by Wyatt North
– St. Isidore of Seville
Isidore’s much older brother, Leander, took charge of young Isidore’s education. His methods were very harsh, but Isidore persisted and retained his love of learning, eventually becoming known as Spain’s greatest educator. He established seminaries throughout Spain, wrote textbooks on a wide variety of subjects, and succeeded his brother Leander as bishop of Seville, a position Isidore would hold for 37 years. (Another brother, Fulgentius, was also a bishop, and his sister Florentina was an abbess. All three are revered as saints in Spain.) Isidore also developed a model for representative government and helped convert the Visigoths to Catholicism. One of the last things he did as he was dying in 636 at 76 years of age was to give everything he owned to the poor. He was canonized in 1598 by Pope Clement VIII and is regarded as the last of the Doctors of the Church.
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“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.”
– St. James the Greater (James 1:5)
James and his brother John, sons of Zebedee, were the second pair of brothers (also fishermen) to become disciples of Jesus. James, his brother John, and Simon Peter were the inner circle most favored by Jesus and privileged to witness events not seen by the other disciples: the raising of the daughter of Jairus from the dead, the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the transfiguration. James is believed to have been the first of the apostles to be martyred, because his is the only martyrdom of an apostle to appear in the New Testament. His beheading by sword was ordered by King Herod during the persecution of early Christians, most likely in the year 44. He is sometimes called St. James the Greater to distinguish him from the other disciple named James, who is referred to as James the Lesser because he was either shorter or younger. He is the patron of pilgrims and Spain. The Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) is a network of pilgrim routes that have been in use for centuries and lead to the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. More than 278,000 people completed the pilgrimage in 2016.
“The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.”
– St. Jane Frances de Chantal
Jane Frances was raised by her father, president of the parliament of Burgundy, after the death of her mother when Jane was not yet two years old. One of the first things she did after marrying the Count de Chantal was to restore the practice of daily Mass in the castle. She was known as a devout and charitable woman, and she maintained those qualities in times of great trials and sorrow. The loss of three children in infancy and the death of her beloved husband when she was 28 tested her strength, but she sought spiritual direction from St. Francis de Sales, who encouraged her charitable works and remained her friend until his death. They worked together to establish the congregation of the Visitation of Holy Mary, or the Visitation Order, with an initial congregation of only three women. There were 86 Visitation houses by the time of Jane’s death and 164 when she was canonized herself in 1767, 126 years after her death at the age of 69.
“Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to him. That is all the doing you have to worry about.”
– St. Jane Frances de Chantal
St. Vincent DePaul became Jane’s new spiritual director when St. Francis de Sales had to return to Geneva. Jane suffered several personal losses during the years following the death of St. Francis de Sales in 1622, including the battlefield death of her son and the deaths of her son-in-law and friends when plague broke out in France in 1632. St. Vincent de Paul described Jane in these words: “While apparently enjoying the peace and easiness of mind of souls who have reached a high state of virtue, she suffered such interior trials that she often told me her mind was so filled with all sorts of temptations and abominations that she had to strive not to look within herself. But for all that suffering her face never lost its serenity, nor did she once relax in the fidelity God asked of her. And so, I regard her as one of the holiest souls I have ever met on this earth.” St. Jane de Chantal is the patron of forgotten people, in-law problems, loss of parents, parents separated from children, and widows.
“You either belong wholly to the world or wholly to God.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney grew up during the French Revolution, which started when he was a toddler and didn’t end until he was thirteen. His life and worldview were shaped not only by his Catholic upbringing but also by the turmoil and reign of terror he witnessed as an impressionable child. Until it became too dangerous, the Vianney family traveled to remote farms where priests in hiding would conduct Mass. His first catechism teachers were two nuns whose communities had been dissolved yet were willing to instruct him in private. Young Jean, or John in English, developed a great admiration for the priests and other religious people who risked their lives by continuing their work in secret during the anticlerical phase of the revolution. He considered them heroes.
“What? The cross make us lose our inward peace? Surely it is the cross that bestows it on our hearts. All our miseries come from our not loving it.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
At the age of 20, John enrolled in the presbytery school in Écully, operated by the Abbe Balley, where he had to work very hard to make up for the years of education he’d missed out on during the revolution. The Catholic Church had been officially re-established a few years earlier, and John, an ecclesiastical student, should have been exempt from military service. However, Napoleon Bonaparte rescinded the exemption in dioceses where he needed to recruit more troops, and John was drafted in 1809.
“Sin is the executioner of the good God, and the assassin of the soul. It snatches us away from Heaven to precipitate us into Hell. And we love it! What folly! If we thought seriously about it, we should have such a lively horror of sin that we could not commit it.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Illness cast John into the role of deserter when he didn’t return to military duty upon his release from the hospital. Instead, he stopped to pray in a church and met a young man who offered to help him catch up with the troops but instead led John into the mountains, where several deserters were in hiding. He would live in a sympathetic widow’s barn for the next 14 months under the name Jerome Vincent, hiding every time the gendarmes came through looking for deserters. During his stay there, he started a school in a nearby village under his assumed name.
“We ought to run after crosses as the miser runs after money. . . Nothing but crosses will reassure us at the Day of Judgment When that day shall come, we shall be happy in our misfortunes, proud of our humiliations, and rich in our sacrifices!”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
When deserters were granted amnesty in 1810, John returned to finish his studies in Écully then attended seminary. His academic performance was not up to par, and it looked doubtful that he would be ordained. However, it was argued that his piety outweighed his ignorance, and he was ordained a deacon in 1815. Following in the footsteps of the priests he so admired as a child, he was ordained a priest and was assigned to assist Abbe Balley at Écully. Three years later, after Balley’s death, John became parish priest in the Ars parish, a town so small and insignificant that he had trouble finding it. One of his accomplishments was establishing a home for girls, called La Providence.
“See, my children, a person who is in a state of sin is always sad. Whatever he does, he is weary and disgusted with every thing; while he who is at peace with God is always happy, always joyous. . . Oh, beautiful life! Oh, beautiful death!”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Father Vianney was disturbed by the religious ignorance and indifference that were the legacy of the French Revolution. He found it intolerable that many people spent the Sabbath working, drinking, or dancing rather than wor
shipping. He spent long hours trying to turn the people of his parish from blasphemy and refused to absolve anyone who would not give up dancing. Many welcomed his efforts, and as his fame spread, thousands of people every year traveled to hear him preach.
“If someone said to you, ‘I would like to become rich; what must I do?’ you would answer him, ‘You must labor.’ Well, in order to get to Heaven, we must suffer.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
One of the times that Father Vianney is said to have miraculously multiplied food occurred when the orphanage staff told him there was no food left to eat. The attic where corn was kept was completely empty. He bowed his head in prayer and then instructed one of the staff to go upstairs and fetch some corn. She came back empty-handed because she had been unable to open the attic door. When the door was forced open, they found that the attic was filled with corn from floor to ceiling.
“The first thing about the angels that we ought to imitate is their consciousness of the Presence of God.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Father Vianney had a special devotion to St. Philomena since the tomb of the 15-year old martyr was discovered when he was only a year older than she was when she died. His relationship with St. Philomena has been described as a personal, supernatural friendship. In his position as parish priest in Ars, France, Father Vianney built an altar to her and installed the relic in it. When people came to him asking to be cured of their afflictions, he told them to appeal to St. Philomena for intercession with God, not to him. He assured them that St. Philomena had never disappointed him and had, in fact, cured him of a lethal illness. He routinely told those seeking a cure, especially a physical cure, to challenge her to prove that she could deliver one. For example, he told a woman whose left arm was paralyzed to say to St. Philomena, “Restore my arm to me or give me your own!” She experienced an immediate healing, as did many others who were instructed to challenge St. Philomena in this manner.
“The Devil writes down our sins - our Guardian Angel all our merits. Labor that the Guardian Angel's book may be full, and the Devil's empty.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Father Vianney did not like it when the healed and their loved ones attributed cures to him rather than to St. Philomena. He reportedly made a deal with St. Philomena that when people came to him to be cured of a physical affliction, he would send them to her altar with the understanding that she would not heal their bodies until nine days later, when they were back home and would not associate their healing with the parish priest back in Ars. Nonetheless, Father Vianney himself is known to have brought about many healings.
“The happiness of man on earth, my children, is to be very good; those who are very good bless the good God, they love Him, they glorify Him, and do all their works with joy and love, because they know that we are in this world for no other end than to serve and love the good God.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
Father Vianney was concerned that the town of Ars would become so famous as a place for physical healing that people would forget about the potential for spiritual healing. He considered every conversion a miracle. He often attached conditions to a physical cure that required a corresponding attention to the person’s soul. Two examples are commonly cited—telling a young, unchaste epileptic, “That is not the way to behave for one who desires to be cured,” and telling a girl that the cure for her paralysis was contingent upon her becoming respectful of her mother. He also told people that curing a physical affliction might not be good for their soul, saying that “The greatest cross is having no cross.”
“So, you will ask me, who then are the people most tempted? They are these, my friends; note them carefully. The people most tempted are those who are ready, with the grace of God, to sacrifice everything for the salvation of their poor souls, who renounce all those things which most people eagerly seek. It is not one devil only who tempts them, but millions seek to entrap them.”
– St. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney
As he grew older, Father Vianney craved a more contemplative life than was possible while serving the residents of Ars and the thousands of pilgrims arriving there every year in search of spiritual or physical healing. On four occasions, he attempted to leave Ars and enter a monastery, but it never worked out. He eventually abandoned the idea. He died in 1859 at age 73. Over 6,000 people, including 300 priests, were present at the funeral of the simple parish priest. He was beatified in 1905 and canonized in 1925. He is the patron saint of parish priests.
“Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.”
– St. Jerome
St. Jerome was born Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus in 342 AD, in today’s Croatia or Slovenia. Although the details of his early life are largely unknown, it’s likely that his family was of some wealth and social standing. He was well-tutored in Latin and Greek and was regarded as headstrong and impulsive. He completed his education in Rome, where he spent his free time in the pursuit of pleasure, especially pleasures of the flesh, though he knew his behavior was immoral. The pangs of guilt he suffered led him to visit the crypts where he could easily imagine himself in the depths of Hell. But guilt alone wasn’t enough to make Jerome mend his ways.
“One may understand by the nourishment of the swine the false philosophy of the world, the vain eloquence of oratory. Their cadence and harmony, in flattering the ear, possess the mind, and enchant the heart; but after one has read works of this kind with great attention, nothing is left but vacancy and confusion. Let us not delude ourselves by saying we do not put any faith in the fable, with which these authors have filled their writings. This reason does not justify us, since we scandalize others who think we approve of what they see us read.”
– St. Jerome
While studying in Rome, Jerome practiced his Latin and Greek by transcribing the inscriptions on the tombs in the catacombs. He traveled quite a bit after completing his education, translating and copying books with the goal of building a personal library collection. In 374 in Antioch, he began writing his first work, Concerning the Seven Beatings. He also experienced the loss of several companions who sickened and died, though it’s not clear whether they all had the same disease. Jerome also became ill and had a vision that intensified his religious feelings and changed the course of his life. He saw himself standing in judgment in front of Christ and being found wanting for having given to much attention to secular studies and interests. He spent the next four years praying and fasting while living as a hermit in the desert southwest of Antioch, where he continued to experience visions and bouts of illness.
“When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.”
– St. Jerome
Jerome had great mastery of Latin and Greek but was ignorant of Hebrew. He determined to learn the language as a way of exercising his faithfulness. Jerome found learning Hebrew to be a difficult and painful process, even with the help of a fellow monk who was a convert from Judaism, but he persisted. St. Jerome is perhaps best known today for his translation of the Scriptures from Hebrew and Old Latin. It was a task that occupied years of his life.
“In God's Name, the counsel of My Lord is safer and wiser than yours. You thought to deceive me, and it is yourselves who are deceived, for I bring you better succor than has ever come to any general or town whatsoever the succor of the King of Heaven. This succor does not come from me, but from God Himself, Who, at the prayers of Saint Louis and Saint Charlemagne, has had compassion on the town of Orleans, and will not suffer the enemy to hold at the same time the Duke and his town!”
– St. Joan of Arc
There are few saints whose story is as familiar to the public as that of Joan of Arc, patron saint of soldiers and of France. It captured the imaginations of writers including William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, and Bertholt Brecht. It’s been translated into musical works, including a Rossini ca
ntata and operas by Verdi and Tchaikovsky, interpreted in modern dance by Martha Graham, and depicted in art found in museums around the world. Condemned unjustly by an English court to burn at the stake for heresy, she was martyred in 1431, her eyes fixed on a cross held before her at her request, a small cross fashioned by an English soldier tucked insider her dress. Twenty-one years later, a posthumous retrial (the nullification trial) requested by Joan’s mother and the Inquisitor General and authorized by the Pope found that Joan’s original trial was unjust. It took the appellate court another four years to formally declare Joan innocent, in 1456.