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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

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

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black Christianisme Ministère et évangélisme Spiritualité
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    • February 2: The Presentation of the Lord

      February 2: The Presentation of the Lord
      Feb 1 2025
      February 2: The Presentation of the Lord
      Feast; Liturgical Color: White

      God goes to Church

      The various names, meanings, and traditions overlapping in today’s Feast churn like the crystals in a kaleidoscope, revealing one image and then another with every slight rotation of the tube. The Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is, rotate, also the Purification of Mary. But, rotate, it’s also known as the “Meeting of the Lord” in the Christian East. And, rotate, it’s also the Feast of Candlemas, marking forty days after Christmas. The multiple names and meanings of today’s Feast have given birth to surprisingly broad and varied cultural expressions. The biblical account of the Presentation is the source for the “two turtle doves” in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” for the sword piercing Mary’s Immaculate Heart in Catholic iconography, for the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the rosary, and for the Canticle prayed by all the world’s priests and nuns every single night of their lives. The Presentation is even the remote source of the frivolous American folkloric tradition of Groundhog Day.

      Behind all of these names and meanings are, however, a few fundamental theological facts worthy of reflection. The Lord Jesus Christ, forty days after His birth, in keeping with both the biblical significance of the number forty and with Jewish custom, was presented in the temple in Jerusalem by His parents, Mary and Joseph. Saint Luke’s Gospel recounts the story. After the Presentation, Jesus was to enter the temple again as a boy and later as an adult. He would even refer to His own body as a temple which He would raise up in three days. Jesus’s life was a continual self-gift to God the Father from the very beginning to the very end. His parents did not carry their infant Son to a holy mountain, a sacred spring, or a magical forest. It was in His temple that the God of Israel was most present, so they brought their Son to God Himself, not just to a reflection of Him in nature.

      The extraordinarily beautiful temple in Jerusalem, the building where Jesus was presented by His parents, was burned to ashes by a powerful Roman army under the future Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. It was never rebuilt. A tourist in Rome can, even today, gaze up at the marble depictions of the sack of the Jerusalem Temple carved on the inside vaults of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Christianity has never had just one sacred place equivalent to the Jewish Temple or the Muslims’ Kaaba in Mecca. Christianity is historical, yes, but it has a global reach rising above any one culture or region.

      Christ is destined for all cultures and all times. Every Catholic church with the Blessed Sacrament is a Holy of Holies, which fully expresses the deepest mysteries of our faith. There is no strict need to go on pilgrimage to Rome or to Jerusalem once in your life. But you do have to go on pilgrimage to your local parish once a week for Mass. Every Catholic church in every place, not just one building in one place, encompasses and transmits the entirety of our faith. God’s hand must have been involved in the headship of the Church migrating from Jerusalem to Rome in the first century. Our Pope does not live in the historical cradle of the faith he represents, because Saint Peter saw no need to remain in Jerusalem in order to be faithful to his Master. The Church is where Christ is, Christ is in the Holy Eucharist, and the Holy Eucharist is everywhere.

      We go to church, as the Jews went to their one temple or to their many synagogues, because God is more God in a church. And when we experience the true God, we experience our true selves. That is, we are more us when God is more God. God is interpreted according to the mode of the interpreter when He is sought in a glowing sunset, a rushing waterfall, or a stunning mountain. In nature, God is whoever the seeker wants Him to be. In a church, however, God is protected from misinterpretation. He is surrounded and protected by His priests, saints, sacraments, music, art, and worship. In a church, God is fully clothed, equipped, and armored. He is less likely to be misunderstood. So we go to find Him there, to dedicate ourselves to Him there, and to receive Him there in His Body and in His Blood.

      Lord Jesus, as an infant You were brought to the temple by Your parents out of religious duty. Help all parents to take their duties to God seriously, to inculcate their faith in the next generation by their words and actions, so that the faith will be handed on where the faith is first learned—in the family and in the home.
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      6 min
    • January 31: Saint John Bosco, Priest

      January 31: Saint John Bosco, Priest
      Jan 30 2025
      January 31: Saint John Bosco, Priest
      1815–1888
      Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
      Patron Saint of editors, publishers, schoolchildren, and juvenile delinquents

      His fatherly heart radiated the warm love of God

      Some saints attract the faithful by the raw power of their minds and the sheer force of their arguments. Think of Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Augustine. Other saints write so eloquently, with such grace and sweetness, that their words draw people to God like bees to honey. Think of Saint John Henry Newman or Saint Francis de Sales. Still other saints say and write almost nothing, but lead lives of such generous and sacrificial witness that their holiness is obvious. Think of Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Today’s saint was not a first-class thinker, eloquent writer, bloody martyr, or path-breaking Church reformer. Yet his abundant gifts drew people to God in their own unique way.

      Saint John Bosco was, to put it in the simplest terms, a winner. His heart was like a furnace radiating immense warmth, fraternal concern, and affectionate love of God. His personality seemed to operate like a powerful magnet that pulled everyone closer and closer in toward his overflowing, priestly, and fatherly love. His country-boy simplicity, street smarts, genuine concern for the poor, and love of God, Mary, and the Church made him irresistible. Don Bosco (‘Don’ being a title of honor for priests, teachers, etc.) had charm. What he asked for, he received. From everyone. He built, during his own lifetime, an international empire of charity and education so massive and so successful that it is impossible to explain his accomplishments in merely human terms.

      Like many great saints, Don Bosco’s external, observable charisms were not the whole story. Behind his engaging personality was a will like a rod of iron. He exercised strict self-discipline and firmness of purpose in driving toward his goals. His gift of self, or self-dedication, was remarkable. Morning, noon, and night. Weekday or weekend. Rain or shine. He was always there. Unhurried. Available. Ready to talk. His life was one big generous act from beginning to end.

      Saint John grew up dirt poor in the country working as a shepherd. His father died when he was an infant. After studies and priestly ordination, he went to the big city, Turin, and saw first-hand how the urban poor lived. It changed his life. He began a ministry to poor boys which was not particularly innovative. He said Mass, heard confessions, taught the Gospel, went on walks, cooked meals, and taught practical skills like book binding. There was no secret to Don Bosco’s success. But no one else was doing it, and no one else did it so well. Followers flocked to assist him, and he founded the Salesians, a Congregation named after his own hero, Saint Francis de Sales. The Salesian empire of charity and education spread around the globe. By the time of its founder’s death in 1888, the Salesians had 250 houses the world over, caring for 130,000 children. Their work continues today.

      Don Bosco was not concerned with the remote causes of poverty. He did not challenge class structures or economic systems. He saw what was in front of him and went “straight to the poor,” as he put it. He did his work from the inside out. It was for others to figure out long-term solutions, not for him. Don Bosco did not know what rest was and wore himself out by being all things to all men. His reputation for holiness endured well beyond his death. A young priest who had met him in Northern Italy in 1883, Father Achille Ratti, later became Pope Pius XI. On Easter Sunday 1934, this same pope canonized the great Don Bosco whom he had known so many years before.

      Saint John Bosco, you dedicated your life to the education and care of poor youth. Aid us in reaching out to those who need our assistance today, not tomorrow, and here, not somewhere else. Through your intercession, may we carry out a fraction of the good that you achieved in your life.
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      6 min
    • January 28: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor

      January 28: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor
      Jan 28 2026
      January 28: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor
      1225–1274
      Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
      Patron Saint of universities and students

      A theological Grand Master, he positioned every piece exquisitely on the chessboard

      The silhouette of Saint Thomas Aquinas hovers like a giant on the highest summit of human thought, casting so wide and deep a shadow over the landscape that all subsequent thinkers labor on the shady slopes below him. It is fair to say that Thomism, the thinking method and intellectual conclusions of Saint Thomas, has been the Catholic Church’s standard theology since he lived in the thirteenth century.

      Saint Thomas understood that all thinking about God is done from inside original sin and within the parameters of human intellectual capacity. The uncreated, timeless, mysterious God, then, is by definition incomprehensible to creatures trapped in time, space, matter, sin, distraction, and confusion. God is outside of the universe, rather than being just one important ingredient in the recipe of reality. This essential “otherness” of God means that His presence is not completely accessible to the senses. It is not just a question of seeing farther, understanding more deeply, hearing more acutely, or feeling more intensely. Twenty senses instead of five would still not be enough to capture God, because He transcends all other forms of being known to us. In the 1950s, a Russian cosmonaut looked out over space from his orbit miles above the earth and declared "I have found no God." He was looking for something that wasn’t there and answering a question that was poorly posed.

      Sometimes God is described as the highest being in an immense hierarchy of beings. From this perspective, the tiniest specks of organic or inorganic life, up and onward through plant and animal life, mankind, the planets and the solar system itself, are all beneath and owe their creation to the super being of God Himself. In this “ladder-of-existence” understanding, every being is a rung leading to higher and higher rungs at the top of which stands God.

      Such an understanding of God is inaccurate, Aquinas would hold. God is not the highest of all beings but Being itself. Every person at one time did not exist. Creation itself, including mankind, is created, meaning at some point it was not. But God cannot not be. For Saint Thomas, God’s essential action is to exist. It is intrinsic to His nature as God. God, then, is not something in the air but the air itself. He is not the biggest whale in the ocean. He is the water. This means that there is no strict need to provide scientific evidence for God, because even asking the question presumes the reality all around us. Science, for example, can explain the chemical composition of ink, but it has nothing to say about the meaning of words printed in ink. Science clearly has limits.

      Thomism’s understanding of God as non-contingent being, which makes all dependent existence possible, is intellectually sophisticated and also deeply attractive. This understanding of God meshes nicely with an appreciation for the natural beauty of the earth, love of art, and charity for our fellow man, while also allowing space for God to reveal Himself more fully, and gratuitously, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. Importantly, it also avoids confusing God’s creation with God Himself.

      Saint Thomas’s encyclopedic knowledge and massive erudition existed harmoniously with a humble nature and a simple, traditional Catholic piety. He was a well-balanced man and a dedicated Dominican priest. This synthesis of childlike wonder and deep inquiry marked his life. After having a mystical vision of Jesus Christ on the cross while praying after Mass one day, Saint Thomas abandoned any further writing. He died on his way to the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, not yet fifty years old. He is buried in Toulouse, France, retaining his status as the Church’s most eminent theologian.

      Saint Thomas, your life of the mind co-existed with a deep piety. Your writings defend the faith of those who have neither the time nor the gift for higher study. Help all those who teach in the Church to follow your example of humble and faithful inquiry into the highest truths.
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      6 min
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