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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

By: Fr. Michael Black
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 "Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black Christianity Ministry & Evangelism Spirituality
Episodes
  • July 4: Independence Day—USA

    July 4: Independence Day—USA
    Jul 3 2024
    July 4: Independence Day—USAOptional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White“...nobis donet en patria.”Father hunger—the primordial longing to impress, to emulate, or just to find dad—moves us more fundamentally than any thirst for mom. Mom’s warm love and constant presence is typically assumed. She is always near. We spend the first nine months of life sheltered inside her sanctuary, a memory of closeness and protection buried deep in our psyche. But dad comes later, a remote creature orbiting around mother and child with a deep voice, sandpaper face, and rugged hands. Knowing him, and loving him, takes some work, and for that reason seems more worth it. The desire for a pater, a father, goes hand in hand with our need for a patria, or fatherland. To be a citizen of the world is not to be a citizen at all. The world is not a country. We don’t want to be born at sea, drifting under a flag, any more than we want to be born into family. We want to be born into a family. We want to master one language, stir upon hearing one hymn, and stand with our civic siblings to honor one flag. We want, and need, to love a patria. Independence Day of the United States of America commemorates the founding events of a country as worthy of admiration and appreciation as any country ever was. The United States merits respect for a thousand compelling reasons, but honoring her also points to the inherent limits of even the healthiest love of fatherland.There are only a few things a man will die for: family, religion, and country being the most obvious. To emigrate to the United States many immigrants have, for centuries now, disrupted family life, bid farewell to well-loved homelands, abandoned historic family farms, and been absent from spouses and children for months and years. Why? Because it was worth it! A country worth dying for is a country worth dying to get into. No country has ever afforded its citizens what America has afforded them. Its success is unequalled. And yet, for all of its flourishing opportunity, robust legal structures, and protection of human rights, the patria of the U.S. is not, and no patria could ever be, Heaven itself. A country provides meaning, but not ultimate meaning.When Americans die they will not be judged by Uncle Sam. An old man with a long white beard wearing a star-spangled waistcoat will not stand before the individual soul. Uncle Sam won’t judge anyone because Uncle Sam doesn’t exist. He is as real as the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or Lady Liberty. The Statue of Liberty consists of a rigid iron frame draped in thin copper. That’s it. “She” rusts. Meaningful secular holidays invite reflection upon what kind of truth perdures and upon the difference between two close cousins, faith and patriotism. Jesus Christ is not like Uncle Sam. He is not an anthropomorphism, a depiction in human form of a non-human reality. We have statues and paintings of Jesus Christ for the same reason we have statues and paintings of George Washington—because the camera hadn’t been invented yet. If there had been cameras in first-century Palestine, Jesus’ face would be as correctly shown as Abraham Lincoln’s.Our crucifixes don’t symbolize God. They show God. Jesus is not a metaphor. He is not the human representation of ethereal God-like qualities. Jesus thundered with the authority of God, referred to Himself as God, and performed Godly acts, including the ultimate miracle of raising Himself from the dead. Jesus doesn’t represent something else, or someone else, that hides behind a curtain or a mask. Our love of God, then, should run deeper than our love of country because God will, by definition, never end. Mighty Rome ended. Weeds grew, and still grow, in the bustling forum where Julius Caesar was knifed in the back. America’s raw military power, global cultural reach, and thumping economy will not last forever. Countries rise and countries fall, but God and His Church will endure. Geological time uses immense spans of millennia, ages, and eons to capture the reality of glacial movement, tectonic shifts, and continental splitting. We should use similar references of time when describing the vastness of God. A two-thousand-year-old Church is ancient of days in man-time. But in God-time the Church is just a babe rocking in a cradle. Geologically we would understand this. Theologically we should as well. The United States will pass into history in one blink of God’s eyelashes. So we should love more what deserves more love. We should love less what deserves less love. And we should live more fully only for a deathless God who grants endless life in a true homeland that will never cease.God the Father, may our hearts bear a deep love for our earthly fatherland as an extension of our love for You, our Father in Heaven. May our one heart burst with love for all those that deserve our love, most especially our family, our nation, and our Church.
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    7 mins
  • July 3: Saint Thomas the Apostle

    July 3: Saint Thomas the Apostle
    Jul 2 2025
    July 3: Saint Thomas the Apostle
    First Century
    Feast; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of doubters and architects

    ‘Perhaps’ - the crack in the unbeliever’s wall of certainty

    All unbelievers have a type of faith. They firmly believe in God’s non-existence and in the weakness, not wisdom, of trusting in a reality greater than oneself. Atheism is a belief system, though its object of faith is obviously not God but other sacrosanct, secular “doctrines.” Yet the unbeliever’s secular faith, just like every believer’s, is continually tempted by doubt. The unbeliever, whether fixated on a friend’s lifeless body in a coffin, dumbstruck while gazing at the vastness of the sea, or just when lying in the dark of night, wonders if he has everything figured out. Although he shows a brave front, the unbeliever secretly doubts. He is not certain. He is threatened. There is always the great “perhaps.” Perhaps, just perhaps…the believer is…right. The atheist is under constant assault from faith, primarily from inside himself. Only when trying to quit religion does he realize, painfully, that the drama of being a man cannot be avoided. He exchanges the uncertainty of belief for the uncertainty of unbelief.

    Today’s saint, known as “Doubting Thomas,” is Christianity’s icon of doubt. He loves, serves, and follows the Lord. Upon hearing of the death of Lazarus, Christ decides to go to Judea, where He had previously come under attack. The Apostles are concerned for Christ’s safety, but Thomas supports Him, saying, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (Jn 11:16). Thomas is strong and generous. But he is also a man, so he does what men do—he doubts. Christ’s crucifixion was a searing experience for His Apostles, and Thomas doubts that one so cruelly and publicly murdered could be alive. He is told by his co-Apostles that the Lord is risen and has appeared to them. Yet still Thomas doubts. He will only believe if he can place his hands in Christ’s very wounds.

    To satisfy his skepticism, Thomas joins the others and waits patiently on the Sunday after Easter. The risen Lord appears again in the same place. “Peace be with you,” He says to all. And then to Thomas himself, “Put your finger here and see my hands...Do not doubt but believe.” “My Lord and my God!” is all the flabbergasted Thomas can muster in response (Jn 20:24–29). Thomas’ simple declaration of faith—“My Lord and my God!”—is whispered by millions of faithful at the consecration at Mass, words of faith forged from the anvil of doubt.

    Doubt is often the starting point, the context, and the invitation to faith for so many modern doubting Thomases. Yet true doubting leads to true searching. And a true search is not perennially open-ended but risks finding what is sought. Saint Thomas’ doubt, his moment of weakness, served a higher purpose when Thomas found what he was looking for. The Son of God said “...the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls…” (Mt 13:45) and “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how” (Mk 4:26–27). The kingdom is not the fine pearl. The kingdom is the merchant in search of fine pearls. The kingdom is not the seed. It is the man scattering the seed. The search, the scattering, the effort, the struggle, the journey. These are often the first stages of finding God. Honest, authentic inquiry is god-like. Every legitimate search presupposes, after all, that there is something, or someone, to find.

    Doubt is the plow that opens the furrow where the seed of faith can fall and germinate. Saint Thomas the Apostle is our guide and patron in understanding how doubt sparks faith. Being absent, he heard. Hearing, he doubted. Doubting, he came. Coming, he touched. Touching, he believed. And believing, he served.

    Saint Thomas, help all who struggle with belief in God. Through your example and intercession, assist all those overwhelmed by distractions and doubts to come to a well-informed trust in the Father and Lord of all.
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    6 mins
  • July 1: Saint Junipero Serra, Priest

    July 1: Saint Junipero Serra, Priest
    Jul 1 2024
    July 1: Saint Junipero Serra, Priest 1713–1784Memorial; Liturgical Color: WhitePatron Saint of California and vocations“Always forward!” was his motto and his lifeThe United States of America’s impressive Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., includes the majestic, semicircular Statuary Hall. Each of the fifty states chooses two citizens of historic importance to represent it in the Hall. Statues of one nun and four Catholic priests, two of them saints, grace Statuary Hall, including today’s saint. Junipero Serra was the founder of California. He was the pathbreaking, indestructible priest who trekked California’s mountains, valleys, deserts, and shores to found nine of its eventual twenty-one missions. California’s rugged cattle culture, its luxurious orchards and rolling vineyards, its distinctive Mission architecture, and its blending of Mexican and Native American heritage are the legacy of Father Serra and his Franciscan confreres. The Franciscan city names tell the story: San Francisco, Ventura (Saint Bonaventure), San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Our Lady Queen of the Angels (Los Angeles) and on and on. The Franciscans simply made California what it is.Father Junipero Serra was baptized as Michael Joseph on Mallorca, an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. He grew up dirt poor and devoutly Catholic. He joined the Franciscans as a youth and moved to the large city of Palma de Mallorca, where he took the religious name of Junipero in honor of one of Saint Francis of Assisi’s first followers. After priestly ordination, Father Junipero obtained a doctorate in philosophy and taught Franciscan seminarians. He was destined to lead a successful life as an intelligent, holy, and pious intellectual. But in the Spring of 1749, he felt the Lord calling him to become a missionary to New Spain (Mexico). On the fateful day of his departure from his large Franciscan monastery, he kissed the feet of all his brother Franciscans, from the oldest to the youngest. He then boarded a ship and sailed away from his native island for the first time and the last time. He would never see his family again. Our saint’s life began in earnest in middle age. Long years of intellectual, spiritual, and ascetic preparation steeled his body, mind, and will for the rigors to come.Arriving in the port of Veracruz, Father Serra walked hundreds of miles to Mexico City rather than travel on horseback. Along this first of many treks, he was bitten by either a snake or a spider and developed an open wound that never healed, causing him near constant pain for the rest of his life. Father Serra spent the first several years of his missionary life in a mountainous region of Central Mexico among an indigenous population that had encountered Spaniards, and the Catholic religion, two centuries before. Father Serra wanted a rawer missionary experience. He wanted to meet and convert pagans who knew nothing of Christianity. After years of faithful service as a missionary, church builder, preacher, and teacher in Central Mexico, Father Junipero finally had his chance. The Franciscans were tasked with leading the religious dimension of the first great Spanish expedition into Alta California, the present day American state. If Father Serra had never gone to California, he may still have been a saint, but one known to God alone. It was the challenge of California that made Father Junipero into Saint Junipero.Already in his mid-fifties, Father Serra was the head priest of a large migration of men, women, soldiers, cattle, and provisions whose goal was to establish Spanish Catholic settlements in California. Integral to this cultural and evangelical effort was the founding of California’s missions, the vast farms, cattle ranches, churches, communities, and schools that have left such an enduring mark on California. For the last fifteen years of his life, Saint Junipero was seemingly everywhere in California—walking, confirming, working, building, preaching, fasting, planning, sailing, writing, arguing, founding, and praying. He exhausted his poor, emaciated body. He was recognized by all as the indispensable man. Father Junipero died quietly at the San Carlos Mission in Carmel just as the United States was becoming a country on the other side of the continent. He did for the West Coast what George Washington and better known founders did for the East Coast. He founded a society, in all of its complexity. Decades later, Americans migrated to far-off California, newly incorporated into the federal union, looking for gold, and were surprised to discover a distinctive culture as rugged, layered, and rich as the one they had left behind.California’s foundational events were distinctly Catholic just as the Eastern colonies’ were distinctly Protestant. When ceremoniously inaugurating an early mission, Father Junipero said a High Mass, sang Gregorian chant, processed with an image of the Virgin Mary, and had the Spanish ...
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    7 mins
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I enjoy the episodes… Just wish it was possible to reflect on tomorrow’s episode the evening before…

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