Saint Michael Center

DECEMBER SAINTS CALENDAR
1	Saint Edmund Campion Saint Natalie
2	Saint Bibiana
3	Saint Francis Xavier Saint Jason
4	Saint John Damascene Saint Barbara
5	Saint Sabbas
6	St. Nicholas Saint Denise
7	Saint Ambrose
8	The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
9	Saint Leocadia
10	Our Lady of Loreto Blessed Brian Blessed Sidney
11	Saint Damasus
12	Our Lady of Guadalupe Saint Jane Frances de Chantal Saint Abra
13	Saint Lucy
14	Saint John of the Cross
15	Saint Christiana
16	Saint Ananias, Saint Azarias and Saint Misael Saint Alice
17	Saint Lazarus
18	The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
19	Blessed Urban V
20	Saint Dominic of Silos
21	Saint Peter Canisius
22	Saint Flavian
23	Saint John Cantius Saint Yvo of Cartres
24	Saint Adam and Saint Eve
25	The Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Saint Anastasia Saint Eugenia
26	Saint Stephen
27	Saint John
28	The Holy Innocent
29	Saint Thomas a Becket Saint David the King
30	Saint Sabinus
31	Saint Sylvester Saint Catherine Laboure

He was born in London in 1540. He went to the University of Oxford where he was perhaps its most brilliant student. Queen Elizabeth, the heretical Queen of the English, met him there on a visit in 1566. She was fascinated by his good looks, his manner and his brilliance of mind. Temporarily, he took the oath of supremacy to her, but when he saw how the catholic martyrs were being tried in England and the doctrines for which they were willing to shed their blood, he threw aside all his heretical leanings. He went to Douai, in France, and later to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus. He returned to England and made an effort to win all Protestants back to the Catholic Faith. He was seized and arrested and brought to the Tower of London. The Queen came to see him. She tried to persuade him to give up his strong stand for the Catholic Church. She made offers to him of every liberty and honor if he would forsake the Catholic Faith. Edmund Campion refused. He was tortured on the rack, and for four long conferences faced the heretics who opposed him and refuted brilliantly every one of their arguments. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on the first day of December. He has been one of the glories of the Society of Jesus ever since.

Saint Natalie (311). She was a courageous woman from Nicomedia who took great care of the martyrs there during the persecution of Diocletian.

DECEMBER 2. Saint Bibiana (Vivian) (363). Saint Bibiana was a heroic Roman girl, the daughter of a father and mother who were saints. Her sister was also a saint. All four of this family were martyred for the Catholic Faith. Her father, Saint Flavian, has his feast day on December 22. Her sister, Saint Demetria, has her feast day on June 21. And Saint Dafrosa, the mother of Saint Bibiana, has her feast day of January 4. This is how this holy little family is scattered through the year in liturgical love. It was Julian the Apostate, in 363, who martyred Saint Bibiana. He could not induce her to give up either her Faith or her chastity, even though she was tied to a pillar and scourged with metal ropes. When she died, her body was thrown to the dogs. It was rescued by a Catholic priest. There is a great church dedicated to Saint Bibiana in Rome. Her mother and her sister are buried with her. Saint Bibiana (Saint Vivian) is the patroness of the diocese of Los Angeles in the United States of America.

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.

Saint Jason (283). He was the son of the martyr. Saint Claudius, a Roman tribune. Saint Jason was beheaded along with his brother, Saint Maurus. Their mother, Saint Hilaria, buried them. She was arrested while praying at their tomb and was also martyred.

DECEMBER 4. Saint John Damascene (749). He was the last of the Greek Fathers and a great Doctor of the Church. His veneration for holy pictures and images caused him to have his right hand cut off by order of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian. His right hand was miraculously restored to him by the Blessed Virgin Mary when he knelt before one of her images. Saint John Damascene was seventy-three years old when he died.

Saint Barbara (235). Saint Barbara was born and lived in northern Egypt, in the city of Heliopolis. This was the city through which Our Lady and Saint Joseph carried Our Lord on the Flight into Egypt, and where all the pagan idols crashed to the ground when the Holy Family walked through the streets. Saint Barbara was a most beautiful girl. Her father kept her locked up in a tower, where she had three windows made, in honor of the Blessed Trinity. She was secretly baptized a Catholic. Her tyrannical father hated her for this. He denounced her. He had her tortured, and then martyred her himself by cutting off her head with a sword. Before her death she had destroyed all the idols in her father’s house. Her father was later struck by lightning and killed. Saint Barbara is one of the fourteen Holy Helpers, and is invoked against lightning.

DECEMBER 5. Saint Sabbas (532). He was an abbot, a most saintly monk who care from Cappadocia in Asia Minor, and lived in the desert land between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. He finally took charge of all the monasteries in that territory. He was a great fighter to protect the humanity of Jesus Christ from the Monophysite heresy, which denied the human nature of Jesus, thus putting an end to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to His Most Precious Blood. One of the monasteries built by Saint Sabbas, not too far from the Garden of Olives where Our Lord sweat blood on the night of His Passion, still remains. It is the second oldest monastery in the history of the Church. The oldest monastery is that of Saint Catherine of Alexandria on Mount Sinai. Saint Sabbas was ninety-three years old when he died. His relics are now in the Church of Saint Mark in Venice.

6. Saint Nicholas of Bari (350). The great Saint Nicholas, whom everybody knows and speaks of, was an Archbishop at Myra in Asia Minor. He has come to be honored as the patron saint of children. His relics were taken by the Italians to Italy in 1087, and are now honored there, at Bari. Saint Nicholas raised three children from the dead. His name has been corrupted from Saint Nicholas into “Santa Claus.” The true Saint Nicholas is the one who honors those who love and venerate him as a saint, not as an advertisement. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of Russia.

Saint Denise (Dionysia) (484). Saint Dionysia was one of the groups of African martyrs killed under the Vandal King Hunneric. Her little child and her sister were both killed at the same time.

DECEMBER 7. Saint Ambrose (397). Saint Ambrose is one of the four great Doctors of the Western Church. He was a bishop of Milan in Italy. He began by being the governor of northerly Italy. But when the bishop of Milan died, because of the voice of a child in the crowd shouting “Ambrose for bishop!”. Saint Ambrose, though only a catechumen at the time, was baptized, confirmed, ordained a priest, and was consecrated a bishop on December 7 in the year 374. Saint Ambrose died when he was only fifty-seven. He died on Good Friday. He was buried by the side of the martyrs, Saints Gervase and Protase, who were the protomartyrs of Milan. It was Saint Ambrose who baptized Saint Augustine on April 24, 387. This was on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, and the day on which Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine composed the beautiful hymn known as the Te Deum, an indispensable prayer of the Catholic Church. The sayings of Saint Ambrose as a Doctor of the Catholic Church are so profound and clear and noble that any one of them, once listened to or read, can never be forgotten. Saint Ambrose says that the devil keeps an account of our sins, but if we accuse ourselves of these sins before a Catholic priest in confession, no accuser, not even the devil, will appear before us when we stand at the Judgment Seat of God.

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 9. Saint Leocadia (303). A glorious little virgin martyr, killed for the Catholic Faith in Spain, is Saint Leocadia. Her home was at Toledo. She was thrown over a precipice by haters of her Faith and her purity. She was a beautiful image of the Mother of God. Her precious body was crushed to pieces from falling on rocks.

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.

Blessed Brian (1591). He was born in Yorkshire in England and was hanged at Tyburn, during the Protestant Reformation, for sheltering his cousin, a priest.

Blessed Sidney (1591). He was hanged at Tyburn for protecting Catholic priests in England. His name may be spelled Sydney.

DECEMBER 11. Saint Damasus (384). He was the thirty-ninth Pope. He was a Spaniard, born in Rome. He is called by Saint Jerome, “an incomparable man.” He was the Pope of the second Ecumenical Council of the Church (the Council of Constantinople I) which defended the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. He was the Pope who assigned Saint herome to make the complete Latin version of the Holy Scriptures which has served all true Catholics from that time to this. One of the great devotions of Saint Damasus was to Saint Laurence the martyr who shed his blood in 258.

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.

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1641). In her early years, Jane Frances Fremyot married theBaron de Chantal. After his death, under the spiritual guidance of Saint Francis de Sales, she founded the Sisters of the Visitation, one of the greatest Orders of nuns in the Catholic Church. This was in the year 1610. At the time of her death there were eighty-six convents of this Order in France alone. Saint Francis de Sales called Saint Jane Frances de Chantal “the perfect woman.” One of the great admirers and supporters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal was Saint Vincent de Paul.

Saint Abra (361). She was the daughter of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, a Doctor of the Church, born before he was converted to the Catholic Faith and gave up his wife to God. She was eighteen years old when she died, and was the greatest glory of her father’s heart. Of the thirty-two Doctors of the Church, including Saint Hilary, eight have notable relatives who were saints. Saint Basil’s grandmother, Saint Macrina, his father and his mother, Saint Basil and Saint Emmelia, two of his brothers, Saint peter of Sebaste and Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and his sister, Saint Macrina, were all saints. Saint Gregory Nazianzen’s mother, Saint Nonna, was a saint and so where his sister, Saint Gorgonia, and his brother, Saint Caesarius. Saint Ambrose has a sister, Saint Marcelina, and a brother, Saint Satyrus, who were saints. Saint Augustine’s mother was a saint, the notable Saint Monica. Saint Gregory the Great’s mother, Saint Sylvia, and his two aunts, Saint Tarsilla and Saint Emiliana, were saints. Saint Isidore of Seville has among the saints tow of his brothers, Saint Leander and Saint Fulgentius, and a sister, Saint Florentiana. Saint Bernard of Clairvaus has a sister, Saint Humbeline, and a brother, Blessed Gerard, both listed in the catalogue of saints of the Roman Catholic Church.

DECEMBER 13. Saint Lucy (304). Saint Lucy was a little Sicilian girl who lived in Syracuse, and was martyred when she was twenty-one years old for the Catholic Faith. Her name is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the mass and always in the Litany of the Saints. Wonderful miracles have been worked through her intercession. She refused to marry a pagan. She died a Christian virgin.

DECEMBER 14. Saint John of the Cross (1591). Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church; was a Spanish Carmelite priest. He died when he was only forty-nine years old. He was the great friend and supporter of Saint Teresa of Avila. He has been called the “mystic of mystics.” His brilliant works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle and the Living Flame of Love, are beautiful inspirations for those who wish to be detached from all worldly things and dedicate themselves wholly to god. Saint John suffered great persecutions, even from this own Order. He was once kept in prison for nine months and slandered by everyone. But his motto and his prayer was “to suffer and to be despised.” He gloriously lived up to his title, “of the Cross.”

DECEMBER 15. Saint Christiana (Nino) (320). She lived in Georgia in southern Russia. Even when enslaved by the haters of the Catholic Faith, Saint Christiana, by her beautiful humility in all her prayers and by her wonderful miracles, converted thousands and thousands to the one true Faith.

DECEMBER 16. Saint Ananias, Saint Azarias and Saint Misael (Seventh Century B.C.). There were the three handsome and royal Jewish boys (the Babylonian names were Sidrach, Abdenago and Misach) who, during the Babylonia Captivity of the Jews, which lasted from 606 B.C. to 536 B.C., as companions of the great prophet Daniel, by command of the King Nabuchodonosor were asked to eat forbidden food and adore a golden statue. When they refused, they were thrown into a fiery furnace which had no power to destroy them. It was they who composed, while in the midst of the flames, the beautiful canticle found in the third chapter of the prophet Daniel which the Catholic Church still sings and recites, and which begins, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the god of our fathers, and worthy to be praised and glorified and exalted above all forever.” Saint Ananias, Saint Azarias and Saint Misael are popularly known as “the three young men in the fiery furnace.”

Saint Alice (Adelaide) (999). She was the daughter of a king of Burgundy. She married the King of Italy. On his death, she married the Roman Emperor, Otto the Great. Left a widow, she became the ruler of the Empire. Before her death she dedicated herself to god in a convent as a nun. Saint Alice was a princess, a queen, an empress and a nun. She was sixty-nine years old when she died.

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 19. Blessed Urban V (1370). Blessed Urban V was a Pope in the fourteenth century during the dreadful period when the Popes were living in Avignon, in France, and not in Rome, where they belonged. This was much to the detriment of the good of the Church. Blessed Urban V was the sixth of the seven Popes to rule the Church from Avignon. By the encouragement of a brilliant Catholic woman, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Pope Urban V made plans to return to Rome and did so. He was forced to return again to France where he died. But because of his courage, the Avignon Captivity, which lasted from 1309 to 1377, came to an end under his successor, Pope Gregory XI.

DECEMBER 20. Saint Dominic of Silos (1073). He was first a shepherd. He later became a priest and lived as a hermit under the Rule of Saint Benedict. He was appointed Abbot of Saint Sebastian’s at Silos in Spain. He miraculously delivered more than three hundred prisoners taken by the Mohammedans shortly after his death. It was because of the intercession of Saint Dominic of Silos that Blessed Jane of Aza brought into the worlds, in 1170, the great Saint Dominic who founded the Order of Friars preachers. All the queens of Spain used to keep his staff in their room when they were giving birth to a child.

DECEMBER 21. Saint Peter Canisius (1597). He was a native of Holland who was received into the Society of Jesus when he was twenty-two years old. He was the great leader of the counter-Reformation against Protestants in German countries in the sixteenth century. He worked in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Bohemia and Poland. He has been made a Doctor of the Universal Church, one of the two members of the Society of Jesus to receive this honor. The other is Saint Robert Bellarmine. Saint Peter Canisius has been called “the second apostle of Germany.” The first apostle of Germany was Saint Boniface, who died in 755 and whose feast is June 5. It is Saint Peter Canisius who assures us that Saint Maternus, the son of the widow of Naim, was the first Bishop of Cologne, in Germany.

DECEMBER 22. Saint Flavian (362). He was the husband of Saint Dafrosa and the father of Saint Bibiana (Vivian) and Saint Demetria, all of whom were martyred for the Faith under Julian the Apostate. Saint Flavian, who had once been prefect of Rome, was branded on the forehead as a slave and sent into exile, where he died of privations.

DECEMBER 23. Saint John Cantius (1473). He was born at Kenty in Polan. Its Latin name is Cantius, and that is why he is called Saint John Cantius. He became a student and eventually a professor and a preacher at Cracow. He strengthened and brightened the Catholic Faith in the lovely country of Poland by his brilliant, childlike and apostolic teaching. He made many pilgrimages to Rome, on foot and all alone. His devotion to the Passion of Our Lord was so great that he walked all the way to Jerusalem to see where Jesus died, hoping to be martyred there by the Turks. A notable story told about Saint John Cantius is that once, on his way to Rome, some robbers beat him and took from him all his money. He had some gold pieces sewed up on his clothes when he told the robbers he had no more money. He had forgotten these gold pieces were there. When he discovered them, he ran after the robbers and gave them the money. The robbers were so impressed by this simplicity and innocence that they threw themselves at this feet, gave him back all they had stolen from him and begged his forgiveness.

Saint Yvo of Cartres (1115). Saint Yvo was a member of the Order of Saint Augustine. He was made Bishop of Chartres, and was a consultant to King Philip of France. He is responsible in no small part of the Code of Canon Law in the Catholic Church as we have it today.

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.

Saint Anastasia (304). Anastasia was a beautiful Roman woman who for the Catholic Faith was tortured and burned alive. She is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass. It was in her church in Rome that the Holy Father used to say the second Mass on Christmas Day, the day on which every pries may say three Masses. Saint Anastasia’s mother, Fausta, is a saint and is commemorated on December 19, six days before her martyred daughter.

Saint Eugenia (257). She was a noble young virgin who was converted by her slaves, Saint Protus and Saint Hyacinth. Her father was Saint Philip, a former prefect of Egypt, who became a convert and a martyr. Saint Eugenia founded a convent of virgins. After many trials she was beheaded under Valerian.

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 29. Saint Thomas a Becket (1170). Saint Thomas a Becket was an archbishop of Canterbury in England. He became archbishop there in 1162. He would not let any political power in England move in and govern, or destroy, any of the God-given liberties of the Catholic Church. He was killed in his own cathedral in Canterbury at the foot of the altar. His brains and his blood were thrown all about the place by those who claimed to be carrying out the orders of the King. His shrine was one of the most famous and revered in all England. Constant pilgrimages to Canterbury were made up to the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Saint David the King (973 B.C.). David, the great king and prophet of the Old Testament, who we call Saint David on his feast day, lived a thousand years before Our Lord. He was King of Israel for forty years, from 1013 to 973. He was seventy years old when he died. Despite his human frailty, his will was notably attached to the love and service and praise of God. It was King David who wrote the one hundred and fifty Psalms which the Catholic Church uses in every part of its prayer, in the Mass and in the Divine Office. King David has been called “a man after God’s own Heart.”

DECEMBER 30. Saint Sabinus (303). Saint Sabinus was a heroic Catholic bishop who was martyred along with two of his deacons at Spoleto, in Italy, under the cruel Emperor Diocletian. His death began by having both his hands cut off, those consecrated which a short time before had been holding the Body of Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Mass.

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 Sylvester (335). Saint Sylvester I was the thirty-fourth Pope. He was elected to the Chair of Saint Peter in 314, the year after the Emperor Constantine had ended the bloody persecution of the Catholic Church. Saint Sylvester was the Pope who instituted the first Roman martyrology. He was very devoted to Church music. He is responsible for the Nicene Creed in the Mass and also put in the Mass the invocation Kyrie Eleison (Lord, have mercy). He was the Pope of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325, when Arius, a heretic who denied the Divinity of Jesus, was formally condemned.

-from “Saints to Remember from January to December,” by the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

DECEMBER SAINTS