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Third Sunday 0f Advent

"Advent is synonymous with hope,

not the vain waiting for a faceless god,

but concrete & certain trust in the return of him who has already visited us." -JPII

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[portraitsofsaints]

The Month of the Divine Infant

He has become so small a child! So you can approach Him with confidence. -St. Josemaria Escriva

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Peter Canisius

Doctor of the Church

1521-1597

Feast day: December 21

Patronage: The Catholic Press

Saint Peter Canisius, a Jesuit, was ordained in 1546 in the midst of the Protestant reformation. He believed and led the Catholic Reformation with patience and love, thru education. He wrote Summary of Christian Doctrine, a catechism, that was reprinted over 200 times in 15 languages. St. Peter founded universities and seminaries and traveled over 20 thousand miles, preaching and caring for the sick. He is considered the second Apostle of Germany.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

aint Dominic of Silos

1000-1073

Feast Day: December 20

Patronage: prisoners, captives, shepherds, pregnant women, against rabies, rabid dogs, and against insects

Saint Dominic of Silos grew up loving solitude as a shepherd in Spain. He eventually became a Benedictine abbot that reformed both physically and spiritually, the monastery in Silos. It became famous as a center of learning, charity, and healing. Wealthy patrons gave money to the monastery that allowed Christians to be ransomed from the Moors. 100 years after St. Dominic’s death, Blessed Joan of Aza made a pilgrimage to his tomb where he appeared to her and told her that her unborn son would grow up to be St. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Dominicans.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Blessed Pope Urban V

Feast Day: December 19

Patronage: Architects, Educators, Benedictines Missionaries

Blessed Pope Urban V was a French Benedictine monk who as pope brought the papacy back to Rome from Avignon. He was a brilliant intellectual, who lived simply and modestly. As an abbot, papal diplomat, papal ambassador and pope, he worked to reform, restore and unify the church. During his life, he worked for peace between France and Italy, established universities, and supported the crusades. He died of natural causes.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Samantha of Clonbroney

Died: 739 AD

Feast Day: December 18

Patronage: spiritualness

Saint Samantha (Samthann or Samthana), a maiden of Ulster, Ireland was entrusted by her family to the guardianship of the Irish king Cridan. The king wanted her to marry and arranged for her marriage but after a miraculous event when a heavenly light emitted from her face as she was sleeping, he relented. She was then allowed to enter a convent to become a nun, eventually becoming abbess of the convent of Clonbroney, that was founded by St. Patrick. Many miracles are attributed to her, but mostly she was known for her wisdom in teaching and being a spiritual advisor to others.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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The Month of the Divine Infancy

“It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”

– Pope Benedict XVI

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Adelaide

932-999

Feast Day: December 16

Patronage: abuse victims; brides; empresses; exiles; in-law problems; parenthood; parents of large families; princesses; prisoners; second marriages; step-parents; widows

Saint Adelaide, born a princess, was given in an arranged marriage at the age of 16 to Lothair of Italy. He died 3 years later and his successor ordered Adelaide to marry his son. When she refused, he had her imprisoned and seized the throne. She escaped and sought help from King Otto of Germany to regain it. He conquered Italy and they married in 951. Pope John XII crowned them as rulers of the Holy Roman Empire in 962. After Otto’s death, Adelaide became estranged from her stepson Otto II, left the court and lived in Burgundy with her brother, but they reconciled before his death and she returned as Regent. One of the most influential women of the 10th century, Adelaide used her position and power to help the poor, evangelize and build and restore monasteries and churches.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[portraitsofsaints]

Third Sunday 0f Advent

"Advent is synonymous with hope,

not the vain waiting for a faceless god,

but concrete & certain trust in the return of him who has already visited us."

-JPII

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint John of the Cross

Doctor of the Church

1542-1591

Feast day: December 14 (New) November 24 (Trad)

Patronage: contemplative life, contemplatives

Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic priest, was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation. He suffered many hardships of life in his youth. He boarded at a school for the poor where he felt the call of a religious vocation. In 1563, he joined the Carmelites and in 1567 he befriended St.Teresa of Avila. They both worked to reform the lax Carmelite order to a more strict, prayerful, and simpler order. (the Discalced Carmelites) There were major disagreements and the Carmelites even incarcerated St. John for disobedience. During imprisonment, John wrote some of his deepest spiritual poetry and contemplations, which is why he is a Doctor of the Church. St. John of the Cross died of a skin infection.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Lucy

283 - 304

Feast Day: December 13

Patronage: blind, martyrs, Perugia, Italy, epidemics, salesmen, throat infections, writers

Saint Lucy is a 4th c. virgin martyr who died during Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. Little is known of Lucy's life but legend gives us many stories. One is that after the governor ordered her to be defiled at a brothel, guards were not able to move her, even with the help of oxen pulling her. Another was that while being tortured, her eyes were gouged out, yet when her body was being prepared for burial they discovered her eyes had been restored.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Odilia of Alsace

660-720

Feast Day: December 13

Patronage: eye afflictions and blindness

Saint Odilia (also known as Odile and Ottilia) was born blind to a noble family, and because of the humiliation of her handicap, she was removed from the house and placed in a monastery. At her baptism at the age of 12, she miraculously recovered her eyesight and was restored to her father and the world. Her personal beauty, and her father's wealth and power, attracted to her many rich suitors. She refused them all; and her father himself built a Monastery on the rocks of Hohenburg, wherein she served her divine Lord, governed a large community as Abbess, and gave relief to every sort of suffering until she died of natural causes.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus associated with a series of five Marian apparitions to a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego and his uncle, Juan Bernardino, which are believed to have occurred in December 1531.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Finnian of Clonard

470 - 549

Feast Day: December 12

Patronage: Diocese of Meath

Saint Finnian was born in Ireland, studied scripture, and perfected his holiness with penance and prayer in Wales and France for 30 years. He was sent back to Ireland and founded the Abbey in Clonard where he became the “Teacher of the 12 Apostles of Ireland” who came to study under him. The Abbey in its height had 3,000 students. St Finnian also established schools, monasteries, and churches. He is considered the “Father of Irish Monasticism”. He died in 549 of the plague.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Our Lady of Loreto

Feast Day: December 10

Patronage: aircrews, aircraft, pilots, aviation flying, Air Forces, builders, construction workers, Aprino, Chajnsielem, Guidonia, and Loretto, Italy

The Shrine of Our Lady of Loreto refers to the house where the Blessed Mother Mary was born and the Annunciation occurred. It appeared in Loreto, Italy on December 10, 1294, when tradition has it, that angels transported it from the Holy Land to Italy as the crusaders were driven out of Palestine. It’s the first shrine of international renown dedicated to the Immaculate Mother Mary and has been there for centuries.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Pope Saint Damasus I

305-384

Feast Day: December 11

Patronage: Archaeologist, against fever

Saint Damasus was 60 years old and a deacon when he was elected Pope during a troubled but pivotal period of the Church. The Arian heresy was raging, an antipope was trying to usurp him yet he zealously defended and served the Church. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate Scriptures into Latin, changed the liturgical language of the Church from Greek to Latin, restoring and creating access to the catacombs, drained the swamps of Rome, and encouraged veneration of the martyrs.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

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Happy Feast Day

Saint Juan Diego

1474-1548

Feast day: December 9

Patronage: America and Natives

Saint Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican who embraced the Catholic faith that came with Cortez, spread by the Spanish friars. On December 9th, 1531, Our Lady appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill (Guadalupe), as he was going to Mass, asking for a church to be built on that spot. After convincing the skeptical Bishop of the apparition's authenticity, through Mary’s miraculous image on his tilma (cloak) and Castillian roses spilling out when he opened the tilma, the Bishop built the church. Thousands of conversions occurred, when the tilma, with our Lady’s image on it, was processed through Mexico City. St. Juan Diego spent the rest of his life as the tilma's caretaker and telling the apparition's story. The tilma can be seen today in the basilica in Mexico City.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)