Saint Michael Center

DECEMBER SAINTS CALENDAR
3	Saint Francis Xavier
6	St. Nicholas
8	The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
10	Our Lady of Loreto
12	Our Lady of Guadalupe
17	Saint Lazarus
18	The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
24	Saint Adam and Saint Eve
25	The Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
26	Saint Stephen
27	Saint John
28	The Holy Innocent
31	Saint Catherine Laboure

DECEMBER 3 - Saint Francis Xavier (1552). Saint Francis Xavier of the Society of Jesus has been the greatest apostle of the Catholic Church since the time of Saint Paul. He is called the second Saint Paul. He entered the Society of Jesus when he was twenty-eight years old. When he was thirty-four years old he set out as a missionary to India and Japan, in the year 1540. He took with him no other book except his breviary. He landed in Goa on May 6, 1542, after a long and most dangerous journey of thirteen months. He went to the Molucca Islands. He was three times shipwrecked. He often spent days without food. He was attacked by the Mohammedans. After his great work in India, he started off for Japan. The next great country he wished to go to was China, and he almost reached it in 1552, when he landed on the small island of Sancian, near the coast of China. There he was taken ill and died. Saint Francis Xavier baptized three million people. He destroyed forty thousand idols in the pagan East. He built over a hundred churches. He raised about twenty-five people from the dead. His last words were, “Virgin Mother, remember me.” Saint Francis Xavier was canonized March 12, 1622. The Novena of Grace, celebrated in his honor, always ends each year on that day. Saint Francis Xavier was forty-six years old when he died. All his missionary work in the East was done in ten years.

DECEMBER 6 - Saint Nicholas (4th Century). St. Nicholas, the 4^th century saint who inspired our modern figure of Santa Claus, was born near Myra, a port on the Mediterranean Sea serving the busy sea lanes that linked the seaports of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Ships ailing these waters, laden with grain and all kinds of goods, found safety in the port from raging storms and menacing pirates.

Nicholas came from one of the city’s wealthy merchant families, but he was not spoiled by his family’s wealth. His mother and father taught him to be generous to others, especially those in need. So Nicholas came to see that helping others makes one richer in life than anything else.

One day, by chance, Nicholas heard about a rich man in Myra who lost all his money when his business failed. The man had three lovely daughters, all wishing to get married, but he had no money for their marriage. Besides, who would marry them, he thought, since their father is such a failure? With nothing to eat, the man in desperation decided to sell one of his daughters into slavery. At least then the rest of them might survive.

The night before the first daughter was to be sold, Nicholas, with a small bag of gold in this hand, softly approached their house, and, tossing the gold through an open window, quickly vanished into the darkness.

The next morning, the father found a bag of gold lying on the floor next to his bed. He had no idea where it came from. “Maybe it’s counterfeit,” he thought. But as he tested it, he knew it was real. He went over the list of his friends and business associates. None of them could possibly have given him this.

The poor man fell to his knees and great tears came to his eyes. He thanked God for his beautiful gift. His spirits rose higher than they had been for a long time because someone had been so unexpectedly good to him. He arranged for his first daughter’s wedding and there was enough money left for the rest of them to live for almost a year. Often he wondered: who gave them the gold?

But by the end of the year, the family again had nothing, and the father, again desperate and seeing no other way open, decided his second daughter must be sold. But Nicholas, hearing about it, came by night to their window and tossed another bag of gold as before. The next morning the father rejoiced and thanking God, begged His pardon for losing hope. Who, though, was the mysterious stranger giving them such a gift?

Each night afterwards the father watched by the window. As the year passed their money ran out. In the dead of one night he heard quiet steps approaching his house and suddenly a bag of gold fell onto the floor. The father quickly ran out to catch the one who threw it there. He caught up with Nicholas some distance away and recognized him, for the young man came from a well-known family in the city.

“Because you needed it,” Nicholas answered. “But why didn’t you let us know who you were?” The man asked again. “Because it’s good to give and have only God know about it.”

When the bishop of Myra died, the priests and leading people of the city along with the neighboring bishops came together in their cathedral to select a new bishop. They prayed and asked God to point out who it would be. In a dream, God said to one of them that they should all pray together the next morning. Someone would come through the cathedral door as they prayed. He should be their choice.

It was Nicholas who entered the cathedral the next morning. Immediately, the people of the city named him their bishop, for they knew that this unassuming person, whose good deeds they had learned about, was meant by God to lead them.

As bishop of Myra, Nicholas seemed more aware than ever of people’s needs. He would appear all over the city offering help to anyone in difficulty, then quietly disappear without waiting for thanks. He shunned publicity. Still, his reputation as a holy man grew and grew, even spreading to distant cities that had never seen him.

He was especially interested that families had enough to eat and a good place to live, that children got ahead in life, and that old people lived out their lives with dignity and respect. And he always loved the sailors living so dangerously on the sea. Without their ships, people everywhere would be without food and other goods they carried for trade.

Yet, it is as a lover of children that Nicholas is best remembered today. While he lived, he gave the little ones he met small gifts-some candy, a toy. His kindness, which always managed to surprise them, touched their hearts, and they learned from this holy man what a beautiful thing giving is.

In the figure of Santa Claus, whose name and activity Nicholas inspired, we have this saint with us today.

DECEMBER 8 - The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (17 B.C.). This is the mystery of Mary to which our whole country, the United States of America, was dedicated at the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1846. The meaning of the mystery is that from the first instant of her conception in the womb of Anna, her mother, Mary was without original sin. Nothing of the guilt which Adam bestowed on the whole human race, because of his sin the Garden of Paradise, was allowed to touch the perfect soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God created the soul of Mary in sheer holiness, full of every grace he could bestow on her. In our own day, which is rightly called “the age of Mary,” in the year 1854, on December 8, the courageous and holy Pope Pius IX, defined the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a dogma of the Catholic Faith. Anyone who does not believe in this dogma, Our Lady, in 1858, in one of her eighteen apparitions to Saint Marie Bernadette of Lourdes, a little fourteen year old girl who lived in southern France, said, by way on innocently emphasizing the papal definition of Pius IX and its meaning, not “I was immaculately conceived” but “I AM the Immaculate Conception.” This she said on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25. Mary let us know thereby that she was the very notion of this grace in the mind of God from all eternity. Mary is God’s love, His dove, His beautiful one.

DECEMBER 10 - Our Lady of Loreto. This feast commemorates the translation of the holy little house where Mary was conceived and born, and where Jesus, true God and true Man, was conceived. Houses and dwelling place are an important part of Christian love. The beautiful holy house where Mary and Jesus were both conceived, and where Mary was born, was miraculously transported from Nazareth to Dalmatia in the year 1291. In the year 1294, it was again miraculously transported to the little town of Loreto in northeast Italy. One of the greatest privileges a Catholic can ask of God is to visit this holy house, enter its doorway, and see where Jesus and his virginal Mother lived during Our Lord’s childhood, young manhood, and hidden life, until He was thirty years of age. Numberless saints visited the Holy House of Loreto, and many, many Popes have given it their blessing. A little saint who especially loved it, and nearly died of joy when she visited it, was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, the Little Flower.

DECEMBER 12 - Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531). Guadalupe is a little town three miles north of Mexico City. There, in the year 1531, thirty-nine years after Columbus discovered America, Our Lady appeared to a simple Indian fifty-five years old, named Juan Diego. Juan Diego had been converted to the Catholic Faith six years before. Our Lady appeared to this simple Indian three times, and to his uncle once. She wanted a shrine built in Guadalupe in her honor. Our Lady saw in the Mexicans a people she could love and beautifully make her children. For the sake of those who doubted that Juan Diego had seen her, on the morning of December 12, 1531, Our Lady told him to father some roses from the hill and put them in his cloak and carry them to the bishop of the diocese. Juan Diego did so. When he opened his cloak-the Mexicans call it his ”tilma”-in the presence of the authorities, there was found imprinted on it one of the most beautiful pictures of the Mother of God that has ever been seen. The picture is called “Our Lady of Guadalupe”. Copies of it have been made and sent to every part of the world. Within eight years after the apparition of Our Lady to this simple Mexican Indian, nine million converts among his people were made to the Catholic Faith. Mexicans have beautifully preserved the Catholic Faith through the years in spite of all the opposition of the enemies of Christ. There are great number of Mexicans in Heaven.
MARY'S MISSION IN AMERICA: THE STORY OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

DECEMBER 17 - Saint Lazarus (First Century). Saint Lazarus was the brother of Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Martha. He was raised from the dead by Jesus, as we are told in the eleventh chapter of Saint John. He was one of the very first apostles to France. He was driven out of the Holy Land by the Jews and sailed on a boat without sails or oars, with his two sisters and other, and landed on the coast of Southern France. He because the first Bishop of Marseilles. He is one of the most loved of all saints of the Catholic French people. His name appears in landmarks all over France in the French form, “Saint Lazare”.

DECEMBER 18 - The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1 B.C.). This is the day of the octave before the birth of Jesus from the womb of Mary. It is the beginning of Our Lady’s last novena, awaiting the coming of her Divine Child Whom she had kept in her womb for nine months. What those last days of expectation before the nativity of Jesus meant to the heart and soul of the Mother of God, anyone with childlike love can somehow imagine, and with the help of God can realize intensely. It is a loving and prayerful prelude to Christmas to remember our Lady on this day.

DECEMBER 24 - Saint Adam and Saint Eve (First Age of the world). As we have said elsewhere, Adam and Eve are not called saints in ordinary reference, historical or scriptural. But they may be called saints on their feast day, which is the vigil of Christmas, because we know from sound Catholic tradition that they repented of their great sin, lived lives of holiness and are now in Heaven. Adam is the father of the human race. Eve, his wife, was formed form Adam’s body. All of us have descended from these two. Adam was created in a state of pardisal innocence, with no human frailties or weakness. Adam sinned by disobeying the command of God not to eat a forbidden fruit. The whole human race inherited original sin because of Adam. Adam personally repented. Adam live for 930 years. By his sorrow, his contrition, his pleading and his love, Adam finally won God’s full forgiveness for himself. Adam died and went to the Limbo of the Just, which is called “hell” in the Apostle’s Creed. This was not the hell of the damned. It was the place where the Just had to wait for the coming of Christ. Adam ascended into Heaven in body and in soul with Our Lord on Ascension Thursday, forty days after Easter. Adam’s feast is the vigil of Christmas, which is also the feast of Eve, his wife, who is with him in Heaven.

DECEMBER 25 - The Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (1 A.D.). On December 25, five thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine years after the creation of the world, in a little stable in the town of Bethlehem, six miles southwest of Jerusalem, of a beautiful virgin, fifteen years, three months and seventeen days old, took place the birth of all births in the history of the world, The Eternal and Everlasting God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, generated in the bosom of the Father before all ages, having taken a human nature (a human soul and human body) came forth like light from the womb of Mary of Nazareth, in the town of Nazareth, in the town of Bethlehem in Judea. Mary was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus. The nativity of Jesus did not in any way alter the virginal character of the body. Jesus ensued from Mary’s womb as light comes through a window. Mary at once wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes and laid Him in the straw of a manger, where an ox and an ass had been eating. Angels at once began to shine on March 25, nine months before, was leading Kings from the East to show them where God was born. It was Christmas Day. The crib in which Our Lord was laid when He was born is now kept in the Church of Saint Mary Major in Rome.

DECEMBER 26 - Saint Stephen (36). The name Stephen means “crown”, and this is appropriate when you think of the saints because the first martyr of the Catholic Faith – the protomartyr as he is called – was named Stephen. Saint Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews in the year 36. Saint Paul was present at this martyrdom, and it was a grace, which in no small way caused his conversion. Saint Stephen’s full story takes up two chapters in the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 6 and 7. Saint Stephen was one of the first seven deacons. Saint Stephen’s name is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass. He is the first martyr mentioned in the litany of Saints. He is buried in Rome, beside Saint Laurence, and greatly venerated there. Saint Stephen’s greatest honor is that his feast is the day after the birth of Our Lord.

DECEMBER 27 - Saint John (100). Saint John the Evangelist was the youngest of all the Apostles. He was twelve years younger than Our Lord and was eighteen years old when he became a disciple of Jesus. Saint John was the other brother of Saint James and the son of Saint Mary Salome. He is called by God’s own inspiration, “the disciple of whom Jesus loved.” On the Mount Calvary, he was given charge and care of the Blessed Virgin, the day Jesus died. Saint John the Evangelist was the Blessed Virgin Mary’s priest. He said Mass for her every day. He listened to her say the “Magnificent” every morning after she had received her Divine Son in the Holy Eucharist. He was the priest who put back into the mouth of the Mother of God the Precious Body and Blood which came from her womb, divinized by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Saint John the Evangelist wrote the fourth Gospel, three Epistles and The Apocalypse: one historical book, three doctrinal books and one prophetical book. After the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Assumption into Heaven, in the year 58, Saint John went to Ephesus. He preached in Asia Minor with such intensity and with such fruits that a Roman Emperor had him dragged over to Rome. In the year 95 he was tried in Rome and condemned to be thrown into a caldron of boiling oil, by which God’s Providence did him no harm. He was then exiled to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse in the year 96, and later his three Epistles. He died at Ephesus in the year 100. He was eighty-eight years old when he died. No relics of him remain. His body was assumed into Heaven with his Soul. Saint Robert Bellarmine assures us of this great fact.

DECEMBER 28 - The Holy Innocent (1 A.D.). These were seventy-two little Jewish boys of two years and under who were killed by the order of King Herod the Great in his effort to get rid of Jesus, once the news of our Lord’s birth had been made manifest. The Catholic Church calls these little boys “the flowers of the Martyrs.” They were the first little innocents to die for Jesus, the beginning of the millions who would, in the history of the Catholic Church, be killed for the sake of what they were and what they believed.

DECEMBER 31 - Saint Catherine Laboure (1876). She was a religious of the Sister of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. She was sent to a convent in Paris where Our Lady appeared to her three times in the year 1830, and gave her the inspiration for the beautiful miraculous Mary medal, which so many Catholics wear today. Saint Catherine Laboure is the saint of the Mary medal. Saint Dominic is the saint of the Rosary. Saint Simon stock is the saint of the Scapular. Saint Francis of Assisi is the saint of the Christmas Crib. Saint Bernadine of Siena is the saint to the Holy Name. Saint Leonard of Prot Maurice is the saint of the Stations of the Cross. Saint Paschal Baylon is the saint of the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Gaspar del Buffalo is the saint of the Most Precious Blood. Saint Margaret Mary is the saint of the Sacred Heart. Saint Louis Marie de Montfort is the saint of slavery to Mary. Saint Teresa of Avila is the saint of Saint Joseph. Saint Jerome is the saint of Guardian Angels. Saint Therese of Lisieux is the saint of the Holy Face. SAINT CATHERINE LABOURE' & THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL

DECEMBER SAINTS