Traditional Catholic Daily Devotional

• "Hell" — From the Assumption to Advent
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Saint John Leonardi was a pharmacist who became a priest, founded a religious order, and eventually helped lay the groundwork for the Church's worldwide missionary efforts.

He was born in 1541 near Lucca, Italy, and as a young man trained to become an apothecary. In those days, an apothecary was part pharmacist, part herbalist, and part medical adviser. John learned how to prepare medicines, treat illnesses, and care for people who came looking for help.

But the more he worked with the sick, the more he began thinking about another kind of healing.

The healing of souls.

At thirty-one, John was ordained a priest, and he immediately noticed something troubling. Many Catholics in Lucca knew surprisingly little about their faith. The Council of Trent had called for better religious instruction, but putting those reforms into practice was taking time.

John decided to do something about it.

He began gathering children and young people for catechism lessons. Before long, other priests joined him, and in 1574 he founded the community that eventually became the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God.

And that's when the trouble started.

Not everyone appreciated John's enthusiasm for reform. His efforts to improve religious life brought him into conflict with influential people in Lucca. Opposition became so intense that he was eventually forced to leave his hometown.

Imagine founding a religious community to help your neighbors and then discovering that some of those neighbors would rather you stayed away.

John took the disappointment to Rome.

There, he became friends with Saint Philip Neri and continued working for the renewal of the Church. He also developed a remarkable interest in foreign missions.

Together with the Spanish priest Juan Bautista Vives, John promoted the idea of establishing a center in Rome where young men from different nations could be trained as missionaries.

That proposal helped prepare the way for the Church's later missionary institutions, including the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, established in 1622, thirteen years after John's death.

There's also an interesting connection to his original profession.

John never really stopped being an apothecary at heart.

He simply came to believe that the Church needed spiritual medicine just as urgently as sick people needed physical medicine. His approach to reform wasn't merely to criticize what was wrong. He wanted to provide better priests, better catechism, and better spiritual formation.

In 1609, when an epidemic struck Rome, John personally cared for the sick. He contracted the disease himself and died on October 9.

He was sixty-eight.

Today, his relics are venerated in the Church of Santa Maria in Campitelli in Rome, where the religious community he founded continues its work.

John Leonardi began his career preparing medicine for the body.

He spent the rest of his life trying to bring souls back to health.

Saint John Leonardi, devoted teacher of the faith and physician of souls, pray for us.

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Saint Bridget of Sweden was a wife, a mother of eight children, a widow, a mystic, and eventually a religious foundress. And somewhere along the way, she also found time to tell kings and popes what they were doing wrong.

She was born in 1303 into one of Sweden's wealthiest noble families. As a young girl, Bridget developed a deep love for Christ's Passion, and according to tradition, she began experiencing visions when she was still a child.

At thirteen, she married a nobleman named Ulf Gudmarsson.

And by all accounts, they had a happy marriage.

Together they raised eight children, including their daughter Catherine, who would also become a saint. Bridget managed their household, helped the poor, and eventually served at the Swedish royal court. She and Ulf even made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

After Ulf died, Bridget's life took a very different direction.

She began receiving the extraordinary visions that would eventually fill several volumes known as her Revelations. These included detailed meditations on the Nativity and Passion of Christ, many of which influenced European religious art for centuries.

But Bridget wasn't content simply to write down visions.

She acted on them.

At the time, the popes were living in Avignon, France, rather than Rome. Bridget became convinced that the papacy needed to return to the Eternal City, and she wasn't particularly shy about saying so.

She sent messages to popes, kings, and bishops, sometimes warning them in remarkably direct language to reform their lives.

Imagine being a medieval king and receiving a letter from a Swedish widow explaining exactly how you were failing God.

Bridget eventually moved to Rome, where she spent years caring for the poor, visiting churches, and working to establish a new religious community.

That community became the Bridgettine Order, with its motherhouse at Vadstena in Sweden. One unusual feature was its double-monastery arrangement: monks and nuns lived separately but belonged to the same foundation, governed by an abbess.

There's also a fascinating connection to Christmas.

The familiar image of the Christ Child lying on the ground, surrounded by brilliant light while Mary kneels in adoration, owes much of its popularity to a vision Bridget described during a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Before that, Western artists often portrayed Mary reclining after childbirth. Bridget's account helped change how generations imagined the Nativity.

She died in Rome in 1373 after returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Today, pilgrims can visit her rooms in Rome's Piazza Farnese or travel to Vadstena, where her relics are honored and her religious community took root.

Bridget's life is a reminder that holiness doesn't belong to just one stage of life. She served God as a wife, mother, widow, pilgrim, and religious foundress.

And she apparently never lost the courage to speak her mind.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, courageous mother, mystic, and pilgrim of Christ, pray for us.

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• "The Attitude of Those Invited to the Feast" — From the Assumption to Advent
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The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary on October 7 is famously connected with the Christian victory at Lepanto in 1571, when Pope Saint Pius V asked Catholics throughout Europe to pray the Rosary for the Christian fleet.

But that's only one chapter in a much larger story.

For centuries, Catholics have turned to the Rosary during moments when things seemed almost hopeless.

One of the strangest examples comes from nineteenth-century Italy and a man named Bartolo Longo.

Longo had grown up Catholic but drifted badly during his university years. He became involved in occultism and eventually described himself as having been ordained a satanic priest. His life became increasingly miserable until friends helped bring him back to the Catholic faith.

Even after his conversion, though, Longo was haunted by his past.

Then one day, while walking near Pompeii, he remembered words a priest had told him: "If you seek salvation, spread the Rosary."

So he did.

Longo spent the rest of his life promoting the Rosary, building the great Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary at Pompeii, helping orphans and the children of prisoners, and turning a place associated with ancient paganism into one of the world's great Marian pilgrimage sites.

The former occultist eventually became Blessed Bartolo Longo.

Then there is Fatima.

In 1917, Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children in Portugal and repeatedly asked them to pray the Rosary every day. At her final apparition on October 13, she identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary.

But perhaps one of the most remarkable modern Rosary stories comes from Hiroshima.

When the atomic bomb exploded over the city in 1945, a small community of Jesuit priests was living only several blocks from the center of the blast. Their rectory was damaged, but the priests survived. One of them, Father Hubert Schiffer, later spoke publicly about their survival and said they believed they had been protected because they were living the message of Fatima and praying the Rosary daily.

Their survival has sometimes accumulated exaggerated details in retellings, so we should be careful about turning it into a scientific proof of a miracle.

But the priests themselves knew what they believed.

They credited Our Lady.

And that's really what makes the Rosary's history so fascinating.

It appears in enormous historical events like Lepanto.

It appears in apparitions like Fatima.

It appears in the conversion of a former occultist at Pompeii.

And it appears much more quietly beside hospital beds, in prison cells, around family tables, and in the hands of Catholics facing things they simply don't know how to fix.

The Rosary doesn't promise that every battle ends the way we want.

It gives us something to do when we've reached the point where there is nothing left to do except place the situation in God's hands.

One bead.

One Hail Mary.

And then another.

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, refuge in every trial and Mother who always leads us to Christ, pray for us.

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• "The Spouse" — From the Assumption to Advent
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Saint Bruno founded one of the strictest religious orders in the Catholic Church, and more than nine hundred years later, his monks are still living remarkably close to the way he did.

Bruno was born around 1030 in Cologne, Germany. He was brilliant, studied at some of Europe's best cathedral schools, and eventually became a respected teacher at Reims. Among his students was a man who would later become Pope Urban II.

Bruno could have had a very successful Church career.

Instead, he wanted silence.

In 1084, Bruno and six companions went looking for somewhere they could disappear. The Bishop of Grenoble, Saint Hugh, gave them an isolated valley high in the French Alps called Chartreuse.

It was perfect.

Cold.

Remote.

Difficult to reach.

Basically everything Bruno was looking for.

There the men built individual cells around a small church and began living an unusual combination of hermit and community life. Each monk spent most of his time alone, praying, studying, working, and eating in his cell. They gathered for certain prayers and on special occasions, but solitude remained at the heart of their vocation.

That little community became the Carthusian Order, taking its name from Chartreuse.

And the Carthusians became famous for something extremely rare in Church history.

They basically never needed a major reform.

Religious orders often go through periods of expansion, decline, reform, and renewal. The Carthusians simply kept doing more or less what they had always done. This gave rise to their famous saying: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis — "The Cross stands while the world turns."

Bruno himself didn't get to stay at Chartreuse as long as he wanted.

Remember that former student who became pope?

Urban II called him to Rome.

Bruno obeyed, but court life was almost unbearable for a man who had deliberately moved into the Alps to avoid exactly that sort of thing. Eventually he received permission to return to solitude, this time in Calabria in southern Italy, where he founded another hermitage.

There's also a funny connection to Bruno's legacy.

The Carthusian monks eventually became associated with the famous green and yellow Chartreuse liqueur, made from a secret recipe involving more than a hundred herbs and plants. Only a tiny number of monks know the complete recipe at any given time.

So one of the world's most secretive drinks comes from one of the world's most secretive religious orders.

Bruno died in Calabria in 1101.

Today, Carthusian monks still live behind monastery walls in profound silence, following a way of life that would be immediately recognizable to him.

In a world that seems increasingly incapable of being quiet for five minutes, Bruno's legacy feels almost radical.

He believed silence wasn't empty.

It was where he could finally hear God.

Saint Bruno, father of the Carthusians and lover of sacred silence, pray for us.

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Today is the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, but this year it also falls on Rosary Sunday, which gives us a perfect excuse to look at a side of Francis we don't talk about nearly as often: his deep love for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Francis is usually remembered for poverty, the stigmata, and maybe a bird or two.

But one of the deepest threads running through his spirituality was his love for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Francis lived before the Rosary had developed into exactly the form Catholics know today, so we shouldn't picture him walking around Assisi with a modern five-decade rosary. But Marian prayer was everywhere in his life.

And one little chapel became especially important.

Early in his conversion, Francis discovered a crumbling church outside Assisi dedicated to Saint Mary of the Angels. We know it better as the Portiuncula. Francis repaired it with his own hands and came to love the place so much that it became the spiritual home of the entire Franciscan movement.

He wanted his friars close to Mary.

According to his early biographer Thomas of Celano, Francis had an almost indescribable love for the Mother of Jesus because, as he put it, she "made the Lord of Majesty our brother."

That's such a Franciscan way of looking at Mary.

He loved her because she gave us Jesus.

Francis composed prayers in her honor as well. In his *Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary*, he piles title upon title upon her: Holy Lady, Queen, Mother of God, Virgin made Church.

And his Marian devotion became part of the DNA of the Franciscan Order.

Later Franciscans became some of the strongest defenders of the Immaculate Conception. Blessed John Duns Scotus provided the theological explanation that became enormously influential in the Church's understanding of the doctrine. Franciscans also helped spread devotions such as the Franciscan Crown, a seven-decade rosary meditating on the Seven Joys of Mary.

So there's a beautiful connection this year with Saint Francis's feast falling on Rosary Sunday.

Francis didn't see devotion to Mary as something competing with devotion to Christ. Quite the opposite.

Mary fascinated him because everything about her pointed toward Jesus.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than at the end of his life.

When Francis knew he was dying, he asked his brothers to carry him back to the Portiuncula.

Back to Saint Mary of the Angels.

Back to the little chapel dedicated to Our Lady where so much of his vocation had begun.

There, lying near the tiny church he loved, Francis died on the evening of October 3, 1226.

For all the enormous basilicas, paintings, statues, and stories that later surrounded him, Francis chose to finish his life beside a little chapel of the Blessed Virgin.

That's not a bad image for Rosary Sunday.

Stay close to Mary.

Because Francis understood exactly where she always takes us.

To Christ.

Saint Francis of Assisi, devoted son of Our Lady and joyful brother of Christ, pray for us.

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Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus is famous for her "Little Way," the idea that holiness doesn't necessarily require doing spectacular things. Sometimes it means doing something very small that costs you quite a lot.

And one of my favorite examples involves a nun Thérèse simply could not stand.

Thérèse entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux at only fifteen. Life there meant living every day with the same small group of women. You prayed together. Ate together. Worked together. Saw each other constantly.

And inevitably, there was one sister whose personality rubbed Thérèse completely the wrong way.

Thérèse never names her in Story of a Soul, which is probably the first charitable thing she did for her.

She admits that this sister had "the faculty of displeasing me in everything." Her mannerisms bothered Thérèse. Her personality bothered her. Thérèse couldn't even explain everything that irritated her.

So she made a decision.

She would treat this sister as though she were her favorite person in the convent.

Whenever they met, Thérèse gave her a warm smile.

She prayed for her.

She looked for opportunities to help her.

When the sister said something irritating, Thérèse tried not merely to suppress an annoyed response, but to answer with genuine kindness. She even tried to discover something admirable about the sister so that her charity wouldn't become completely fake.

And apparently Thérèse became too good at it.

One day the sister finally asked her something along the lines of, "Sister Thérèse, would you tell me what attracts you so much to me? Whenever you look at me, I see you smile."

That's the best part of the story.

The poor woman had absolutely no idea.

Thérèse writes that what attracted her was Jesus hidden within this sister, because Christ makes lovable even what naturally seems unlovable.

There's another wonderfully human convent story. During prayer, a sister near Thérèse repeatedly made a small clicking or rattling noise that drove her crazy. Thérèse couldn't stop noticing it.

So instead of spending prayer mentally complaining about the noise, she deliberately listened to it and turned it into a kind of music offered to God.

That is the Little Way in real life.

Not floating around the convent feeling affectionate toward everyone.

Not pretending difficult people aren't difficult.

It's recognizing, "This person is driving me absolutely nuts, and I am going to love her anyway."

Thérèse died from tuberculosis in 1897 at only twenty-four. She never traveled as a missionary, founded a religious order, or accomplished anything the world would have considered particularly important.

She smiled at the nun who annoyed her.

She tolerated the irritating noise.

She did tiny things with enormous love.

And the Church eventually declared her a Doctor of the Church.

Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, teacher of the Little Way and saint of ordinary acts of love, pray for us.

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The Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels celebrates one of those Catholic beliefs that many of us learn as children and then perhaps don't think about nearly enough as adults: God has entrusted each of us to the care of an angel.

The idea is deeply rooted in Scripture. Christ Himself speaks of children whose angels "always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." In the Book of Tobias, the Archangel Raphael accompanies young Tobias on a dangerous journey, protecting and guiding him even though Tobias initially has no idea who his traveling companion really is.

Early Christians took this very seriously.

Church Fathers wrote about angels assigned to individuals, and over the centuries devotion became increasingly personal. By the Middle Ages, Christians were regularly praying to their guardian angels for protection against temptation, danger, and especially a sudden or unprepared death.

But interestingly, the feast itself took a while to develop.

Local celebrations honoring guardian angels appeared during the Middle Ages, particularly in Spain. In the sixteenth century, devotion spread rapidly, and in 1608 Pope Paul V approved a feast of the Guardian Angels. Later in the seventeenth century, Pope Clement X extended it throughout the universal Church and fixed its celebration on October 2.

That placement makes perfect sense.

September 29 honors Saint Michael and the Archangels.

Three days later, October 2 honors the angels assigned to ordinary people like us.

One of the most charming parts of this devotion is how universal it became. Catholic children across completely different cultures learned essentially the same habit: before bed, ask your angel to watch over you.

The familiar English prayer begins, "Angel of God, my guardian dear," but versions of that prayer exist in languages all over the Catholic world.

And Catholic tradition doesn't imagine guardian angels merely preventing car accidents or helping children sleep peacefully.

Their real job is much bigger.

They help us get to heaven.

Saints wrote about asking their angels for help during prayer, sending them ahead when entering difficult conversations, and asking their guardian angel to cooperate with the guardian angel of another person. Saint Padre Pio famously encouraged people to "send me your guardian angel" when they needed his prayers.

There's something wonderfully humbling about the whole idea.

According to Catholic teaching, an intelligent spiritual creature far more powerful than we are has been given an assignment by God.

You.

Not because you're famous.

Not because you're important.

Simply because God considers one human soul worth guarding.

And apparently, our guardian angels have been watching us make questionable decisions since childhood without requesting reassignment.

That's patience.

Holy Guardian Angels, our unseen companions and guides on the road to heaven, watch over us and pray for us.

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Saint Jerome is one of the great Doctors of the Church, but he may also be one of the saints you'd least want criticizing your work.

He was brilliant, sarcastic, argumentative, occasionally hot-tempered, and absolutely obsessed with getting the words of Scripture right.

Jerome was born around the year 347 in Stridon, somewhere near the borderlands of the Roman Empire in the Balkans. His family sent him to Rome for an excellent education, and Jerome became fascinated with classical literature. He loved Cicero and the great Latin authors so much that, according to his own account, he once had a terrifying dream in which he stood before God's judgment seat and was accused of being "a Ciceronian, not a Christian."

That got his attention.

Jerome eventually embraced a much more serious Christian life and spent several years living as an ascetic in the Syrian desert.

But he brought books.

Lots of books.

He studied Greek, and then did something unusual for a Western Christian scholar of his time: he learned Hebrew, reportedly receiving lessons from Jewish teachers. That decision would eventually change the Bible used by Western Christianity.

In the 380s, Pope Damasus I asked Jerome to revise the existing Latin translations of Scripture, which varied considerably from place to place.

Jerome didn't simply tidy up the wording.

He spent years comparing manuscripts, consulting the original languages, and eventually translating much of the Old Testament directly from Hebrew. The result became the foundation of what we call the Latin Vulgate, the Bible that would shape Western Catholic worship, theology, art, and culture for more than a thousand years.

And Jerome definitely had opinions while doing it.

His surviving letters show a man who could be warm and deeply pastoral one moment and absolutely devastating toward an opponent the next. He once complained about people criticizing his translations who didn't know Hebrew themselves. Jerome was not especially interested in losing an argument politely.

Later in life, he settled in Bethlehem, where he established monasteries and spent roughly three decades studying Scripture near the place of Christ's birth.

Visitors to the Church of the Nativity can still visit a cave traditionally associated with Jerome's years of work. There's something wonderfully fitting about imagining one of history's greatest biblical scholars surrounded by manuscripts in a cave beneath Bethlehem.

Artists often depict Jerome with a lion because of a later legend that he removed a thorn from the animal's paw and the grateful lion remained with him afterward. He's also usually surrounded by books, which is probably much closer to historical reality.

Jerome could be difficult.

He could also be wrong.

But he believed Sacred Scripture deserved a lifetime of serious study.

And he gave it one.

Saint Jerome, brilliant Doctor of Scripture and tireless translator of the Word of God, pray for us.

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