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
August 24
St. Bartholomew
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21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 25
St. Louis of France
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August 26
Our Lady of Czestochowa
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August 27
St. Monica
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August 28
St. Augustine
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August 29
Passion of John the Baptist
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August 30
St. Jeanne Jugan
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International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
August 27
St. Monica
Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.
Saint Monica, about the conversion of her son Augustine
Monica was born in Tagaste, North Africa in 322 AD and was raised in a Christian family. She was given in marriage to a bad-tempered, adulterous pagan named Patricius. Though he was difficult, and his mother even more so, Monica won them both over with patience, and she had the joy of seeing both embrace the faith.
She became the mother of two, and more troubling was her eldest son, bright but lazy Augustine. As a teenager he went to Carthage, where he found the philosophy of the heretical Manichees – and a mistress. He returned home, spouting heresy, and Monica drove him from her table. Only a prophetic dream could convince her to take him back. Soon afterward, she consulted an unknown bishop, who reassured her: “It is not possible that the child of these tears should be lost.”
At the age of twenty-nine, Augustine went to Rome to seek work and his widowed mother followed. Monica convinced him to put off his concubine—with whom he now had a child– although he soon took up with another. She found an ally in Bishop Ambrose of Milan, whose teaching began to work on Augustine. She prayed constantly for the conversion of her husband (who converted on his death bed), and of her son (who converted after a wild life).
At last, his mother’s prayers, the bishop’s urgings, and his own incessant longings were fulfilled in a stunning moment of grace. Telling the story in his Confessions, Augustine praised God for the moment he was able to go to Monica and tell her that he wanted to be baptized. “You had turned her mourning into joy much more perfectly than she had ever hoped.” She died six months later in the year 387.
August 28
St. Augustine of Hippo
Saint Augustine of Hippo (born Aurelius Augustinus on November 13, 354 in Numidia) is considered to be the patron saint of brewers, because of his famous conversion from a life of parties, drunkenness, and wicked living. During his early life, he was immersed in the creature comforts of his morally, spiritually, and socially decadent society. He lived with a Carthaginian woman for 15 years, fathering a son Adeodatus out of wedlock. He was a brilliant orator, who found his living in teaching rhetoric, first in Carthage, then in Milan.
Through the prayers of his mother St. Monica (whose feast day is celebrated the day before his), and the influence of his mentor St. Ambrose, he finally became convinced of the truth of Christianity. One day, while despairing of his sins, he heard a child chanting, “Take up and read!” Picking up a book of Scriptures in the garden where he walked, he randomly opened to chapter 13 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, where Paul admonishes them to leave behind licentious behavior and to put on Christ. He was moved to repentance and to a life of sanctity; he was baptized by St. Ambrose and, three years later, was ordained a priest. Upon his mother’s death in Italy, he returned to Africa, sold all his inheritance, and gave it to the poor. He founded a monastery, but shortly became the bishop of Hippo, holding that office for 34 years. Much of his time was spent in combatting the many heresies that sprang up, including Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism, and others.
He is considered one of the most significant Christian thinkers since St. Paul. He was a prolific writer, his most important writings include his autobiographical Confessions (c. 400) and his philosophical The City of God (c. 413–426). His adaptation of classical thought and rhetoric to Christian teaching was foundational for much of Christian thought, from medieval and through modern times. He is considered one of the greatest of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church.
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like. ”
St. Augustine of Hippo
August 29
St. Jeanne Jugan
“Be kind, especially with the infirm. Love them well … Oh yes! Be kind. It is a great grace God is giving you. In serving the aged, it is he himself whom you are serving.”
St. Jeanne Jugan
Jeanne Jugan was born in Brittany, the sixth of eight children. Her father, a poor Breton fisherman, was lost at sea when she was four. Her mother took odd jobs to keep her children fed. Because of the persecutions that occurred during the French Revolution, she taught them the faith secretly.
Jeanne grew up working as a shepherdess and a maid. She took a job as a kitchen maid in the home of a devout Catholic, the Viscountess de la Choue, who took Jeanne with her when she visited the poor. Twice a young man proposed marriage, but she declined his offers, telling her mother, “God wants me for himself. He is keeping me for a work which is not yet founded.” She took jobs as a nurse, servant, and companion.
At forty-seven, Jeanne was living in an apartment with two other women. In the winter of 1839, she found Anne Chauvin, an old blind woman, on her step. She tucked the woman into her own bed and slept in the attic. From this time, the elderly poor became the center of her concern. Within two years, she had found the means to begin a twelve bed shelter and hospital for them; a year later, she found an unused building which she used to accommodate forty elderly in need. People called her and the women who joined her the “Little Sisters of the Poor.” Jeanne became “Mary of the Cross.”
Within a few years, a priest who was helping Jeanne lead the new community inexplicably removed her from her post and sent her to beg for the sisters. A few years after that, Jeanne was told to retire to the motherhouse, where she dwelt for twenty-seven years in obscurity. Although the younger sisters did not know she was their foundress, she taught them, nevertheless: “The poor are our Lord.” Jeanne died at eighty-six. Today her sisters serve in thirty-one countries. She was canonized in 2009.