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
February 8
St. Josephine Bakhita
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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
World Day for Consecrated Life
World Marriage Day
February 9
Bl. Luis Magana-Servin
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February 10
St Scholastica
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February 11
Our Lady of Lourdes
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February 12
St Meletius of Antioch
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February 13
Bl Christina of Spoleto
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February 14
Sts. Cyril and Methodius
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St. Valentine’s Day
February 8
St. Josephine Bakhita
Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born around 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan. When she was 9 years old, Josephine was kidnapped by Arab slave traders. She was given the name Bakhita, which means fortunate. For the next 12 years she would be bought, sold and given away over a dozen times. She spent so much time in captivity that she forgot her original name. Her experience as a slave ranged from fair to cruel, depending on the owner; one cruelly and deliberately scarred and mutilated her. She was eventually sold to the Italian Vice Consul to Turkey and returned with him to Italy.
Her new family used her as a nanny. When her mistress left the country, she was placed with the Canossian Sisters in Venice. She was deeply moved by their faith and, when her mistress returned, refused to leave the convent. The courts eventually freed her, and she remained with the sisters. On January 9, 1890 she received the sacraments of initiation and took the name Josephine Margaret. She took her final vows as a Canossian sister six years later.
She remained in the convent for another 42 years, until her death in 1947. She was known for her gentle voice and smile and her gentle and charismatic personality. After a biography of her was published in 1930, she became a noted and sought after speaker, raising funds to support missions.
“If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and Religious today… The Lord has loved me so much: we must love everyone… we must be compassionate!”
St. Josephine Bakhita
February 11
Our Lady of Lourdes
Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes
Pope John Paul II (August 15, 2004.)
Hail Mary, lowly handmaid of the Lord,
Glorious Mother of Christ!
Faithful Virgin, holy dwelling-place of the Word,
Teach us to persevere in listening to the Word,
and to be docile to the voice of the Spirit, attentive to his promptings in the depths of our conscience
and to his manifestations in the events of history.
Holy Mary, Mother of believers,
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
On February 11, 1858, a young lady appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a sickly child of poor parents living in the small town of Lourdes in south-western France. The lady instructed Bernadette to return to the grotto, where she appeared to the young peasant girl a total of 18 times. At one of these times, the lady instructed Bernadette to dig in a certain spot where a spring streamed forth. Almost immediately cures were reported by those who drank there.
During the apparition on March 25, the lady identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. Having only a very rudimentary knowledge of her faith, she did not understand the term, but reported it to her parish priest. Bernadette reported the desire of the lady that a chapel should be built at the grotto.
In 1862 Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions and authorized the worshipt of Our Lady of Lourdes for the diocese. Today nearly 5,000,000 pilgrims visit the site every year, and it continues its history of miraculous healings. The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes became worldwide in 1907.
February 14
Sts. Cyril and Methodius
These brothers, the Apostles of the Slavs, were born in Thessalonica, in 827 and 826 respectively. Though belonging to a senatorial family they renounced secular honours and became priests. They were living in a monastery on the Bosphorous, when the Khazars sent to Constantinople for a Christian teacher. Cyril was selected and was accompanied by his brother. They learned the Khazar language and converted many of the people. Soon after the Khazar mission there was a request from the Moravians for a preacher of the Gospel. German missionaries had already laboured among them, but without success. The Moravians wished a teacher who could instruct them and conduct Divine service in the Slavonic tongue. On account of their acquaintance with the language, Cyril and Methodius were chosen for their work. In preparation for it Cyril invented an alphabet and, with the help of Methodius, translated the Gospels and the necessary liturgical books into Slavonic. They went to Moravia in 863, and laboured for four and a half years. Despite their success, they were regarded by the Germans with distrust, first because they had come from Constantinople where schism was rife, and again because they held the Church services in the Slavonic language. On this account the brothers were summoned to Rome by Nicholas I, who died, however, before their arrival. His successor, Adrian II, received them kindly. Convinced of their orthodoxy, he commended their missionary activity, sanctioned the Slavonic Liturgy, and ordained Cyril and Methodius bishops. Cyril, however, was not to return to Moravia. He died in Rome, 4 Feb., 869.
At the request of the Moravian princes, Rastislav and Svatopluk, and the Slav Prince Kocel of Pannonia, Adrian II formed an Archdiocese of Moravia and Pannonia, made it independent of the German Church, and appointed Methodius archbishop. In 870 King Louis and the German bishops summoned Methodius to a synod at Ratisbon. Here he was deposed and condemned to prison. After three years he was liberated at the command of Pope John VIII and reinstated as Archbishop of Moravia. He zealously endeavoured to spread the Faith among the Bohemians, and also among the Poles in Northern Moravia. Soon, however, he was summoned to Rome again in consequence of the allegations of the German priest Wiching, who impugned his orthodoxy, and objected to the use of Slavonic in the liturgy. But John VIII, after an inquiry, sanctioned the Slavonic Liturgy, decreeing, however, that in the Mass the Gospel should be read first in Latin and then in Slavonic. Wiching, in the meantime, had been nominated one of the suffragan bishops of Methodius. He continued to oppose his metropolitan, going so far as to produce spurious papal letters. The pope, however, assured Methodius that they were false. Methodius went to Constantinople about this time, and with the assistance of several priests, he completed the translation of the Holy Scriptures, with the exception of the Books of Machabees. He translated also the “Nomocanon”, i.e. the Greek ecclesiastico-civil law. The enemies of Methodius did not cease to antagonize him. His health was worn out from the long struggle, and he died 6 April, 885, recommending as his successor Gorazd, a Moravian Slav who had been his disciple.
Formerly the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius was celebrated in Bohemia and Moravia on 9 March; but Pius IX changed the date to 5 July. Leo XIII, by his Encyclical “Grande Munus” of 30 September, 1880, extended the feast to the universal Church.
“Behold, my brother, we have shared the same destiny, ploughing the same furrow; I now fall in the field at the end of my day. I know that you greatly love your Mountain; but do not for the sake of the Mountain give up your work of teaching.”
St. Cyril, Monk, on his deathbed to St. Methodius, Bishop