus’ dogmatic definitions on Mary as the God-bearer in 431, the Basilica was restored and rededicated.

Of the four major basilicas in Rome, St. Mary Major most retains the atmosphere, the “feel,” of antiquity. The sites of the Basilicas of St. Peter and St. John Lateran are ancient, but the present baroque structures date from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. And the ancient, Paleo-Christian Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls burned almost entirely to the ground in 1823. The present structure is an impressive replica, but relatively modern. The fourth-century core of St. Mary Major is, however, intact. It has been embellished, added to, and redecorated over the centuries. Nevertheless, it is to Christian Rome what the Pantheon is to pagan Rome—a complete, entire, and unscathed survivor from a built environment which has otherwise disappeared.

For Catholics, every church is a Domus Dei, a house of God. Whether it is full of one thousand souls, or silent and empty, it is a house of God. A church does not just keep one warm when it is cold, or dry when it is wet. A church does not become such only on Sunday. A church is more than a shelter, just like a home is more than a house. A good church is theology in stone. It reflects the truths it teaches in its very shape, in its steps, in its arches, windows, doors, lighting, marble, statues, mosaics, floors, and altars. Every Catholic church should be able to pass the “deaf test.” That is, when a hearing-impaired person enters a church, he or she should be able to easily understand what that church is teaching without hearing a single word from the pulpit or one verse sung from the choir. A religion’s hierarchy of truths should be expressed, in a confident and certain manner, by the structure where that religion’s faithful gather to worship God. One should understand with the eyes. It is not for the Catholic to “shiver in the barn of the Reformation,” as one theologian wrote, and to guess what the building is trying to say.

If God himself were to pull open the immense doors of St. Mary Major, one imagines He would walk down the central nave, look to his His right and to His left, smile, and slowly nod His head in pleasure and agreement. There, in an ornate chapel to the right, is Pope Saint Pius V. “How well he guided the rudder of my ship on earth.” There, under the altar, are the bones of Saint Jerome. “Oh cantankerous Jerome, you gave my Church the definitive text of my Word.” There, below the high altar, is a relic of the manger of Christ. “And there it all started. Resting in that wood, My Son brought the Old Testament to an end.” And on and on and on: saints, popes, the Virgin, the tabernacle, the confessionals, the Stations of the Cross. God the Father would not be a stranger in St. Mary Major. He would feel at home, surrounded by the things, signs, pictures, and emblems of the family life of the Universal Church.

Rome is a small planet of art and beauty. The density of artistic treasures in St. Mary Major, and so many other Roman churches, exercises a gravitational pull drawing all those enamored with God and His beauty toward the sacred core of the eternal city.

Holy Trinity, our worship of You is a matter of justice more than charity. We owe You reverence in the same way a child owes honor to his parents. Our love is inflamed by the sacred beauty of churches where You, Mary, and the saints are honored with such effusions of human genius.

August 4: Saint John Vianney, Priest
1786–1859
Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Patron Saint of parish priests

A farmer knows God through prayer, not books, and becomes a holy priest

“Is Mr. Vianney good?” the Vicar General asked. “He is a model of goodness,” the seminary official responded. “Very well. Then let him be ordained.” And thus the last obstacle was removed from the long and winding path to Holy Orders of John Marie Vianney. Young John had difficulty learning Latin, and all seminary courses were in Latin. He had difficulty, in fact, learning anything. He had received almost no primary school education. His father needed John’s rough hands on the plow to work the soil of the family farm. Education was a luxury, and poor families had no such luxuries. Schooling was for others. After deciding to enter the seminary, John had to be privately tutored, was almost compelled to transfer to a less demanding diocese, was in and out of different seminaries, and finally personally interviewed to determine if his simplicity disqualified him from ordination. A man hears a call, but it’s the Church that responds “Yes” or “No.” The Vicar General—courageously, wisely, and correctly—answered, “Yes.” Saint John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, was ordained in 1815.

After a brief assignment as Vicar in the parish of a mentor, Father Vianney was made pastor of the parish in Ars, a small, dead-end village of farmers, seemingly dropped in the middle of a remote countryside. It was so tiny that, on his first visit, the new priest couldn’t find it without local help. When he first stepped foot in the parish, he dropped to his knees and kissed the ground. Father Vianney’s humble, servile gesture was known to Pope Saint John Paul II, who emulated it on every first visit he made to a country as Pope.

Father Vianney would spend the rest of his life, forty plus years, in Ars, burning his candle at both ends until there was nothing left to be consumed. His big heart enfolded the small town within itself. Father Vianney had a simple pastoral plan. His goal was that every single person in Ars go to Mass every single Sunday. Every. Single. Person. Every. Single. Sunday. To implement his plan, he acquainted himself with everyone, fasted and prayed, taught, and heard multiple hours of confessions every day. And he preached, unremittingly, about the fires of hell. If anyone thought there was no hell, then his sermons would have made no sense, because hell was his constant theme. His personality was not for everyone. He could seem fanatical, rough, and just a bit beyond zealous. But his total commitment, purity of life, and moral strictness were obvious. There was also that special something which only a saint has. Father Vianney had it. Like body language, which everyone can read but no one can explain, holiness surrounded him like an aura.

Crowds of people started coming to Ars just ten years into his time there. The nearest large city, Lyon, added trains to and from Ars to accommodate the crowds. Father Vianney himself was the destination of these pilgrimages, not Ars. Unusual spiritual phenomena added to the mystery. People were physically healed, and Father Vianney could read souls, see into the future, and prophecy. But his greatest gift was his own example of holiness. His pithy wisdom in the confessional was so sought after, the lines seeking his counsel so long, that he was made a prisoner of that sacramental box. Near the end of his life, people grabbed at his cassock to obtain a relic. And the night he finally succumbed to his pastoral burdens and died, the simple faithful stripped the bark from the trees in front of his rectory just to have a small chunk of something the holy man had looked at, or which his shadow had darkened. Father Vianney converted his parish one soul at a time using the perennial tools of the Church: prayer, fasting, the sacraments, and preaching.

Saint John Vianney, may your example of dedication to prayer and the sacraments provide an example of holiness to all parish priests so that they may embody for their parishioners the fundamental spiritual truths of our faith.

August 2: Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Priest
1811–1868
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
Apostle of the Holy Eucharist

The Eucharist was the pearl that shone in his eyes

The great artist Auguste Rodin, who sculpted “The Thinker” and other world-famous pieces, met today’s saint in 1862 and joined his Congregation as a lay brother. Rodin was despondent over the death of his sister and wanted to abandon art and dedicate his life to God. Saint Peter Julian Eymard burned like a bonfire for God, but this was one vocation his flames would not consume.

Father Eymard could see Rodin’s prodigious talent in an evocative bust Rodin sculpted of the future saint while Rodin was a religious brother. Eymard told Rodin to return to the world to pursue his artistic calling. So while Father Eymard was as apostolic and demanding as any saint, he was also just as wise as any saint. Not every man who felt a vocation truly had one. It was for the superior to discern the validity of the calling. Father Eymard knew this well from personal experience. He had lived at least three priesthoods inside of his one priesthood: as a diocesan priest in a parish, as a religious priest in the Marist Order, and as the founder of the Congregation of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

There was never a time when Peter Julian Eymard did not love Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. At the age of five, he disappeared from home one day. His siblings went in search and found him standing right next to the tabernacle in their local church. When they asked him what he was doing there, little Peter responded, “I am here listening to Jesus.” His father did not want Peter to be a priest but a blacksmith. He relented a bit over time and then died prematurely, removing all opposition. Peter was ordained a diocesan priest in 1834 and served in a parish. But he felt a slightly different call within his call and began to seek admission to the Society of Mary, or Marists. His diocesan bishop was reluctant to let Father Peter go. The bishop relented in 1839, writing to the Marist superior that “I have given sufficient proof of my high esteem for the Society of Mary in giving it such a priest.”

Father Peter’s personal energy, apostolic zeal, and prayerfulness led to his being named a Marist Provincial. He traveled throughout France and became acquainted with nocturnal and perpetual adoration societies. He became expert at preaching about the Eucharist and at directing lay Eucharistic societies. During a Corpus Christi procession in 1845, he had a mystical experience while carrying the Blessed Sacrament. His attraction to the Eucharist became so personal and so intense that he resolved “to preach nothing but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Eucharistic” from then on. Discussions with his superiors about orienting the Marist’s more toward a Eucharistic identity were frustrated. It was not their primary charism. On January 21, 1851, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fourviere overlooking Lyon, Father Eymard received the inspiration to found a new Order dedicated exclusively to the Blessed Sacrament. This third call within his one priestly call would consume the rest of his life.

In 1857 the Society of the Blessed Sacrament was formally established in Paris. One year later, the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament for nuns would be founded. Father Peter and his few companions did not limit their Eucharistic dedication to piety and prayer. They prepared children to receive First Holy Communion, reached out to lapsed Catholics, and promoted frequent reception of Holy Communion for all Catholics. The normal struggles of every young Congregation bedeviled Father Eymard: extreme poverty, atrocious lodgings, lack of vocations, and problems of growth.

Rodin’s bust captures the essence of Father Eymard better than any photo. Eymard’s mass of hair is out of control, communicating his passionate eccentricity. His gaze is penetrating. He knows the mysteries of God and other secrets of the soul. His thin face, straight nose, and protruding cheekbones say he is a mortified ascetic. And buried in his vest, just over his heart, is a scroll. Only a few words of it can be read. It is a fragment of Emyard’s prayer: “O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine.” His love of the Eucharist pulsated in sync with his heart, every moment of every day of his fifty-seven years. Our saint is buried in his Congregation’s chapel in Paris. He was canonized in 1962 and in 1995 his Optional Memorial was finally included in the Church’s universal sanctoral calendar.

Saint Peter Julian Eymard, your ardent love of the Blessed Sacrament consumed your thoughts, words, preaching, and life. May such a healthy devotion mark all of our lives. May we satisfy Christ’s thirst for our presence by not making Him wait too long between our visits.