Saint Michael Center

NOVEMBER SAINTS CALENDAR
1	All Saints
2	All Souls
3	St. Martin de Porres
5	St. Zachary and St. Elizabeth
10	St. Leo the Great
13	Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
18	The Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul
21	The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
27	The Miraculous Medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary

All Saints. This is the feast, not only of all saints who have been canonized, but of all saints who have not been canonized and are in Heaven. It is, in a generous way, the feast of all those who are still on earth and are trying to be saints. No one can be a saint without love for and protection by and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is Queen of All Saints. Saint Paul tells us that the will of God is not merely for our salvation, but also for our sanctification. Everyone is called to be a saint. Anyone who does not become a saint has no one but himself to blame. Our Lady holds her greatest bounties and generosities in store for those who are starting to be saints.

All Souls. On this day every priest in the Catholic Church is allowed to say three Masses for the souls in Purgatory. The first saint who started the celebration on this day of the feast of All Souls was Saint Odilo, whose feast day is January 1. This was in 998. All prayers for the souls in Purgatory are most efficacious when put under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saturday is Our Lady's special day during the week. Our Lady visits Purgatory every Saturday to release the souls there who have died during the week and who have worn the brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. When Our Lady was assumed into Heaven on August 15, who undoubtedly took countless souls from Purgatory with her, perhaps all of them that were then there. Our Lady's promise to those who wear the brown scapular is this: "Whosoever dies in this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire. On Saturday, as many as I shall find in Purgatory, I shall free." Blessed Claude de la Colombiere says that "of all the forms of our love for the Blessed Virgin and its various modes of expression, the scapular is the most favored." The prophecy of Ezekiel declares, "The gate of the inner court that looks toward the East shall be shut for six days, but on the sabbath day it shall be opened." The Church has applied this prophecy to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The "inner court" means Purgatory, and the "sabbath day" means Saturday, the day when Our Lady abundantly releases souls from Purgatory and brings them to Heaven.

Saint Martin de Porres (1639). He was a South American, born of a Spanish father and an Indian mother. He lived at Lima in Peru. He became a lay brother in the Dominican Order. So great was his holiness that his light shone all through the New World. His memory will never be forgotten. So great was his power of prayer that he raised a dead man to life. He was seventy years old when he died. Pope John XXIII canonized him on May 6, 1962.

Saint Zachary and Saint Elizabeth (First Century). Saint Zachary and Saint Elizabeth were the father and the mother of Saint John the Baptist, the last and the greatest of the prophets and the precursor of Our Lord. Saint Zachary's story is beautifully told in the first chapter of Saint Luke. Saint Zachary was spoken of in one of the three canticles of the New Testament, which is known as the "Benedictus." It is recited in the prayers of priest as part of their liturgical worship. Saint Zachary was inspired by God through an angel to give Saint John the Baptist his name. Saint Zachary was martyred in the Temple of Jerusalem by the Jews. The martyrs of the Old Testament run from A to Z, from Abel, the son of Adam and the first martyr that ever was, to Zachary, the father of John the Baptist and the last martyr of the Old Testament

Saint Elizabeth was the cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was to her that Mary went in haste after she had conceived her Child, and after she learned that Elizabeth had conceived hers. The second phrase in the "Hail Mary", "Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit if thy womb," was given us by Saint Elizabeth. And so, her memory is beautifully kept in the Rosary, where this phrase is mentioned fifty-three times. Saint Elizabeth's first greeting to Our Lady, when she saw her standing in her doorway was: "Whence is this to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me!" This was a sheer and unequivocal way of proclaiming Mary, her own cousin, to be the Mother of God. With Elizabeth's as the central greeting, the Angel Gabriel's as the first and that of the Council of Ephesus as the last, this is the full "Hail Mary": Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Saint Leo the Great (461). There have been thirteen Popes named Leo; five of them canonized saints: Saint Leo I, Saint Leo II, Saint Leo III, Saint Leo IV, and Saint Leo IZ. Saint Leo I, called Saint Leo the Great, was a Pope and Doctor of the Church. He reigned for twenty-one years and fought all manner of heretics. He was "the soul of the Council of Chalcedon," in 451, which condemned the Monophysites, those heretics who held that the human nature of Jesus was absorbed into the Divine, and no longer exists. This heresy would leave Mary, the Mother of God, without a Child. Saint Leo the Great, by his personal power and fearlessness, kept Attila and the Huns from invading the city of Rome in the year 452.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1917). The first saint ever to die in the United States as an American citizen was named Frances. She is Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who was born in 1850, and who died in 1917 at the age of sixty-seven. She came to this country from Italy in an effort to keep her beloved Italian Catholics from being perverted in their Faith by those in this country who plotted against it. She became an American citizen a few years before she died. She died in Chicago. Her body is now in New York. She is the namesake of that notable saint called Frances of Rome, who died in 1440, and who is remembered on her feast day March 9. Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini added Xavier to her name because she wished to make the great apostle of the Society of Jesus, Saint Francis Xavier, the patron of her crusade for the Faith in the United States.

The Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The Basilicas of Saint Peter, the Apostle and first Pope, were built at the foot of Vatican Hill in Rome by Pope Saint Cletus. It has since grown to be the greatest and most impressive church in the world. Fifty thousand people can be accommodated in it. The feast of November 18 commemorates the solemn consecration of the new basilicas there by Pope Urban VIII, in 1626. It is on the spot where Saint Peter was crucified upside down in the year 67. Pope Saint Cletus also built a church over the tomb of Saint Paul-outside-the-walls, on the road to Ostia. This church has been made larger and larger through the years. A great fire destroyed it in 1823. It was rebuilt, and its final structure, as we see it today, was consecrated by Pope Pius IX in 1854, two days after he had defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Pope ordered that the commemoration of the dedication of Saint Paul's Basilica should take place on November 18, together with that of Saint Peter.

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (13 B.C.). Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, the father and the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, presented the to God in the Temple, to live there and to belong to God forever, when she was three years, two months and thirteen days old. Saint Joachim and Saint Anne sensed in the Blessed Virgin Mary from the moment of her birth that she was divinely great, and belonged to God and not to them. When her father and her mother brought Mary to the Temple of Jerusalem and presented her there, Saint Zachary, a priest of the Temple and the father of Saint John the Baptist and the husband of Saint Elizabeth, received her. He took her by the hand and led her into the cloister of virgins who dwelt in the Temple. There she stayed, adored God and prayed until she was fourteen years old. Then her first espousal to Saint Joseph were miraculously arranged by God, so as to give her a virginal husband to protect her in her virginal motherhood when she conceived her Divine Child and brought God into this world.

The Miraculous Medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1830). This is the feast of the lovely medal designed by the Mother of God herself and given to a beautiful nun, Sister Catherine Laboure, now canonized saint, a Sister of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. Our Lady appeared three times to Saint Catherine Laboure in the year 1830. Our Lady told Saint Catherine just how the medals in her honor should be made and designed. On one side of each medal is an image of Mary, with the words, "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." On the other side is the first letter of the name Mary, placed in the center with twelve stars around it, a cross just above it, and the hearts of Jesus and Mary engraved just below it. These miraculous medals are now called, in simplicity, "Mary medals". By holding them, wearing them, kissing them or showing them to others, countless favors and miracles have been worked everywhere by the power of the intercession of the Mother of God.

NOVEMBER SAINTS