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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Von: 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 Christentum Spiritualität
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  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord
    Mar 30 2024
    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord c. 33 A.D. The first Sunday after the first full moon that falls on, or after, March 21 Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White or GoldCheckmate!If you want to discover what’s really going on in a story, follow the women. Curious about how the plot of a book, movie, or show is going to resolve itself? Follow the female characters, because the men...and the rest of the story...will soon catch up with them. It is a female disciple, Mary Magdalen, who takes our hand and walks us quickly onto the stage of Easter Sunday. Mary doesn’t go to the tomb on Saturday, because no work can be done on the Sabbath. So early Sunday, while it is still dark, Mary walks alone to the burial garden and sees something, or, more precisely, doesn’t see something, that changes world history. The dead body of Jesus is not on the slab! The stone is rolled away! The tomb is empty! Mary Magdalen is witness one, the first of billions to know that Jesus rose from the dead. Witness one then quickly runs to tell the good news to witness two and three, the Apostles Peter and John. Thus the first links in the endless chain of believers were forged, a strong, enduring chain that has wended its way through history until today.Relegating Jesus’ miracles to the bin of apocryphal but consoling stories, many moderns argue Christ’s most enduring legacy is the verifiable good He did for His fellow men. Yet the Gospels don’t tell us that Jesus went around doing good. They tell us He went around doing miracles. Jesus doesn’t help an old woman carry a load up a hill. He doesn’t dig His hand deep into His pocket and spare some change. Jesus doesn’t offer words of comfort to the sick; He heals the sick. Jesus doesn’t jump into the sea to save the drowning Peter; He walks on the water. Jesus didn’t volunteer in a soup kitchen; He miraculously multiplied bread and fish and distributed food to the masses. And Jesus didn’t save people from the danger of death; He raised them from the dead. Jesus temporarily resuscitated three people, all of whom later died, before He resurrected Himself forever. There was nothing dreamy about the Resurrection. Real people with real names in a real place saw the Resurrected Jesus with real eyes. Easter celebrates the miracle of all miracles, the greatest unexpected result of all time, the indispensable genesis event of Western Civilization.So today we raise a toast to a fresh spring morning two thousand years ago. In a garden moist with dew, with small birds chirping and flowers’ bending toward the dawning sun, in a small, darkened hollow cut into the rock, a dead man, icy cold to the touch, zapped to life. He achingly rose from His stone slab and walked slowly toward the low entrance. He rolled away a heavy stone and stepped out into a new world where death was no longer the master. The ageless, see-saw battle between life and death was resolved in favor of the more powerful. Checkmate! The mind wanders at the beauty of it all.The story is told of the conception of twins. In their first weeks of life they stretch and groan and grow. They are happy to be alive, to be together. They squirm and jostle and explore their cramped watery world. They are curious. They see a life cord tethering them to someone greater and are overjoyed. “How great is our mother’s love that she shares her life with us.” Weeks turn into months in their warm amniotic bath. The twins shift and change. “What does this mean?” Twin One asks. “It means that our life in the womb is ending,” Twin Two responds. “But I don’t want to leave the womb! I am happy here. I want to stay here forever, close to our mother!” “But we have no choice,” Twin Two responds again. “Besides, maybe...just maybe, there is life after birth.” Twin One: “But how can that be? The sac will break, the cord will be severed, and we’ll be cut off from our source of life. And besides, there’s evidence that others were here before us, and none has ever come back to tell us that there is life after birth. No, this is the end.” Twin Two begins to despair, “If life in the womb ends in death, what’s its purpose? It’s meaningless! Maybe...maybe we don’t even have a mother...maybe we just made her up.” Twin One: “But we must have a mother. How else did we get here? How else do we stay alive?”And so the last days in the womb were filled with questioning and deep fear about the future. The moment of birth came at an hour they did not expect. The twins were emotional, wondering about the unknown, uncertain if they would ever see each other, or their mother, again. The transition was painful. They struggled. They heard screams. All that they knew disappeared. And then… light! Shocking bright whiteness. Their eyelids slowly peeled from their skin, and they gazed in confused wonder at a new world around them. Their life-source, their great mother, wept when they were placed in her ...
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    7 Min.
  • April 4: Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor

    April 4: Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor
    Apr 2 2024
    April 4: Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor
    c. 560–636
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the internet

    There was little he did not know

    The vast colonial ambitions of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went hand in hand with equally epic Catholic missionary efforts. This unity of purpose, these shared goals, with civil and ecclesiastical resources and powers working in concert, was the natural consequence of a country with a total unity of identity. Today’s saint was a singularly important, if remote, source for that powerful concurrence of Iberian theology, culture, art, and language which, after centuries of gestation, became the Spanish juggernaut that conquered and evangelized a hemisphere in the 1500s.

    As a youth, Isidore received an excellent classical education in the Roman tradition, similar to the classical learning Saint Augustine imbibed two centuries before him and utilized to such great effect. Yet Isidore not only learned a great deal, he also remembered it and was uncommonly dedicated to his intellectual pursuits, writing numerous weighty tomes. The breadth and depth of his learning were without equal in his time. It was simply said that Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, knew everything. He is considered by many to be the last of the Latin Fathers of the Church, those early Christian theologians whose writings are the gold standard for all subsequent theologians.

    His knowledge was put to good use. As the Roman world, which had dominated Spain for so many centuries, slowly crumbled away in the fifth and sixth centuries, Visigothic (Western Goths) tribes overran Spain. Like their Gothic cousins in Central Europe, the Visigoths were Arians, and Arians were heretics. They denied that Christ was consubstantial with the Father and accepted all that flowed from that erroneous starting point. Saint Isidore played an important role in the assimilation of the Visigoths to Nicene Catholicism after one of their Kings abandoned Arianism. Theological unity having been achieved, the old Roman culture of Iberia slowly blended with Visigothic culture to form something new—Spain. Saint Isidore was, then, a nation builder, because he was first a Church builder. And he built the Church not just through his massive erudition but also through effective headship in calling and guiding Church synods, by establishing liturgical unity through the Mozarabic Rite, and by encouraging scholarship and learning through the Cathedral schools he mandated in every diocese.

    Saint Isidore’s most enduring work is his Etymologies (or Origins), an enormous compendium of universal knowledge. It was the standard encyclopedia in Medieval libraries and continued to be utilized as late as the Renaissance. No author’s manuscripts were more widely copied in the Middle Ages than Isidore’s. Although Saint Isidore was not a creative thinker in the same class as Saint Augustine or the Eastern Fathers of the Church, his mind was such a vast storehouse of knowledge that Pope Saint John Paul II named him the Patron Saint of the Internet.

    After a long reign as Archbishop of Seville, in his last days Saint Isidore prepared for death by wearing sackcloth and ashes, confessing his faults to his people in church, and asking their forgiveness. He died in his late seventies in 636, just four years after Mohammed, the founder of Islam, died in Saudi Arabia. About seventy-five years after their deaths, Muslim armies crossed the strait of Gibraltar from North Africa and began the long conquest which obliterated the Visigoths. The Spanish reconquest of their nation would take centuries until, in 1492, the last Muslim stronghold, Granada, fell. Both sides were inspired by faith more than patriotism. Both sides fought. Both sides thought they were right. In the end, the nation Isidore created was the stronger and drove Mohammed’s heirs back over the waters to Africa. Isidore’s enormous legacy was a Catholic nation, and it prevailed.

    Saint Isidore, you used your education and knowledge to great effect to evangelize a people. Help all who seek your intercession to unite their learning with zeal for the good of the Church and the many peoples it serves.
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    6 Min.
  • Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)

    Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)
    Apr 18 2025
    Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)
    c. 33 A.D.
    Triduum; Liturgical Color: Red

    No one knew love looked like this

    One of the most famous Greek sculptures in the world, a larger-than-life marble statue of a female, reigns over a monumental staircase in the Louvre. A soft, unfelt breeze ripples through the thin, flowing sheets that wrap her frame. Two expansive, articulated wings sweep elegantly back from her torso, giving the impression that she has just floated down from on high and landed softly on the prow of an invisible ship. Though now headless, the statue’s sense of movement is so vivid that one can still “see” her neck craning, her jaw jutting, and her eyes looking carefully downward as she settles to ground. She moves and yet she is still. She is “Winged Victory,” Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

    Victory in battle, conquest in war, and success in sport are typically celebrated with a blast of trumpets, gold medals hung around the neck, ticker-tape parades, a crowning with laurels, or the placing of an elegant statue like “Winged Victory” to serenely personify triumph over one’s enemies. Jesus Christ changed all that. He changed what victory looked like. Jesus climbed a different podium to win a different type of victory over man’s greatest enemy.

    On Good Friday, the God of the Living descended into the depths of human experience to conquer death. His victory parade was the carrying of the Cross on His tender shoulders up the hill of Calvary, where His hands were nailed to a splintery timber. He was raised on high by centurions for mockery, not exaltation. He then died a slow, agonizing death as His thorax sunk lower and lower and His diaphragm sucked less and less air into His lungs. It was not fast and clean. It took three hours. No one knew it at the time, but this was the new look of love in the Christian age, this was the new victory pose. Not laurels, but thorns. Not trumpets, but screams. Not medals, but scars. On Good Friday, Christ redefined victory. The victor is not prideful or strong, but humble, meek, wrecked, injured, and dead. Pain in the non-Christian world, whether in the past or today, has no redemptive power or reward. It is just mindless and arbitrary suffering. At best, it is stoicism.

    In the person of Jesus Christ, God does not explain human suffering. Instead, He gives it meaning. And giving meaning to something is a type of answer, although not a solution. We do not go to a funeral to solve a problem. We go simply to be present, to share the family’s sorrow. Sharing is a powerful response. It is more satisfying and profound to give something meaning than to make it disappear. The answer of Jesus Christ to human suffering is to share it. His answer is empathy. He suffers, dies, and is buried. No one can point a finger at God and say, “You don’t know what it’s like!” He certainly does know what it’s like! Jesus could have saved the world by cutting Himself shaving. But He didn’t. He experienced more than was necessary, because it was more fitting that God share every single human experience except sin. God drinks the common cup of human suffering to the dregs.

    Jesus did not die full of years. He died young, like many tragic heroes. Christ’s death gives hope to all who are preyed upon by loneliness, depression, fear, illness, anxiety, confusion, sin, and shame. In His death, Jesus does not just tell us but shows us that all these things can be conquered when united to Him. Jesus did not leave us a book but a life. And that life continues to be shared with us in word and sacrament, in its fullness, in the Catholic Church.

    God did not die on the Cross so that artists could sculpt Him. God died for a higher reason. He died for us. In Christ, the gift and the giver, the priest and the sacrifice, merge, and the result is life. As in marriage, so also in the Trinity, self-gift merges in generative love and creates life. So we etch that powerful reminder of Christ’s life-generating gift of self—the Crucifix—into our tombstones and place it high in our churches. This universal symbol of redemptive love even hangs from fine chains on our necks. In hoc signo vinces. Christ is our new winged Victory, not with two glorious wings spreading out in a proud gesture of triumph, but with His two thin bloody arms pinned to the Cross. He hangs there in agony, gasping for air, and heroically waits for Sunday to come.

    Crucified Lord, in Your passion and death, You walked for us the hard path to new life. You exited life through the door of death and so give us hope that the end is the beginning, that loss is gain, that defeat is victory, and that death is life.
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    7 Min.
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