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
January 19
St. Canute of Denmark
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January 20
St. Sebastian
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January 21
St. Agnes
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January 22
St Vincent Pallotti
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January 23
St. Marianne-Cope
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January 24
St Francis de Salest
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January 25
Conversion of St Paul
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January 20
St. Sebastian
St. Sebastian (d. c. 288 A.D.) was born in Gaul, present-day France, to wealthy Italian parents. Educated in Milan, he eventually went to Rome to serve and encourage the Christians who were being persecuted under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. To do so effectively and without suspicion, he enrolled in the Roman army as an officer and eventually became one of the Praetorian Guard, who protected the Emperor.
In this position he did much to encourage the faith of the Christians in the face of brutal martyrdom, and in the process made many new converts through his gift of healing. According to tradition, Marcus and Marcellianus were twin brothers from a distinguished family and were deacons. The brothers refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods and were arrested. They were visited in prison by their parents, who tried to convince them to renounce Christianity. Sebastian succeeded in converting the parents as well as the local prefect, who then released all the Christian prisoners.
Once he was discovered to be a Christian, Sebastian was seized by Roman officers, and delivered to Mauritanian archers to be shot to death. His body was pierced with arrows, and he was left for dead. When the widow Irene of Rome went to recover his body, she discovered him still alive. She took him to her house and nursed him back to health.
One day he took up a position near where the emperor was to pass. He accosted the emperor, denouncing him for his cruelty to Christians. This time the sentence of death was carried out. Sebastian was beaten to death with clubs and his body was thrown into the sewers. It was recovered by a Christian woman, named Lucina, and she secretly buried him in the catacombs beneath Rome.
January 21
St. Agnes
Almost nothing is known of this saint except that she was very young—12 or 13—when she was martyred in the last half of the third century. Agnes was said to be the foster-sister of another holy woman, Saint Emerentiana. Agnes was a beautiful girl whom many young men wanted to marry. Among those she refused, one reported her to the authorities for being a Christian. She was ordered to sacrifice to pagan gods and lose her virginity. Legend has it that she was confined to a house of prostitution so that she would be forced to lose her virginity. When one of the frequenters of the house looked upon her lustfully, he lost his sight but had it restored by her prayer. Agnes was condemned, executed, and buried near Rome in a catacomb that eventually was named after her.
To this day, two spotless lambs are blessed at her church in Rome, Italy on her feast day, and then their wool is woven into the palliums (bands of white wool) which the pope confers on archbishops as symbol of their jurisdiction.
“Christ has made my soul beautiful with the jewels of grace and virtue. I belong to Him Whom the Angels serve.”
St. Agnes of Rome
January 24
St. Francis de Sales
The son of an esteemed Savoyard family, Francis studied initially at Paris, attending the Collège de Clermont in Paris at age 12. His family had intended that he follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming a lawyer and eventually a senator from the province of Savoy. As a teen, he faced the fear of being predestined for eternal damnation; he instead threw himself on the mercy of God, frequently reciting the Memorare. After receiving his law degree and a degree in theology at the University of Padua, he braved his father’s displeasure to become a priest. He was sent on a mission to the Calvinists of the Chablais region, where his preaching did wonders. His gentle approach to evangelization led to his being called the “Gentle Christ of Geneva“.
At the age of thirty-five, Francis was made Bishop of Geneva, a mountainous diocese. He traveled incessantly, preaching sermons to awaken the tepid and drawing Protestants back to the Church. Despite his episcopal duties, he continued to hear confessions, write pamphlets explaining the Catholic faith, and catechize children in his diocese. His pamphlets, extensive correspondence on the faith, and his books are remembered today in his patronship of the Catholic press. He turned down a wealthy French bishopric to continue working where God had placed him.
Friend of both Saint Vincent de Paul and of Saint Jeanne de Chantal, he founded the Order of the Visitation with the latter in 1610. These women were to practice the virtues exemplified in Mary’s visit to Elizabeth: humility, piety, and mutual charity. They at first engaged to a limited degree in works of mercy for the poor and the sick. Today, while some communities conduct schools, others live a strictly contemplative life.
Francis strongly believed in the necessity for every person to practice holiness. “It is a mistake,” he wrote, “a heresy, to want to exclude devoutness of life from among soldiers, from shops and offices, from royal courts, from the homes of the married.”
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, a primer for lay persons, Francis counseled, “Remember the Heart of Jesus beheld your heart and loved it, even while he hung upon the Cross; and by that love he obtained for you all good things which you will ever possess…Well may we all say with the Prophet Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you’ )1:15).”
“Faith is like a bright ray of sunlight. It enables us to see God in all things, as well as, all things in God.”
St. Francis de Sales
January 25
Conversion of St. Paul
Saul of Tarsus (also known by his Greek name “Paul”) was a religious zealot, charged by the Jewish high priest with a mission to arrest followers of Jesus in Damascus, to bind them, and to bring them to Jerusalem for trial. His entire life was forged by his experience on his way to Damascus to make those arrests. He was stuck blind by a great light, from which emanated the accusation, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He became a faithful follower of Jesus and supporter of his church. He became the great Apostle to the Gentiles, making three missionary journeys which brought him to the great centers of Asia Minor and southern Europe, and made many converts. He authored many of the books of the New Testament; in one of his letters to the early Christian community in Galatia, he summed up his life aspiration as, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”