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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Written 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
  • January 24: Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop

    January 24: Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop
    Jan 24 2026
    1567–1622
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of writers and journalists

    A talented gentleman of sterling character embodies holiness

    It is almost an act of rudeness to limit the life of today’s saint to a page or two. Saint Francis de Sales was a religious celebrity in his own day and age. He was an erudite, humble, tough, and zealous priest and bishop. He was holy and known to be holy by everyone, especially those closest to him. He mingled easily with princes, kings, and popes, who enjoyed his charming and educated company. He incessantly crisscrossed his diocese on foot and horseback, destroying his own health, to visit the poor and humble faithful who were drawn to him as much as the high born. He embodied to the fullest that extraordinary pastoral and intellectual productivity, characteristic of the greatest saints, which makes one wonder if he ever rested a single minute or slept a single night.

    Saint Francis de Sales was born and lived most of his life in what is today Southeast France. His father ensured that he received an excellent education from a young age, and his son excelled in every subject. His intellectual gifts, holiness, and engaging personality made him, almost inevitably, an ideal candidate for the priesthood and eventually the episcopacy. He was duly appointed the Bishop of Geneva, a generation after John Calvin, a former future priest, had turned that deeply Catholic city into the Protestant Rome. Saint Francis was Bishop of Geneva primarily in name, not fact.

    In carrying out his ministry, Francis’ weapon of choice was the pen. His apologetic and spiritual works brought back to the faith tens of thousands of former Catholics after they had dabbled in Calvinism. Saint Francis’s works were so profound and creative, and his love of God so straightforward and understandable, that he would be declared a Doctor of the Church in 1877. In his most well-known book, Introduction to the Devout Life, he addressed himself to “people who live in towns, within families, or at court.” His sage spiritual advice encouraged the faithful to seek perfection in the mechanic’s shop, the soldier’s regiment, or on the wharf. God’s will was to be found everywhere, not just in monasteries and convents.

    Many arduous pastoral trips through the mountains of his native region eventually wore him out. Saint Francis never insisted on preferential treatment despite his status. He slept, ate, and traveled as a common man would. When he lay dying, mute after a terrible stroke, a nun asked him if he had any final words of wisdom to impart. He asked for some paper and wrote three words on it: “Humility, Humility, Humility.” Saint Francis is buried in a beautiful bronze sepulchre displaying his likeness in the Visitation Basilica and Convent in Annecy, France.

    Saint Francis de Sales, we ask your intercession to aid us in leading a balanced life of study, prayer, virtue, and service. You were a model bishop who never expected special privilege. Help all those who teach the faith to convey doctrine with the same force, clarity, and depth that you did.
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    4 mins
  • January 23: Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin (U.S.A.)

    January 23: Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin (U.S.A.)
    Jan 23 2026
    January 23: Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin (U.S.A.)
    1838–1918
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Hawaiʻi, lepers, outcasts, and sufferers of HIV/AIDS

    She learned generosity at home and lived it her whole life

    Today’s saint was a model female Franciscan who emulated Saint Francis’ heroic example of personally caring for the outcasts of all outcasts—lepers. Saints are not born, of course; they are made. And Saint Marianne Cope came from a specific time, place, and family. She could have developed her abundant talents in many directions and used them for many purposes, but she re-directed what God loaned her to serve Him, His Church, and mankind. The Church, the Franciscans, and Hawaiʻi were the arenas in which this elite spiritual athlete exercised her skills. She was asked for much and gave even more. She became a great woman.

    Marianne Cope was born in Germany and was brought to New York state by her parents when she was still a baby. She was the oldest of ten children. Her parents lived, struggled, and worked for their kids. She saw generosity in action at home every day. She quit school after eighth grade to work in a factory to financially support her ailing father, her mother, and her many siblings. The challenges inherent to immigration, a new culture, illness, a large family, and poverty turned Marianne into a serious, mature woman when she was just a teen.

    Marianne fulfilled her long-delayed desire to enter religious life in 1862. Once professed, she moved quickly into leadership positions. She taught in German-speaking Catholic grade schools, became a school principal, and was elected by her fellow Franciscans to positions of governance in her Order. She opened the first hospitals in her region of Central New York, dedicating herself and her Order to the time-honored religious vocation of caring for the sick, regardless of their ability to pay for medical services. She was eventually elected Superior General. In her early forties, she was already a woman of wide experience: serious, administratively gifted, spiritually grounded, and of great human virtues. But this was all mere preparation. She now began the second great act of her drama. She went to Hawaiʻi.

    In 1883 she received a letter from the Bishop of Honolulu begging her, as Superior General, to send sisters to care for lepers in Hawaiʻi. He had written to various other religious Orders without success. Sister Marianne was elated. She responded like the prophet Isaiah, saying, “Here am I; send me!” (Is 6:8). She not only sent six sisters, she sent herself! She planned to one day return to New York but never did. For the next thirty-five years, Sister Marianne Cope became a type of recluse on remote Hawaiʻi, giving herself completely to the will of God.

    Sister Marianne and her fellow Franciscans managed one hospital, founded another, opened a home for the daughters of lepers, and, after a few years of proving themselves, opened a home for women and girls on the virtually inaccessible island of Molokai. Here her life coincided with the final months of Saint Damien de Veuster. Sister Marianne nursed the future saint in his dying days, assuring him that she and her sisters would continue his work among the lepers. After Father Damien died, the Franciscans, in addition to caring for the leprous girls, now cared for the boys too. A male Congregation eventually relieved them of this apostolate.

    Sister Marianne Cope lived the last thirty years of her life on Molokai until her death in 1918. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and canonized by him in 2012. She loved the Holy Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and the Church. And because she loved God first, she loved those whom God loves, her brothers and sisters in Christ. She sacrificed for them, left home and family for them, put her health at risk for them, and became a saint through them.

    Saint Marianne Cope, help us to be as generous as you were in serving those on the margins, those who need our help, and those who have no one else to assist them. You were a model Franciscan in dying to self. Help us to likewise die so that we might likewise live.
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    5 mins
  • January 22: Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children (U.S.A.)

    January 22: Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children (U.S.A.)
    Jan 21 2025
    January 22: Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children (U.S.A.)
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White or Violet

    Abortion is a black eye on the handsome face of America

    At 3:00 a.m. on March 13, 1964, a young woman parked her car next to her apartment building in Queens, New York. She got out and started walking toward the door when, in the darkness, she spotted someone in her path. She changed direction and ran toward a police call box. The man caught up and tackled her to the ground. He stabbed her in the back. She screamed for help. Lights blinked on; windows opened. She screamed repeatedly, “I’m dying! Help me!” The attack continued. Forty-five minutes later, a neighbor called the police. Officers arrived and identified the victim as twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese. At least thirty-eight neighbors heard or witnessed the attack. Not one of them came to her aid. Only one called the police, belatedly.

    The response to Kitty Genovese’s murder was widely studied and became known as the “Genovese Syndrome” or the “Bystander Effect.” As the number of bystanders to a crime or accident increases, the likelihood of anyone doing anything about it decreases. Because everyone thinks someone else is going to intervene, no one does anything. Ironically, if Kitty’s attack had been witnessed by just one person, instead of thirty-eight, her chances of survival would have increased.

    Moral outrage is stifled, duty is diminished, and the desire to blend in predominates in groups. Even if a group is witnessing something awful, many individuals keep quiet. January 22, 1973, marks the dark anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton, which blew the moral lights out for the protection of the unborn in the United States. All right-thinking people have an obligation to name abortion for what it is, regardless of what others may say. A country is like a big group, and we tend to conform to group norms. But scientific and technological advances have erased all doubt about whether pre-born life is human life. It’s a baby. When a woman is expecting, no one goes to a “fetus shower,” they go to a “baby shower.” It’s not a potential human life. It’s a human life with potential.

    Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Jewish by blood and atheist by faith, was a Canadian American doctor who not only advocated for the legalization of abortion, but who also, with his own hands, aborted two of his own children. He is considered the “father” of the legalization of abortion in America, which culminated in the judicial decisions remembered today. One day in the mid-1970s, a doctor friend invited Nathanson to hold the ultrasound imaging paddle on a woman’s belly as the doctor aborted her child. Nathanson was horrified at what was displayed on the ultrasound screen. The baby was vigorously flailing, trying to avoid the doctor’s instruments, pushing against the sharp objects jabbing his body. And then the baby’s mouth opened in a silent scream for help. Soon after, Dr. Nathanson gave up his lucrative abortion practice. And years later, after long and painful soul searching, Dr. Nathanson bowed his head to receive the waters of baptism in the Catholic Church, a real religion that forgives real sins.

    Abortion corrupts all that it touches: family life, relationships between men and women, politicians, courts, doctors and nurses, and public life in general, which has become more hardened to the sufferings and vulnerabilities of those on the margins. But most of all, abortion has harmed every woman who has had one. There are psychological repercussions to the unnatural end of any pregnancy, but most especially when that end is violent, willful, and paid for by the one it harms. When the natural maternal instinct to nurture and protect is so violated, mom may never recover. The wound remains open. The healing is long and partial.

    In this liturgical memorial, we commemorate an anniversary. So…Happy Anniversary, Abortion. You deceive, you divide, you destroy. You are darkness, and you are death. You are the bloody nose on the beautiful face of America. We pray that someday people will only speak about you in hushed tones, behind closed doors, whispering “abortion” like a dirty word. Happy Anniversary, Abortion; you are the pride in the devil’s grin.

    Heavenly Father and Mother Mary, today we storm heaven with our prayers, fasting, and almsgiving in the hope that all unborn children will be protected in law so that they can grow into the men and women you planned them to be.
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    6 mins
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