What is a Saint?
In the Catholic Church, the saints are ordinary people like you and me who made it to heaven. They’ve done nothing that you and I cannot do, if we persevere in following Jesus Christ and living our lives according to His teaching.
Catholic devotion to the saints is nothing more than respect and admiration for the memory of the deceased heroes of the Church. We honor them as men and women of heroic virtue who can serve as our role models. They were no more perfect than are we; but, at the end of their lives – and hopefully, ours – they received from Our Lord his words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
We also ask the saints to intercede for us. Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you when you were having a hard time? That is how Catholics “pray to” the saints – we pray with saints, not to them. As the Letter of James says, “The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.”
Well-known saints like those below often are remembered in a special way on particular days during the year.
January – February – March – April – May – June
July – August – September – October – November – December
This Weeks Saints
April 28
St. Gianna Beretta Molla
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April 29
St. Catherine of Siena
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April 30
Pope St. Pius V
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May 1
St. Joseph the Worker
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May 2
St. Athanasius
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May 3
Sts. Philip and James
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May 4
St. Florian of Lorch
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April 28
St. Gianna Beretta Molla
Gianna Beretta was born near Milan in 1922, the tenth of thirteen children. Growing up, she became a devout and prayerful young woman, active in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Catholic Action movement. She studied medicine in university, with a specialty in pediatrics, and opened he own medical practice in 1949.
Gianna met Pietro Molla, who worked in her office, and in 1955 the two were married. The couple had three children, and, sadly, suffered two miscarriages. Early during her 6th pregnancy, doctors discovered a large ovarian cyst. She allowed her surgeon to remove the tumor itself, but refused an abortion and a hysterectomy which were necessary to save her life, but which would have ended the life of her child.
On April 21, 1962, her daughter Gianna Emanuela Molla was successfully delivered by Caesarean section. A week later, Gianna Beretta died from complications. She was canonized in 1994 during a ceremony attended by her husband and her children. Today, her daughter Gianna Emanuela Molla is a physician herself, and involved in the pro-life movement.
May 1
St. Joseph the Worker
Joseph is the patron saint of many things, including the universal Church, fathers, the dying, social justice, unborn children, travelers, immigrants, a happy death, families, expectant mothers (pregnant women), travelers, house sellers and buyers, craftsmen, and engineers. In order to Christianize the concept of labor and give to all workmen a model and a protector, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955. He described that “no worker was ever more completely and profoundly penetrated by (the spirit of Christ) than the foster father of Jesus, who lived with Him in closest intimacy and community of family life and work.”
St Joseph was himself a humble carpenter who knew what it was to work hard, often for meagre pay, in order to earn a living to support his wife and Jesus, his foster child. Though a hard worker, St Joseph knew and embraced poverty and when presenting gifts at Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, it was the gift of the poor that St Joseph presented to God, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’ (Lk 2:24).
By the daily labor in his shop, offered to God with patience and joy, St. Joseph provided for the necessities of his holy spouse and of the Incarnate Son of God, and thus became an example to all laborers. “Workmen and all those laboring in conditions of poverty will have reasons to rejoice rather than grieve, since they have in common with the Holy Family daily preoccupations and cares”(Leo XIII).
May 3
Sts. Philip the Apostle and St James the Less
For centuries, the Catholic Church had special feasts to honor only four of the apostles: Sts. Peter and Paul, St. John the Evangelist, and St. Andrew, the brother of Peter. The Church memorialized the remaining apostles all together on June 29. But in the sixth century, the bodies of Sts. Philip and James were brought to Rome from the East and were laid to rest in the Basilica of the Holy Apostles. Since they arrived together at the same location, the Church instituted a single feast day for both apostles.
St. James was the brother of the apostle Jude Thaddeus, both being sons of Alphaeus and of one of the “Three Marys” at the Cross. James was referred to as “the brother of the Lord,” because his mother was related to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Upon His Resurrection, Christ appeared to James personally before any other apostle (1 Cor 15:7).
He was called “the Less” because he was younger than St. John’s brother, St. James the Great. He was the author of the Letter of James, in which he writes about faith and works. He became the leader of the church in Jerusalem, its first bishop, playing an important role in the Church’s first council, the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15).
In 62 A.D., according to the historians Eusebius and Hegesippus, James was martyred for the Faith in the Spring of the year 62. The Jewish leaders accused James of breaking the Law and turned him over to a mob. He was dragged to the top of the Temple and, when he refused to recant his claim that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus was the Messiah, he was thrown from the top of the temple. After surviving the fall, he was stoned and then clubbed to death as he knelt in prayer.
St. Philip was one of Jesus’ original apostles; he came from the same town as Peter and Andrew, Bethsaida in Galilee. At the time he was called, stories say that he was a married man and the father to several daughters. He was present at the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. He was shy and timid by nature, but so powerful was his faith after he was called by Jesus, he immediately brought his friend Nathaniel into the inner circle of Christ’s friends. Three days later they both witnessed Jesus’s first miracle at Cana. Just before the Passion, Jesus answered Philip’s query to show them the Father, by teaching the apostles of his union with the Father,
After Pentecost, he was given extraordinary graces to preach the gospel in Greece. In the end, Philip followed in the footsteps of James the Less and many of the other apostles by being martyred for his faith in Christ. After preaching with Bartholomew in Hierapolis, Greece, he was scourged, imprisoned, and ultimately crucified upside down in 62 A.D. He was said to have even continued preaching from his cross.
