What is a Saint?
In the Catholic Church, the saints are ordinary people like you and I 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 23
St. Rose of Lima
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Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 24
St. Bartholomew
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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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Passion of Saint John the Baptist
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August 23
St. Rose of Lima
St. Rose was one of 10 children born of Spanish parents in Lima, Peru, although her mother had Incan blood as well. Rose was beautiful and very pious. She was so sensitive to compliments on her physical appearance that, to combat vanity, she disfigured her face with pepper and lime. When her father’s finances deteriorated, Rose grew flowers to help support them, and used her skill at needlework to help support her family.
When her parents began to seek a suitable marriage partner, twelve-year old Rose insisted that she was meant for Christ. Her parents desired that she marry, but she refused, and lived as a recluse in a hut in her parent’s garden. Her parents were confused by her ardor, but Rose was determined. Seeking to dissuade her suitors, she rubbed pepper on her face. When someone commented on her lovely hands, she coated them with lime.
From a very early age, Rose sought to emulate the exuberant love of Saint Catherine of Siena. When Rose was twenty, she decided to join the Dominican Third Order to which St. Catherine belonged. Her prayer was intense and often ecstatic, and she dedicated her life to chastity and assisting the sick and poor. She inflicted severe penances on herself daily and endured disapproval and persecution from her family because of this, When she began to have visions and other mystical experiences, an evaluation by priests and physicians proved Rose’s experiences to be authentically supernatural.
But Rose remained attentive to others and eminently practical in her daily interactions. When she encountered the sick of the city, she brought them to her family house for care. When she saw the Spanish enslave the natives, she cried out in protest; the Spanish grew rich from Peru’s natural resources while Peruvians became impoverished . Like Catherine of Siena, she spoke out against the corruption of her day.
Rose had a great love for the suffering Lord and sought to imitate him. She wore a metal studded crown on her head as penance— and hid it beneath roses. She was greatly revered by the people, and at the time of her death, at the age of 31, her body could not be buried for several days due to the large crowds. After her death many miracles were attributed to her intercession. Rose of Lima was the first native-born saint from the Americas to be canonized.
“When we serve the poor and the sick we serve Jesus. We must not fail to help our neighbors, because in them we serve Jesus.”
St. Rose of Lima
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