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  • May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor

    May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor
    May 25 2026
    May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor
    c. 672–735
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of scholars

    Life’s drama is found in going deeper, not wider

    There is no world bigger than a monk’s cell. Those four, high walls shape thought like hard, steep banks contain the flow of a river. Rock curtains hanging on both sides force the raging river to carve a path through the landscape, always forward, always deeper. Here the tall banks stop the pounding river from pouring over into the plains. There the low banks allow the gentle current to run low and straight. A river without banks is a lake. And a mind without borders is a puddle—no forward movement and too shallow to sustain life. Borders, limits, and guardrails have expansive effects, paradoxically. A frame makes a painting burst to life; orderly lanes push traffic forward; and the edge of a canvas focuses the artist’s skill. Big thoughts start with boundaries. That’s why big thoughts happen in small spaces. Many thousands of monks’ minds were molded by the limits of the four, cold walls of their cells. And these scholar monks and saint monks gave birth to what we now call Europe.

    Today’s saint was a model monk who lived his whole life in an English monastery, although he occasionally traveled to neighboring communities to teach young scholars. Venerable Bede’s cell and monastery were nothing like those impressive stone structures with soaring arches and large courtyards, which still stand as icons of medieval Europe. Bede lived long, long before that golden age of monasticism. He died less than two hundred years after Saint Benedict, the founder of monasticism. The monasteries of Bede’s era were more like farms, where the monks lived in a dormitory above a large chapter room or perhaps even in crude huts huddled around a squat stone church. These first simple efforts to plant religious life into English soil matured, over centuries, into a network of enormous English monasteries. And these monasteries, in their fullest flower, grew into the universities, towns, schools, hospitals, lodges, cathedrals, and trade centers of England itself, a rich garden of Catholicism known in medieval times as Mary’s Dowry. Venerable Bede and his monastic brothers planted. Later generations harvested. And King Henry VIII then confiscated the garden and handed it over to his friends, who uprooted its most beautiful plants. Ironically and sadly, the tombs of many English saints, including Venerable Bede, lie today in Protestant churches.

    From his cell in remote England, Bede was enmeshed in the Church matters of his day. He was involved in the long simmering dispute over the date of Easter, promoted the practice of using Christ’s birth as the starting date for calendars, translated Christian works from Latin or Greek into Anglo-Saxon (to the immense good of the growth of the Church in England), and authored numerous works, the most famous of which is a history of the Church in England until his days. He was, in short, a prolific and wide-ranging scholar. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII honored that reputation by naming him a Doctor of the Church, the only native of England to be so honored.

    Thomas à Kempis, in his classic The Imitation of Christ, writes that every time a monk leaves his cell he comes back less a man. In his cell the monk learns everything he needs to know about himself, the world, and God. It is inside of our vocations that we find God’s will and our own fulfillment. A deep and abiding commitment to a specific person, religion, home, job, school, parish, spouse, and family is the stuff of life. Wandering is fun for a while. Commitment, though, is more exciting in the long run. The banks of the river must be built up. The edges and borders stacked high. The rails set in place. Then, and only then, life starts to be lived. To go deeper, not wider. To run those roots down deep into the moist soil. When we leave the four corners of our commitments and vocation, it may be liberating for a while, but time rectifies the deception. Our vocation is our home, and in that home we find happiness, make others happy, and satisfy the divine plan of the God who made us.

    Bede the Venerable, we see in your life a model of commitment to one place, one idea, one love, and one Church. We ask your intercession to aid all scholars, all monks, and all who waver, to stay at their desk, their kneeler, or their work bench to fulfill the task at hand.
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    6 Min.
  • The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

    The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
    May 24 2026
    Monday after Pentecost: The Blessed Virgin Mary,
    Mother of the Church
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

    One Mother, two motherhoods

    Mary mothered Jesus, Jesus then gave life to the Church with water and blood from His side, and the Church then mothers us into existence through baptism. Devotion to Mary goes hand in hand with devotion to the Church because both are mothers. Mother Mary gives the world Christ. Mother Church gives the world Christians.

    The metaphorical parallels between Mother Mary and Mother Church are spiritually rich and deeply biblical. Mary was understood by many early theologians as both the mother of the Head of the Church, Jesus, and also the symbol of the Church par excellence. Mother Mary is a virgin who conceived the physical body of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation. In a parallel way, Mother Church is the Mystical Body of Christ who gives every Christian rebirth through the power of the Holy Spirit received at Pentecost. Both Mary and the Church conceived through the same Spirit, without the aid of human seed. Mother Mary makes Christ’s body physically present in Palestine in the first century. Mother Church, in turn, makes Christ’s body mystically present through baptism and sacramentally present in the Eucharist, in every time and place. It was common for a baptismal font in early Christianity to be described as a sacred womb in which Mother Church gave her children life.

    The theological cross-pollination between Mother Mary and Mother Church has produced a field ripe for spiritual and theological cultivation. Christ is from Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Galilee. But He is most deeply from the Father. He is one Son but lives two sonships. Similarly, all Christians are born from one Mother expressed in two motherhoods: Mary’s and the Church’s. Mary and the Church, understood most profoundly, form one mother.  Both are the mother of Christ, but each mutually assists the other to bring Christ physically, sacramentally, and mystically into the world in all His fullness. Neither Mary nor the Church can exercise their motherhoods alone.

    Today’s feast, formally integrated into the Church’s calendar by the authority of Pope Francis in 2018, specifically commemorates Mary’s motherhood of the Church rather than her motherhood of God, a feast celebrated on January 1. Mary likely showed as much tender concern for Christ’s mystical body as it slowly matured in its native Palestine as she did for His physical body in Nazareth. Pope Pius XII perceptively noted Mary’s dual maternity in his encyclical on the Church: “It was she who was there to tend the mystical body of Christ, born of the Savior’s pierced heart, with the same motherly care that she spent on the child Jesus in the crib.” It is possible the Apostles held their first Council in about 49 A.D. in Jerusalem precisely because Mary still dwelled in the holy city. She was likely the young religion’s greatest living witness and pillar of unity. We can imagine her presiding over early Christian gatherings with reserved solemnity, nursing primitive Christianity just as she had Christ.

    Ancient pagans spoke of imperial Rome as a Domina, a divine female master. Rome was praised as a conquering mother who brought vanquished peoples close to her own heart, incorporating them as citizens into her vast, multicultural, polyglot realm. Other empires executed prisoners of war, exiled peoples, imposed a foreign culture, or displaced populations. Not Rome. Rome absorbed them all. The early fathers understood Mother Church as the successor to this Domina. In baptism this Mother does not release her children from her body but absorbs them, making them fully her own unto death. Since the early Middle Ages, feast days and devotions to the Virgin Mary have proliferated in Catholicism. Now Pope Francis has given the Church a feast to compliment that of January 1. The two motherhoods of Mary reflect one profound truth, that Christ approaches us in time and in space, in history and in sacrament, in mysterious and beautiful ways. In the words of Saint Augustine: “What (God) has bestowed on Mary in the flesh, He has bestowed on the Church in the spirit; Mary gave birth to the One, and the Church gives birth to the many, who through the One become one.” This is all cause for deep reflection.

    Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, God prepared you to be the sacred vessel to replace Mother Synagogue with Mother Church. Eve approaches you like mother to daughter, old Eve to New Eve, two mothers of the living. Help all Chritians to see both the Church and you Mary, as their mother.
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    6 Min.
  • Pentecost Sunday

    Pentecost Sunday
    May 23 2026
    Pentecost Sunday c. 33 A.D. Sunday after the Seventh Sunday of Easter Solemnity; Liturgical Color: Red Happy Birthday, Church! All living things have a birthday. The Church is a living organism and Pentecost is her birthday. Pentecost was a Jewish Feast Day. The author of the Acts of the Apostles identifies the day before the Holy Spirit ever descended. But Semitic Pentecost immediately acquired a new and perennial Christian meaning when the wind swirled and wisps of flame descended upon the heads of the Apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem. In a frightening display of God’s raw and awesome power, the Lord and Giver of Life, as the Nicene Creed defines the Holy Spirit, vivified the nascent Church with fire. The Church is still vivified by that same Spirit which has never left the room. Every living thing has an esprit de corps: there is team spirit, company culture, a platoon’s bravado, an orchestra’s élan, or the country spirit known as patriotism. As a living thing, the Catholic Church has a Spirit too, one which indwells in her more fully than in any other Church. The Holy Spirit stamps Catholicism with a trademark of authenticity. It guarantees the Church’s fidelity to the God who gave her life. The dramatic events of the first Christian Pentecost have linked, not illogically, the Holy Spirit with spontaneity, impetuosity, miracle working, supernatural gifts, and high octane evangelization. When a throng of Christians thunders praise and makes the ground tremble, no one attributes the heaving to God the Father. When a tumor disappears and a first-class sinner publicly weeps in repentance, or when upraised hands wave to and fro, heads jut toward the sky above, bodies sway, and pores drip sweat in the heat of the night, all agree that the Holy Spirit is pulsating in sync with the mighty deeds of God. And yet…there is also the still, small voice of the Prophet Elijah. There is also the Monday morning and the Thursday afternoon. Not every day is a rollicking God party. Few days, in fact, involve rollicking God parties. Everyday life is not a crashing wave. It’s more like a constant tide, rising and receding at regular intervals. The Church is often as mundane as everyday life because she is part and parcel of everyday life, as a real religion should be. And so the Church’s Holy Spirit is vitally present in the tide of everydayness just as she is present in the racket of a Saturday night bash. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of unity, drawing all people toward the flame of truth. The Holy Spirit is not an alternate third column creating ‘churches of one’ who speak only for themselves. Christ truly desires that His followers be one, “as we are one” (Jn 17:11). The Church’s unity is forged out of human diversity through a visible structure which channels the Holy Spirit through the Sacraments and their sanctifying graces. Structure and Spirit indwell. The Church’s visible nature embodies the Holy Spirit in the same fashion that an Independence Day parade with its well-known leaders and predictable route embodies a country’s patriotism. The tightly choreographed pattern walked by the smartly uniformed soldier at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier causes citizens to stand in respectful silence and their hearts to swell with pride for their nation because the ceremony makes visible what is otherwise only vaguely felt. Public rituals express communally what otherwise remains emotionally elusive and difficult for individuals to verbalize. The same applies for the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church.Watching the incense slowly rise over the altar at a solemn Mass, whispering on our knees in the deep quiet of the confessional, lighting a candle at the Grotto of Lourdes, or walking and praying as the Corpus Christi procession moves slowly forward are tangible experiences of a living Church. It is in moments such as these that we feel intensely the presence of the Holy Spirit. If we didn’t feel the Spirit in these events, we would not feel His presence at all, or we would not be sure it was not, instead, just powerful auto-suggestion at work. The Church protects us from such illusions.At Pentecost the Holy Spirit did not descend as a communal bonfire. The one Spirit of God parted and came to rest on each of the Apostles individually. The lesson? We each receive our share of God. God is the answer to the question that is every human soul. And God comes to us through a Church, not willy nilly in sweat and song. A tongue of fire is lit in every soul at baptism. We each house an eternal flame burning deep within. That flame will never be extinguished, even at death. Our personal flame of the Spirit, lit in our soul by the Church at baptism, will never die, because the Lord and Giver of Life is eternal. He waits patiently to gather together again every spark and flame that ever parted from Him into the one great conflagration of love that is the never-ending Pentecost of heaven. Come Holy ...
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    7 Min.
  • May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious

    May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious
    May 23 2026
    May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious
    c. 1015–1085
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

    A pope dies on the run

    The last words spoken by Pope Saint Gregory VII were “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, that is why I die in exile.” His enemies would have claimed that they loved justice equally as much but understood it differently, which is why the pope had to die on the run. No one really wins epic battles for power, though one side may prevail in the short run. Everyone loses something in a fight: some their dignity, others their property, their position, or maybe their teeth. There is no such thing as a win-win outcome. Pope Gregory VII was a scrappy fighter who boxed his powerful opponents for years. Yet he didn’t fight for his own honor, wealth, or position, but because he believed that “the blessed Peter is father of all Christians, their chief shepherd under Christ, (and) that the holy Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all the churches.” He battled for the right of the Bishop of Rome to govern the Church’s internal life free of interference from worldly powers. Pope Gregory’s victories and losses colored all of medieval history and established key precedents for the perennial tensions between Church and State which continue until today.

    Gregory VII was baptized as Hildebrand in the Tuscany region of Italy. He received an excellent education from Roman tutors, including one who later became Pope Gregory VI.  Most of his adult life was dedicated to serving various popes in important diplomatic and administrative roles. He was one of the most essential papal advisers of his era, even helping to craft the Church law limiting papal conclaves to cardinals alone. While still a deacon, Cardinal Hildebrand was chosen Pope in 1073 by popular acclamation. He refused to be seated on the papal throne as the result of such an outlaw election and went into hiding. Not until a proper vote of the cardinals took place did Hildebrand accept his election as canonically legitimate. He was shortly thereafter ordained a priest and bishop and then crowned Pope Gregory VII on the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, June 29, 1073.

    When Pope Gregory VII first sat on the throne of Saint Peter and gazed out at the universal church, he did not peer through rose-colored glasses. Long firsthand experience of the world made him no novice, so he set about with great determination to implement needed reforms. His twelve-year papacy would be one of the most consequential in history. Gregory first sought to carve out a space for the papacy to operate free from German meddling in its internal affairs. It was common at the time for princes, kings, and other powerful laymen to appoint clerics to their positions and to “invest,” or clothe, new bishops at their Ordination Masses with the symbols of office, such as their pastoral staff, miter, and ring. Gregory decreed an end to this practice, not least because of the confusion it engendered about who was the source of the bishop’s authority. But the “lay investiture” battle would continue for centuries, leading to recriminations on all sides, including Gregory’s dramatic excommunication of Emperor Henry IV and Henry’s deposition—and driving into exile—of the pope. Incredibly, as late as 1903, the Holy Roman Emperor still directly intervened in a papal conclave, exercising his ancient right of veto to block a cardinal from being elected pope.

    Pope Gregory VII pulled every lever at his disposal to make priestly celibacy compulsory, sought to heal the Schism of 1054 with the Orthodox, railed against simony (the purchasing of church offices), and encouraged the recovery of the holy sites in Jerusalem, a harbinger of the Crusades which commenced soon after his death. Gregory also memorialized in the clearest of terms the Church’s theology of the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, a statement of faith that presaged the deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament so characteristic of the High Middle Ages. Long before the popes were known as “Vicar of Christ,” they were called “Vicar of Peter.” Pope Gregory VII was a model medieval pope above personal reproach, ambitious only for the health and freedom of the Church. He represented both Christ and Saint Peter well.

    Pope Saint Gregory VII, may your earthly example and heavenly intercession sustain and inspire the leaders of the Church to act impetuously, to fight ceaselessly, and to forgive generously when confronted by forces inimical to the well-being of the Church.
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    6 Min.
  • May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin

    May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin
    May 23 2026
    May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin
    1566-1607
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the sick
    Life’s true drama is on the inside

    Today’s Carmelite saint was the Italian counterpart to Spain’s famous Carmelite, Teresa of Ávila, although Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi is less well known than her Spanish contemporary. Teresa was a well-traveled and extroverted reformer and founder of a large and vital branch of the Carmelite Order. Mary Magdalene, on the other other hand, was not even a Mother Superior, much less a founder, and followed the ancient observance of Carmel, not its “Teresian,” or discalced, offshoot.

    Named Caterina at her baptism, today’s saint was from a wealthy, pious, and respected Florentine family who expected their only daughter to marry young and marry well. But young Caterina was well trained in the things of God from the start and destined for a higher calling. While Caterina was still a girl, her spiritual director taught her the benefit and discipline of meditating half an hour a day. At the tender age of twelve, she experienced her first ecstasy. She gazed transfixed at the gorgeous sun setting over the rolling countryside and shook at the awesome beauty of God’s creation. Her mother was there, but little Caterina was speechless, unable to describe what hidden forces caused her body to tremble so.

    When she was sixteen, she entered a Carmelite convent, over her family’s initial objections. Taking the religious name of Mary Magdalene, she experienced a number of shocking spiritual events, which were documented and witnessed by her fellow Carmelites and by priest confessors. The young nun was rapt in God for weeks and months on end. She shook violently and showed signs of the stigmata. In her ecstasies, she received a crown of thorns from Jesus to share in His sufferings and a ring to symbolize her mystical marriage to Him. She lived on only bread and water for years, in reparation for the sins of mankind. When a priest ordered her to eat the simple fare of the convent, she became ill and had to return to her more meager nourishment. After one ecstatic vision, a near-death experience, Mary Magdalene described how she had given her heart to Jesus and how He had returned it to her with the purity of the Virgin Mary’s own heart. Jesus Christ had even hidden Saint Mary Magdalene in His side, subjugating her will and desires to His own.

    These many years of intense fireworks in her soul were followed by dark years of dryness and isolation. She felt a painful separation from Jesus her Spouse. During this time, Saint Mary Magdalene struggled with prideful self-love, distaste for God, and the all too common temptations of the flesh and the devil. But she persevered and became novice mistress of the Carmel, recommending poverty, obedience, and abandonment to the will of God as the surest forms of holiness. Mary Magdalene died young, exhausted from her spiritual contests, fasts, and demanding life of prayer. Behind her spectacular displays of spirituality was the day in and day out austerity of Carmelite convent life: the longing for a nice piece of meat, going to bed on an empty stomach, knees and hips aching from scrubbing the floor for endless hours, no dessert to satisfy the sweet tooth, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament and almost falling forward due to eyes burning with lack of sleep. Only by long practice do actions mature into habits and habits into the highest virtues.

    The proving ground of a strict convent proves a soul, and only then might spiritual flowers bloom. Only then might bright ecstasies sparkle against the dark curtain of night, to the wonder and awe of all around. For Mary Magdalene, Christ was not all rod and lash. She was a happy nun who played her part in keeping her convent running. She kept her personality, like all stigmatists and elite spiritual warriors, yet became one with Christ in a mysterious manner best described in poetic rather than theological terms. Her renown was widespread and her cult immediate. She was canonized in 1669. Her body lies in peace in her native Florence and is still incorrupt.

    Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, we ask your divine intercession before your Mystical Spouse to give all Religious the gift of perseverance, obedience, and poverty. Your spiritual ecstasies were unique—and destined for few. Grant those gifts that are common—and destined for many.
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    6 Min.
  • May 22: Saint Rita of Cascia, Religious

    May 22: Saint Rita of Cascia, Religious
    May 22 2026
    May 22: Saint Rita of Cascia, Religious
    c. 1386–1457
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of abuse victims, sterility, and difficult marriages

    She suffered for two spouses

    Rita Lotti gave birth to her first son at the age of twelve. Fortunately the child was not born out of wedlock. Rita’s husband had been chosen for her by her parents, and they married when she was twelve. Throughout eighteen years of marriage, Rita endured her husband’s insults, physical abuse, and infidelity until the loathful man was stabbed to death by one of his many enemies. Rita pardoned her husband’s killers and impeded her two sons from avenging their father’s death. Marriage ends with death, so Rita was free after her husband’s passing to satisfy a holy desire of her youth and entered an Augustinian convent. The leadership of the local Augustinians was reluctant to admit Rita, however, because she was not a virgin. Despite wide precedence for widows entering religious life, Rita was compelled to wait a number of years before receiving the habit.

    Rita was a model nun who lived to the fullest the spiritual requirements of her age. She was obedient, generously served the sick of the convent, and shared her wisdom of human nature, especially regarding marital distress, with the lay women who sought her out. Sister Rita was also devoted to prayer and meditated so deeply on the Passion of our Lord that she experienced a mini-stigmata. Instead of open wounds in her hands oozing blood, as Saint Francis and Saint Padre Pio displayed, a small wound appeared on Rita’s forehead. It was as if a thorn from Christ’s crown had penetrated the tightly wrapped flesh on her skull. There was no thorn visible, of course, just as no nails or spears pierced the bodies of other stigmatists. Rita’s wound refused to heal for a number of years. The unique statue, or image, showing a nun with a thorn stuck in her forehead is Saint Rita, making her one of the most easily identifiable people on the calendar of Catholic saints.

    After Saint Rita died of natural causes, her body did not deteriorate. She was placed in an ornate tomb, her extraordinary holiness was attested to in writing, and healing miracles were petitioned for and soon granted through her intercession. These many cures led to Rita’s beatification in 1626 and her canonization in 1900. Leathery black skin still covers Saint Rita‘s habited body as she peacefully reposes in a glass coffin in her shrine in Cascia, Italy. She is invoked as a kind of female Saint Jude, a patroness of impossible causes, particularly those related to the difficult vocation of marriage.

    Saint Rita was both a physical and a spiritual mother. She was a spouse of Christ—a perfect man, and of her husband—a flawed man. She knew intimately the vocation both to religious and to married life, giving her a certain status, or credibility, with both consecrated and married women, which few others saints enjoy. Rita’s dual vocation has given her a dual attraction, which is likely the cause of her fame and the continued devotion to her so many centuries after her death. In many ways, her life in the convent was not remarkable, except for the stigmata. There were surely many other nuns in Rita’s era and region whose virtue and prayerfulness stood out. Yet for reasons known to God alone and which are therefore sufficient, this nun, among so many others who brimmed with holiness, is still visited in her shrine, still invoked, and still thanked for the favors that she continues to rain down from her place in heaven.

    Saint Rita, through your intercession, aid all women in difficult marriages and abusive situations. Help women in distress to think rationally, to be faithful to their husbands if possible, to be devoted to their vows if they are able, and yet to flee if they are in danger.
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    5 Min.
  • May 21: Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest & Martyr, & Companions, Martyrs

    May 21: Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest & Martyr, & Companions, Martyrs
    May 21 2026
    May 21: Saint Christopher Magallanes, Priest and Martyr, and Companions, Martyrs Fr. Magallanes: 1869–1927; 22 priests and 3 laymen: 1915-1937, the majority killed between 1926-1929 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red A Mexican bloodletting The governor of Mexico’s Tabasco state in the 1920s, Garrido Canabal, was so insanely anti-Catholic that he named his three sons Lenin, Satan, and Lucifer. He was also a farmer and named one of his bulls “God,” a hog “Pope,” a cow “Mary,” and a donkey “Christ.” He ordered the removal and destruction of all crucifixes from public buildings and graveyards in Tabasco. Painful photographs of the destruction prove that it happened. For his vicious persecution of the Church, he was elevated to a national cabinet position in the 1930s. Canabal was a political protégé of the Mexican president, and later strongman, Plutarco Calles. Calles was an illegitimate child, born to unmarried parents. Calles hated being called an illegitimate child and especially resented the Roman Catholic Church for this title of illegitimacy. In time, Calles became a devout believer in the religion of atheism, eagerly shared his beliefs with others, and put great energy into evangelizing others to his side. As governor of the state of Sonora, he expelled all Catholic priests. As president of Mexico, he carried out an overtly violent, ferocious, scorched-earth attack on Catholicism without par in the twentieth century. Priests were killed for no other reason than for being priests. This led to a popular counterreaction known as the Cristero War, a slow burn of assassinations, pitched battles, skirmishes, and reprisals. Central Mexico was in a full-blown meltdown in the 1920s. For a visitor to Mexico today, or to anyone familiar with its culture, such events are difficult to imagine or comprehend. Mexico harbors one of the most vibrant Catholic cultures in the entire world, thick with devotions, processions, Masses, feast day celebrations, and religious song and dress. Yet the Cristero War did happen, and not a thousand years ago. The militant, anti-religious mentality of Anglo-Saxon secular humanism is familiar to many believers today. It is the air we breath. This educated secularism opposes the very idea of God, exalts a narrow understanding of freedom, denigrates the concept of belief, and transposes science as an object of faith rather than a formal creed. The militant anti-religious mentality of 1920s Mexico, and of other culturally Catholic nations, was and is different from Anglo-Saxon secularism. Anti-Catholicism in Catholic nations expresses itself in anticlericalism. Hatred is unleashed against bishops and priests and their instruments of ministry—altars, crucifixes, vestments, rosaries, statues, etc.—not so much against creeds or ideas. You don’t need to read Nietzsche or to master the Enlightenment canon to hate the Church. Whereas Anglo Saxon secularism wages its battles in the higher echelons of university classrooms and the courts, Latino anticlericalism is not too complex. Just kidnap a priest, blindfold him, tie his hands tightly behind his back, and shoot him in the head. Anticlericalism liquidates its enemies against the dirty brick wall behind the local police station. No courtrooms are needed. Today’s saint, and the others canonized with him, were caught in the storm that was Plutarco Calles. Father Magallanes was a priest of humble origins similar to those of Calles, but Magallanes walked a different path than the strongman. After working the land as a youth for his poor family, he entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1899. He then served faithfully as a chaplain and as a pastor to the Huichole Indians for many years. By middle age, he was a priest of some stature. But the otherwise ordinary arc of his life took an extraordinary turn when, on May 21, 1927, he was on his way to celebrate the Feast of St. Rita of Cascia (May 22) in a small village. A shootout between Cristeros and Federal forces near the village led to Father Magallanes’ arrest, along with a brother priest, Father Caloca. There were no accusations and no trial. There was neither the presentation of evidence nor the right of defense, since priests had no civil rights in Mexico at the time. On May 25, 1927, the two priests were led to the courtyard of a municipal building for what always happened next. Father Magallanes stated: “I am innocent and die innocent. I absolve with all my heart those who seek my death and ask God that my blood bring peace to a divided Mexico.” The priests absolved each other, spoke some few words of comfort, and then were shot to death by a firing squad of fellow Mexicans in soldiers’ uniforms. Father Caloca’s last words were: “For God we lived and for Him we die.” Twenty-five martyrs are commemorated today. All were diocesan priests, except for three laymen who died with their parish priest. They died in eight different ...
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    8 Min.
  • May 20: Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest

    May 20: Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest
    May 19 2026
    May 20: Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest
    1380–1444
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of advertising and gambling

    A sensational preacher popularizes the Holy Name devotion

    Saint Bernardine of Siena was the Billy Graham of his day. Graham was a well-known American evangelist who traveled ceaselessly from city to city preaching the good news of the Gospel over many decades. Yet while today’s saint was certainly a roving evangelist, he was also much more. He was first and foremost vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Franciscan Friar. Saint Bernardine was also ordained into the one Priesthood of Jesus Christ by a successor of the Apostles. And he had received a long and complete theological and humanistic education before he ever opened his mouth in front of a crowd. He was even a doctor of canon law.

    Fifteenth-century Italy was hot with reform of the Church. Ever since 1417 and the end of the Great Schism (an era of two and even three competing popes), talk of Church reform was on the lips of anyone who believed enough to care. Unfortunately, every effort to compel a bishop to live in his diocese, to form better educated priests, to purify indulgence selling, to streamline Church courts, to appoint holy bishops, to stop commerce in relics, and so on, was ignored or resisted. The roots of some weeds are tangled and ferocious. They cannot be pulled from the ground. The 1400s were a lost century for efforts to reform the Church. The popes tightened their grip on Church power so that no council would ever pry their fingers from the levers of ecclesial governance. The needed reforms would have to wait until the immensely successful Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. But it was too late by then. Father Martin Luther and others had been tired of waiting. The Reformation began in 1517, one hundred years after the Great Schism ended. Vast populations of Northern Europe were cleaved from the true Faith because the needed reforms came too late.

    Saint Bernardine was one of the many bright lights of fifteenth-century Italy who did everything in his power to create a holier Church through his preaching. He was such a compelling and entertaining speaker that enormous crowds turned out to hear him, normally first thing in the morning. He encouraged devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus and often held the IHS monogram in his hand when preaching. This devotion was later incorporated as a feast day into the universal calendar of the Church. Bernardine dramatically exhorted his congregations to melt their mirrors, playing cards, perfumes, dice, wigs, and other worldly distractions in a “bonfire of the vanities” roaring near his pulpit. This was true drama.

    In the Franciscan tradition, Bernardine of Siena walked everywhere. No horse or mule or carriage for the journey. He excoriated usury, superstition, and the deplorable scourge of homosexual acts, in the starkest terms. Compared to the modern penchant for market research, polling, and tailoring a message to audience expectations, Saint Bernardine was fearless. He spoke the unvarnished truths of his religion to the adherents of the same. Preaching, he understood, was an essential charism of the Priesthood of Christ, not an add-on. Saint Bernardine also published, far ahead of his time, works on entrepreneurship, business practices, a just wage, and the determining of just values for a product or service. Saint Bernardine was a sophisticated thinker with a common touch.

    The fact that Saint Bernardine lived almost into the age of the printed book meant that many of his sermons were accurately preserved. It also meant that images of his likeness were uniform and accurate. A famous painting by El Greco shows the emaciated friar in a worn Franciscan habit, the three knots on his white cincture visible, representing poverty, chastity, and obedience. His right hand holds a standard bearing the monogram of the name of Jesus—IHS. In his left hand is a book, perhaps the Bible. And at his feet are three bishops’ miters. Saint Bernardine was three times offered to be made a bishop and three times he said, “No.” Thus, in addition to all of his other considerable virtues, our saint also possessed the queen of the virtues — humility. Bernardine of Siena was the Saint Paul of his era and was canonized in 1450, just six years after he died, numerous miracles having already been attributed to his intercession. 

    Saint Bernardine of Siena, inspire all preachers to not count the personal cost of stating uncomfortable truths but instead to suffer the repercussions of honest talk. Help priests to fortify their preaching with impeccable lives of prayer, fasting, devotion, and virtue, just as you did.
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