Traditional Catholic Daily Devotional

• "Recourse to God" — From the Assumption to Advent
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Saint Lawrence Justinian became the first Patriarch of Venice, but he spent most of his life trying to avoid exactly the kind of attention that came with that title.

He was born in Venice in 1381 into the powerful Giustiniani family. Wealth, connections, and a comfortable future were all waiting for him. As a young man, however, Lawrence became convinced that God was calling him somewhere very different.

So he joined a community of canons living on the little island of San Giorgio in Alga, across the lagoon from Venice.

His family wasn't exactly thrilled.

According to tradition, when relatives tried to persuade him toward a prestigious marriage, Lawrence chose instead a life of poverty, prayer, and penance. Once ordained, he became known for walking through Venice begging alms for his community. That could be humiliating for anyone. For a member of one of Venice's noble families, it was especially noticeable.

When people insulted him or refused him, he simply moved on.

When they gave generously, he sometimes deliberately returned to houses where he had been treated badly, reasoning that begging was supposed to teach humility, not make him popular.

Eventually, his reputation reached Rome, and in 1433 Pope Eugene IV appointed him Bishop of Castello, the diocese that then included much of Venice.

Lawrence reportedly tried very hard to get out of it.

He failed.

As bishop, he lived with the same simplicity he had practiced in the monastery. He reduced unnecessary expenses, improved the formation of clergy, visited parishes, and quietly redirected money toward the poor. His episcopal household looked considerably less impressive than people expected from a Venetian bishop.

Then, in 1451, something historically important happened.

The old Patriarchate of Grado was reorganized and united with the Venetian see. Lawrence became the first Patriarch of Venice, beginning the line of patriarchs that continues today. Centuries later, three Patriarchs of Venice would become popes: Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I.

Lawrence was also a serious spiritual writer. His works focused especially on prayer and the interior life, and people sought his advice because he had a gift for making deep spiritual ideas practical.

When he died in 1456, devotion spread quickly. His body became an object of particular veneration and was preserved for centuries in Venice.

There's something wonderfully Venetian about his story. Lawrence lived amid one of Europe's wealthiest cities, surrounded by merchants, palaces, ships, and political power.

Yet right in the middle of all that splendor, he chose simplicity.

He became important almost despite himself.

And when the Church gave him greater authority, he simply found more people to serve.

Saint Lawrence Justinian, first Patriarch of Venice and humble shepherd of the poor, pray for us.

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Saint Ultan of Ardbraccan is one of those early Irish saints whose biography comes to us in fragments, but one particular detail makes him stand out immediately.

He cared for abandoned children.

Ultan lived in seventh-century Ireland and became bishop and abbot at Ardbraccan, in what is now County Meath. He belonged to the remarkable age of Irish monasticism when monasteries were not simply places where monks prayed. They functioned as schools, farms, libraries, hospitals, and centers of charity for the surrounding countryside.

Then Ireland was struck by a terrible epidemic.

A plague sometimes called the Buidhe Chonaill, or Yellow Plague, swept through the country during the seventh century. Among its victims were enormous numbers of adults, leaving children without parents to care for them.

Ultan saw what was happening and stepped in.

Later Irish tradition remembers him gathering orphaned children around the monastery at Ardbraccan and personally helping care for them. One particularly memorable story says that there were so many infants needing to be fed that Ultan devised ways of supplying them with milk, including keeping cows specifically for the children.

It's a wonderfully practical image of sanctity.

A bishop surrounded by crying babies, trying to figure out how to feed everybody.

For that reason, Ultan became especially associated with the care of children and the poor. Centuries before orphanages or organized social services existed, monasteries like his often became the only safety net available when families were destroyed by disease or famine.

But Ultan wasn't only remembered for charity.

Irish tradition also describes him as a scholar and a collector of writings about Saint Brigid of Kildare. One medieval source even credits him with assembling hymns and accounts concerning her life. That gives us another glimpse of what an Irish bishop actually did in this period: care for the poor, govern a monastery, teach, preserve manuscripts, and somehow keep the local Church functioning.

Even the place connected with him is interesting.

Ardbraccan comes from the Irish Ard Breacáin, meaning the "height of Breacán." It became an important ecclesiastical center for centuries after Ultan's time. The old Diocese of Ardbraccan was eventually absorbed into the Diocese of Meath, but the area retained its religious importance long afterward.

Very little of Ultan's personal story survives.

But maybe the detail that survived is exactly the one worth remembering.

When plague swept through Ireland and children were left with nobody to care for them, Ultan didn't write a treatise about the problem. He picked them up. He fed them. And he gave them a home.

Saint Ultan of Ardbraccan, father of orphans and protector of abandoned children, pray for us.

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Saint Pius X became pope in 1903, but he never really stopped thinking like the village priest he had once been.

He was born Giuseppe Sarto in 1835 in Riese, a small town in northern Italy. His family was poor. His father worked as a postal carrier, and Giuseppe sometimes walked miles to school, reportedly carrying his shoes to keep from wearing them out and putting them on when he reached town.

From parish priest to bishop, cardinal, and eventually pope, he kept moving upward through the Church almost despite himself.

When he was elected pope, he reportedly protested that he was unworthy and begged the cardinals to choose someone else.

They didn't.

Pius chose as his motto: "To restore all things in Christ."

And he got to work.

One of his most important reforms affected something Catholics today barely think twice about: frequent Holy Communion. In many places, even devout Catholics received Communion only occasionally. Pius strongly encouraged frequent, even daily, Communion for properly disposed Catholics.

Then he turned his attention to children.

At the time, First Communion was often delayed until twelve, fourteen, or even later. Pius thought that made very little sense. If a child could understand the basic difference between ordinary bread and the Eucharist, why keep him away from Our Lord?

In 1910, he lowered the normal age of First Communion to around seven, the age of reason.

Millions of Catholic childhoods changed because of that decision.

Pius also loved sacred music and wanted Gregorian chant restored to Catholic churches. He reformed seminaries, reorganized parts of Church government, promoted better catechesis, and began the enormous project of organizing centuries of canon law into a single code.

But his pontificate also involved a serious intellectual battle.

Pius saw Modernism as a threat that could hollow out Catholic doctrine from within by treating dogma as something that evolved according to changing religious experience. In 1907, he condemned these errors in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and required strong measures to prevent them from spreading through seminaries and Catholic institutions.

Then came 1914.

Europe moved toward war.

Pius watched the crisis with horror and repeatedly urged peace. According to those around him, the prospect of Catholic nations tearing one another apart weighed heavily on him. He died on August 20, only weeks after the First World War began.

There's a wonderfully tangible connection to him in Rome today. His body rests beneath an altar in Saint Peter's Basilica, dressed simply in papal vestments. Pilgrims still stop there to pray before the pope who wanted ordinary Catholics, especially children, to draw much closer to the Eucharist.

And perhaps that's the simplest way to remember Pius X.

For all the reforms, controversies, and enormous responsibilities of his pontificate, he wanted Catholics to know Christ, receive Christ, and build their lives around Christ.

Saint Pius X, pope of the Eucharist and courageous defender of the faith, pray for us.

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Blessed Brocard of Mount Carmel takes us back to a version of the Carmelite Order that looked very different from the Carmelites we know today.

No Saint Teresa of Ávila yet.

No Saint John of the Cross.

Not even the familiar Carmelite monasteries of Europe.

Instead, picture a handful of Western hermits living in small cells scattered across the slopes of Mount Carmel in the Holy Land.

Brocard lived around the beginning of the thirteenth century, during the Crusader period. Very little is known about his early life, and even some details of his later story come from Carmelite tradition rather than contemporary records. But he is remembered as one of the earliest leaders of the hermits on Mount Carmel, succeeding Saint Berthold.

These men had gathered near a spring traditionally associated with the prophet Elijah. They lived separately in little cells, coming together for Mass and community prayer. And they had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Their small chapel was dedicated to her.

Eventually, they needed something more organized.

The hermits asked Albert of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, to give them a formal rule of life. Around the beginning of the thirteenth century, Albert wrote what became the Rule of Saint Albert, traditionally addressed to Brocard and his companions.

It's surprisingly short.

Rather than creating an elaborate system, the Rule tells the hermits to remain in their cells meditating on the law of the Lord, pray the Psalms, celebrate Mass together, work, fast, keep silence, and obey their prior.

That little document became the foundation of Carmelite spirituality.

And here's the fascinating part.

The order that would eventually produce Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse of Lisieux, John of the Cross, Elizabeth of the Trinity, and generations of contemplatives began with these mostly anonymous hermits trying to pray quietly on a mountain.

Brocard's own life remained largely hidden. Later Carmelite tradition remembers him as a holy superior who guided the community through its fragile early years. Some accounts connect him with miracles and with dealings involving the rulers of the Holy Land, but the historical evidence is thin, so it's better not to make those the center of his story.

The more interesting legacy is the place itself.

Mount Carmel rises above the Mediterranean near modern Haifa, and Carmelites still live there. The Stella Maris Monastery preserves the order's connection with the mountain from which it takes its name.

Brocard didn't leave us famous books or sermons.

He helped preserve something quieter: a way of life.

Eight hundred years later, Carmelites around the world are still living from it.

Blessed Brocard of Mount Carmel, guardian of Carmel's first contemplative spirit, pray for us.

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Anna the Prophetess appears in only a few verses of Saint Luke's Gospel, but those few verses describe a woman who had spent almost her entire adult life waiting for one particular moment.

She lived in Jerusalem and belonged to the tribe of Asher, one of the ancient tribes of Israel. Luke even preserves the name of her father, Phanuel, which is remarkable considering how little Scripture tells us about her.

Anna had been married as a young woman, but her husband died after only seven years.

And then she did something unusual.

Rather than remarry, Anna devoted the rest of her life to God. By the time we meet her in the Gospel, she is an elderly widow, traditionally understood to be eighty-four years old. Saint Luke tells us that she "departed not from the temple," serving God night and day with fasting and prayer.

Think about how many ordinary days that represents.

She watched generations of families enter the Temple.

She saw priests come and go.

She watched children grow into adults and bring children of their own.

And she kept praying.

Then one day, an ordinary-looking young couple walked in carrying a baby.

Mary and Joseph had come to present Jesus according to the Law of Moses. There was no royal procession. No crowd waiting for the Messiah. Just two parents carrying a child and making the offering of a poor family.

But Anna knew.

The elderly Simeon had already taken Jesus into his arms and proclaimed Him the salvation God had promised. Then Anna approached.

Scripture doesn't tell us exactly what she said, which almost makes the scene more intriguing. We are simply told that she began giving thanks to God and speaking about the Child "to all that looked for the redemption of Israel."

In other words, Anna became one of the very first evangelists.

Before the Apostles.

Before John the Baptist began preaching.

Before Jesus had spoken a single public sermon.

An elderly widow was already telling people that the Redeemer had arrived.

There's another beautiful detail hidden in her name. Anna, or Hannah, means "grace" or "favor." Her father Phanuel's name recalls Peniel, "the face of God." Ancient Christian writers naturally saw something fitting there: Anna, after decades of prayer, was finally given the grace of looking upon the face of God in the Christ Child.

And then she almost completely disappears from history.

We don't know how long she lived afterward or what became of her.

Perhaps that's appropriate.

Anna's whole life wasn't about becoming known. It was about being ready.

She reminds us that years spent quietly praying are never wasted. Sometimes God is preparing us for a moment we cannot yet see.

Holy Anna the Prophetess, patient watcher of Israel and joyful herald of the Christ Child, pray for us.

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Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne helped bring Christianity to northern England, and one of the best things about his story is that he got the job because somebody else was apparently terrible at it.

In the seventh century, King Oswald of Northumbria wanted his newly recovered kingdom evangelized. He asked the monks of Iona in Scotland to send a missionary. Their first choice returned frustrated, complaining that the Northumbrians were stubborn and practically impossible to teach.

Aidan listened and suggested that perhaps the missionary had simply expected too much too quickly. Maybe, he said, the people needed the "milk of simpler teaching" before they were ready for stronger things.

The monks apparently looked around the room and thought:

Fine. You go.

So Aidan went.

And he was exactly the right man.

King Oswald gave him the island of Lindisfarne, just off the Northumbrian coast. There Aidan founded a monastery in 635 that became one of the great centers of Christianity in medieval Britain.

At first, there was a language problem.

Aidan spoke Irish.

The Northumbrians spoke Old English.

So Oswald, who had learned Irish during his years of exile, sometimes sat beside Aidan and translated his preaching for the people. It's a wonderful image: the king acting as interpreter for the missionary bishop.

Aidan's own missionary method was remarkably personal. He preferred walking rather than riding horseback because it allowed him to stop and talk with ordinary people along the road. If they were Christians, he encouraged them. If they weren't, he gently introduced them to the faith.

Someone eventually gave him a fine horse so he could travel more efficiently.

Aidan gave it away to a poor man.

When the donor complained, Aidan reportedly asked why the son of a mare should be valued more highly than a son of God.

That pretty much ended the discussion.

Aidan also used gifts from wealthy people to ransom slaves, and some of those freed men later became his students and eventually priests.

His monastery at Lindisfarne became known as Holy Island, and its influence continued long after Aidan's death. Missionaries trained there traveled throughout England establishing churches and monasteries. Later, Lindisfarne would produce the magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the treasures of medieval Christian art.

Visitors can still reach Holy Island today by a tidal causeway. Twice each day, the sea covers the road completely, temporarily cutting the island off from the mainland. Pilgrims have to check the tide tables before crossing, which somehow feels appropriate for a place where monks once built their lives around rhythms of prayer and nature.

Aidan died in 651, leaning against the outside wall of a church near Bamburgh.

He had arrived among people another missionary considered hopeless.

He simply approached them differently.

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, gentle Apostle of Northumbria and friend of the poor, pray for us.

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Saint Rose of Lima was the first canonized saint born in the Americas, but during her lifetime she was mostly known as a young woman who took prayer and penance much more seriously than anyone around her expected.

She was born Isabel Flores de Oliva in Lima, Peru, in 1586. According to tradition, a servant once saw the infant's face mysteriously transform into the appearance of a rose, and the nickname stuck. Rose herself later took the name formally at Confirmation.

She was famous for her beauty, which actually became something of a problem.

Her family expected her to marry.

Rose had absolutely no intention of doing that.

When admirers praised her appearance, she deliberately tried to avoid encouraging the attention. Eventually she consecrated herself to God and became a Dominican tertiary, taking Catherine of Siena as one of her great models.

But Rose didn't enter a convent.

Instead, she built herself a tiny hermitage in her family's garden.

There she spent long hours in prayer while still helping support the household by sewing, embroidering, and growing flowers to sell. She also turned part of the family home into a place where she cared for sick and poor people who had nowhere else to go.

Her penances could be extremely severe, even by the standards of her time, and they're probably not the part of her life most people should try to imitate. What mattered underneath them was something simpler: Rose had an intense desire to belong completely to Christ.

And she lived in an extraordinary Catholic city.

Seventeenth-century Lima produced an almost unbelievable cluster of saints. Rose knew Martin de Porres, and she was confirmed by Turibius of Mogrovejo. Imagine having three canonized saints crossing paths in the same city within a single generation.

Rose died in 1617 at only thirty-one.

Her funeral became an enormous public event. Crowds filled the streets, and important officials reportedly helped carry her coffin because so many people already considered her a saint.

Her canonization in 1671 was historic. She became the first saint canonized from the New World and soon became a patroness not only of Peru, but of the Americas and the Philippines.

Today, visitors to Lima can still see the house where she lived and the garden connected with her little hermitage. One particularly beloved tradition involves a well there. Pilgrims write letters containing their prayers and intentions and drop them into the well, continuing a devotion that draws thousands of visitors each year.

Rose spent much of her life trying to disappear into a garden and pray.

Instead, she became one of the most beloved saints of an entire hemisphere.

Saint Rose of Lima, first flower of sanctity in the Americas, pray for us.

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Saint Sabina is one of those early Roman saints whose biography is difficult to separate from ancient tradition, but whose name has been preserved in a very tangible way.

You can still walk into her church in Rome.

According to tradition, Sabina was a wealthy Roman widow who lived sometime around the end of the first or beginning of the second century. She belonged to the upper levels of Roman society and lived on the Aventine Hill, one of the city's most fashionable neighborhoods.

Her path to Christianity began through someone Roman society probably considered far less important: an enslaved woman named Serapia.

Serapia was a Christian.

Through her influence, Sabina became interested in the faith and eventually converted. It's a fascinating little reversal of the social world of ancient Rome. The wealthy mistress possessed money, property, and status, but the enslaved woman possessed the one treasure Sabina didn't have.

She introduced her to Christ.

Eventually Serapia was arrested for being a Christian and put to death. Sabina recovered her body and gave her an honorable burial.

That was dangerous.

In the Roman world, publicly caring for the body of an executed Christian could advertise your own allegiance. According to tradition, Sabina was soon denounced, arrested, and ordered to sacrifice to the pagan gods.

She refused.

Sabina was beheaded, probably sometime in the early second century, and Christians preserved her memory alongside that of Serapia.

But here's where the story becomes especially tangible.

About three hundred years later, a magnificent basilica was built on the Aventine Hill, traditionally over or near Sabina's home. The Basilica of Santa Sabina still stands today, and it is one of the best-preserved early Christian basilicas anywhere in Rome.

Even its wooden doors are extraordinary.

They date from the fifth century and contain some of the oldest surviving carved Christian scenes in the world, including what may be the earliest surviving public depiction of Christ's Crucifixion.

Centuries later, Santa Sabina became closely connected with the Dominican Order. Dominic lived there, and the basilica eventually became the headquarters of the Dominicans. Saint Thomas Aquinas also taught there.

So the memory of an obscure Roman widow ended up attached to a church that has witnessed nearly sixteen centuries of Catholic history.

And perhaps the most interesting part of Sabina's story is still where it began: with Serapia.

A woman with almost no social power helped convert a woman with enormous social privilege.

Together, they became saints.

Saint Sabina and Saint Serapia, courageous daughters of the early Roman Church, pray for us.

• • • • •

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Saint Augustine may be one of the easiest saints to relate to because he spent a surprising amount of his early life knowing exactly what he should do and finding reasons not to do it yet.

He was born in 354 in North Africa. His mother was Monica, whose years of prayer for her son we've already talked about. Augustine was brilliant, ambitious, and restless. He studied rhetoric, built a successful teaching career, and searched everywhere for answers, including philosophies and religions far outside Christianity.

The problem wasn't that Augustine never thought about God.

He thought about God constantly.

He just wasn't ready for God to interfere with his lifestyle.

In his Confessions, Augustine famously remembers praying, essentially, "Lord, give me chastity and continence... but not yet."

That's Augustine in one sentence.

Eventually he moved to Milan, where he began listening to Ambrose of Milan. Augustine initially went because Ambrose was famous as a speaker. Then, inconveniently, he started realizing that what Ambrose was saying actually made sense.

His conversion finally came in a garden.

Tormented by indecision, Augustine heard what sounded like a child's voice repeating, "Take and read." He opened the letters of Saint Paul and read a passage calling him to abandon his old life.

That was it.

The years of arguing stopped.

Augustine was baptized by Ambrose in 387, with Monica finally seeing the answer to the prayers she had offered for decades.

He eventually returned to North Africa, hoping for a quiet life of prayer and study.

That plan lasted about as well as most plans to become a quiet saint.

While visiting Hippo, Augustine attended Mass, and the local bishop mentioned that the Church needed another priest. The congregation apparently decided Augustine was the obvious candidate. They surrounded him and essentially pushed him toward ordination.

He later became Bishop of Hippo and spent more than thirty years preaching, writing, debating heresies, caring for his people, and producing some of the most influential works in Christian history.

His Confessions still feels surprisingly modern. Augustine writes openly about ambition, lust, friendship, grief, memory, temptation, and the strange ways we hide from ourselves. His famous line captures the whole journey: "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee."

Augustine died in 430 while Vandals were literally besieging Hippo outside the city walls. As his world collapsed around him, the former restless young man spent his final days praying the penitential psalms.

He had spent decades searching everywhere for happiness.

In the end, he found exactly where his mother had always told him it would be.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, restless seeker who became a great Doctor of grace, pray for us.

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Saint Joseph Calasanctius discovered his life's work almost by accident.

He was born in 1557 in Aragon, Spain, into a respected family. Intelligent and well educated, Joseph studied philosophy, theology, and law before becoming a priest. His abilities seemed to point toward a comfortable Church career, and eventually he traveled to Rome hoping to advance his position.

Then he started walking through the poorer neighborhoods.

What he saw changed everything.

Rome was filled with children whose families simply couldn't afford an education. Many spent their days working, begging, or roaming the streets. Education was largely a privilege of families who could pay for it.

Joseph began teaching some of them.

Then more showed up.

And more.

Before long, what had started as a small act of charity became something much bigger. In 1597, Joseph opened a free school for poor children in the parish of Santa Dorotea in Trastevere. It is often described as the first free public school in Europe.

His idea sounds completely normal today.

At the time, it was radical.

Joseph believed poor children deserved serious education, not simply enough instruction to keep them out of trouble. They learned reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and practical subjects that could actually help them build a future.

Eventually he founded the Piarists, formally the Clerks Regular of the Poor Schools of the Mother of God, a religious order dedicated specifically to educating children.

And then everything nearly collapsed.

Joseph was a gifted educator, but administration brought enormous problems. Internal disputes, financial troubles, and serious misconduct by some members of the order eventually reached Rome. Joseph, already an old man, was removed from leadership. The Piarists were stripped of their status as a religious order, and the work he had spent decades building seemed finished.

Imagine being in your eighties and watching your life's work dismantled around you.

Joseph didn't leave.

He didn't become bitter.

He simply continued serving the children and trusted that the work belonged to God.

He died in 1648 at ninety years old without seeing the Piarists fully restored.

Eight years later, the congregation was revived.

Today, Piarist schools continue educating young people around the world.

There's something wonderfully appropriate about Joseph's story. He spent his life teaching children that failure wasn't the end of their future, and then had to live that lesson himself.

His rooms and the school connected with his work can still be visited at San Pantaleo in Rome, where his relics are venerated.

Saint Joseph Calasanctius, patient teacher and father of the poor, pray for us.

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