Saints and Angels – South Africa Needs Our Lady

St. Aloysius Gonzaga

17/06/2025 by SANOL

Patron Saint of Catholic Youth

Feast June 21

Aloysius was born in the Italian province of Lombardy in 1568, the first-born son of a Marquis and the lady of honour to the Queen of Spain.

When he was seven, he experienced a spiritual awakening: he made a vow of perpetual virginity, keeping his eyes downcast in the presence of women to safeguard himself from possible temptation, and dedicated most of his time to prayer, especially the Office of Our Lady.

When he was just eleven years old he fasted in the manner of a monk, eating only bread and water three days a week, practiced austerities and taught poor children the catechism. The next year, he received his First Holy Communion from the hands of the great saint and cardinal, Charles Borromeo.

By age fourteen, Aloysius had resolved to join the Society of Jesus and become a missionary. He was to suffer much from his family’s strenuous opposition to this decision, particularly from his father, who hoped Aloysius would join the military. However, he persevered, and his father finally relented.

In 1585, the seventeen-year-old Aloysius was admitted into the Jesuit novitiate in Rome where he took the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience two years later.

While the young Gonzaga was ordained a deacon at twenty, he was never to realize his dream of becoming a priest and missionary in this life.

As had been foretold to him in a vision, Aloysius died on the octave of Corpus Christi in 1591 after contracting the plague while caring for the sick in the Jesuit hospital. He was twenty-three years old.

He was canonized in 1726 and his relics remain under the altar dedicated to the Jesuit founder in the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome.

The virtue that had so marked him in his youth – purity – and which he preached and practiced to a heroic degree during his short life, became the spiritual crown by which he will be forever known.

Prayer of St Alphonsus Liguori to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

17/06/202511/06/2025 by SANOL

O Adorable Heart of my Jesus, Heart created expressly for the love of mankind!

Until now I have shown towards Thee only ingratitude. Pardon me, O my Jesus.

Heart of my Jesus, abyss of love and mercy, how is it possible that I do not die of sorrow when I reflect on Thy goodness to me and my ingratitude to Thee?

Thou, my Creator,having created me, has given Thy Blood and Thy life for me; and,
not content with this, Thou has invented a means of offering Thyself every day for me in the Holy Eucharist, exposing Thyself to a thousand insults and outrages.

Ah! Jesus, do Thou wound my heart with a great contrition for my sins, and a tender love for Thee.
Through Thy Tears, Thy Blood give me the grace of perseverance in Thy fervent love until I breathe my last sigh. Amen.

My Loving Jesus, in order to show the grateful love I bear Thee, and to make reparation for my unfaithfulness to grace, I [N] give Thee my heart, and I consecrate myself wholly to Thee, and with Thy help I shall try never to sin again.

(100 days indul. Pius VII, 26 June 1770)

Saint Norbert

06/06/2025 by SANOL

Feast June 6

Invoked during childbirth for safe delivery

Norbert was born in the year 1080 in Xanten, Germany, to a noble and wealthy family.

Norbert lived a life of pleasure until one day he lost consciousness after being thrown from his horse during a thunderstorm. He awoke an hour later, and said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” “Turn from evil and do good: seek after peace and pursue it,” came the heavenly reply.

After his conversion, Norbert pursued the priesthood and was ordained in 1115. He received special permission from the Pope to preach the Gospel wherever he chose.

Finding himself at Prémontré in France, Norbert founded a community under the rule of St. Augustine, with the sanction of the Holy See. At first, Norbert had only thirteen followers but the numbers increased to forty by 1121 and by 1125, eight abbeys and two convents had been established. Thus he founded the Norbertine Order.

In 1126, Norbert was chosen Archbishop of Magdeburg. He struggled to reform the clergy, many of whom were leading careless lives, and ultimately succeeded in his reformation endeavours.

Four years later, he defended Pope Innocent II, whose claim to the papacy was threatened by Antipope Anacletus II. Norbert won over the hierarchy of the Church in Germany to Innocent’s cause and influenced the German King Lothar to defend Innocent.

Norbert died in Magdeburg in 1134 at the age of fifty-three. He was formally recognized as a saint by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

Saint Anthony of Padua

01/06/202531/05/2025 by SANOL

FEAST DAY 13 JUNE

Anthony was born Fernando Martins in Lisbon, Portugal, in August, 1195. His noble and wealthy family arranged for him to be instructed at the Cathedral school where he was instilled with a deep religious piety.

At fifteen, Fernando entered the Augustinian Order at the Abbey of Saint Vincent on the outskirts of Lisbon and there studied theology, Latin and the Holy Scriptures.

It was after his ordination to the priesthood that Fernando first came into contact with some Franciscan friars who settled near his monastery.

From the beginning, Fernando was strongly attracted to the simple, evangelical lifestyle of the friars. However, it was not until the news came of the first martyrs of their order – five Franciscans beheaded in Morocco – and Fernando saw their mutilated bodies, which had been ransomed, being buried in the Abbey of Santa Cruz, that he obtained permission to leave the Augustinian Order and join the Franciscans, where he received the new name of Anthony.

So inspired was he by the martyrs’ example that he set out for Morocco himself, with the hope of becoming a martyr too. However, he fell seriously ill on route and was forced to return to Portugal to regain his health. According to the designs of Divine Providence, on the return voyage, the ship was blown off course and landed in Sicily.

From Sicily he made his way to Tuscany where he was assigned to a convent of the order, but he was later assigned to the rural hermitage of San Paolo near Forlì, Romagna, a choice made after considering his poor health. There he lived in a cell made by one of the friars in a nearby cave and spent his time in private prayer and study.

One day, in 1222, in the town of Forli, on the occasion of an ordination, Anthony was persuaded to be the homilist. So simple and resounding was his teaching of the Catholic Faith that even the most unlettered and innocent might understand it and it made a great impression on all who heard. Not only his rich voice and arresting manner, but the entire theme and substance of his discourse and his moving eloquence, held the attention of his hearers.

Everyone was impressed with his knowledge of Scripture, acquired during his years of solitude at the hermitage of Forli.

Saint Barnabas

01/06/202531/05/2025 by SANOL

FEAST DAY 11 JUNE

Though Barnabas, a Jew of Cyprus, was not one of the Twelve chosen by Our Lord, he is still considered an apostle.

He was closely involved with the apostles after Pentecost, and was principally responsible for their accepting Paul, who was a recent convert, into their midst.

Barnabas was sent by the disciples to lend a guiding hand to recent evangelization efforts in Antioch. The success in Antioch led to his first official mission trip: the holy man travelled all over, preaching the Gospel to all who would listen, even the Gentiles. Barnabas took Paul with him, and the two continued to evangelize and preach the Gospel together for many years.

Later, when the two apostles decided to revisit their missions, a sharp contention arose between them over whether John Mark should accompany them, and they parted company going their separate ways: Paul with Silas to Asia Minor and Barnabas with John Mark sailing to Cyprus.

In the Apostle Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians he indicates that their friendship was unimpaired by this disagreement.

It has been said that Barnabas was stoned to death at Salamis, the Greek city-state near Cyprus in about the year 60.

St Christopher Magallanes & Companions

21/05/202521/05/2025 by SANOL

Martyrs of the Cristero War

Feast May 21

Christopher Magallanes was born in 1869 in the province of Guadalajara, Mexico, of devout parents who were poor farmers.

As a youth, he worked as a shepherd, but felt called to be a shepherd of souls. He entered the seminary at nineteen and was ordained at the age of thirty.

He worked as a parish priest in his hometown of Totatiche for two decades, and there also opened a carpentry business to help provide jobs for the local men.

When, in the first decades of the twentieth century, the atheistic Mexican government launched a merciless persecution of the Catholic Church, a new constitution banned the training of priests.

In 1915, Fr. Christopher opened his own small seminary in Totatiche where he soon had a dozen students.

Consequently, accused of trying to incite rebellion, Fr. Christopher was arrested on his way to say Mass, imprisoned and condemned to be shot without trial.

His few possessions he gave away to his jailer and he was executed on 21 May 1927 with another twenty-one priests and three lay Catholics. His last words were:

“I die innocent, and ask God that my blood may serve to unite my Mexican brethren.”

He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 21 May 2000.

Our Lady of Puig

07/04/2025 by SANOL

The fortress and the church of Our Lady of Puig are a short distance out of Valencia; both date from Roman times, when a temple of Venus stood on the hill overlooking the pleasant valley. At the coming of Christians, it was turned into a monastery.

Early in history they acquired the image of Our Lady of Puig, in bas-relief, carved on a slab of marble, which was said to have formed part of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. How it got to Spain is not known with certainty, though the pious insist that it was brought there by angels. It was the principal object of devotion at the shrine, which thrived and became more beautiful until the ancient kingdom of the Visigoths fell to the Muslim invaders in the 8th Century.

In the year 712 AD the monks sadly buried their treasure to hide it from desecration, along with the church bell, under the floor of the monastery, and fled for their lives. After five centuries the Moors were expelled from Valencia, and the plaque of Our Lady of Puig played a part in its liberation.

King Jamie I of Aragon, victorious in other parts of Spain, moved on Valencia with his armies. The Moors, in an effort to trick the Christians into sending their troops to the wrong place, moved to attack the ancient fortress of Puig. This was done with great secrecy, but Our Lady warned the Christians and helped them to win the desperate battle.

Saint Peter Nolasco, who helped to found the Society for the Redemption of Captives under Our Lady’s guidance, was in Puig when the battle took place. One of the soldiers came to him and reported that when he had been on night guard he had seen strange lights over the old ruined church of Our Lady of Puig; sometimes the stars seemed to come down from the sky and circle around the building. Especially on Saturday nights there were bright lights around the mount of the church.

Saint Peter suggested to the king that all the soldiers should receive the Sacraments and pray to know what God was trying to tell them. After this had been done, he led them to the top of the hill and directed them to dig under the floor of the old monastery. Here they found the plaque and the bell, buried for 500 years, but unharmed.

The plaque was first carried to the chapel of the castle fortress. As soon as possible a new church was built on the mountain and given into the charge of the Mercedarians under Saint Peter Nolasco.

The ancient bell which was dated as being cast in 660, and was placed in the tower of the church. This bell was said to be powerful against storms and always rung of its own accord in time of trouble. In 1550 the bell broke and a new one was cast from the fragments of the old one.

The church built by Saint Peter Nolasco was called “the angelic chamber” because angels were often heard singing there in the night, especially on Saturdays.

Our Lady of Puig has been the patroness of Valencia for hundreds of years, and as recently as 1935 when she was honoured by the Spanish Armies who have carried her image in so many successful battles. She was at this time named as a General in the Army and invoked as Patroness in the Christian War against Communism.

Saint Vincent Ferrer

31/03/2025 by SANOL

Patron Saint of Builders, Prisoners, Construction Workers, Plumbers, Fishermen and Spanish Orphanages

Feast Day 5 April

Vincent Ferrer, although born in Valencia in Spain, was from Scotch-English descent on his father’s side.

His parents instilled in him a deep devotion to Our Lord and Our Lady and a tremendous love for the poor.

In 1367 he entered the Dominican Order, and before he reached the age of twenty-one was already teaching philosophy at Lérida, the most famous university in Catalonia.

Transferred to Barcelona to preach to the public, he arrived in the coastal city to find the citizens ravaged by hunger. A famine was raging through that region and the people were desperate for the arrival of a ship of corn. Vincent foretold that the ship would be in harbour before nightfall, and so it happened, at which the people acclaimed the young Dominican preacher a prophet and his superiors cautiously moved him to Toulouse.

Vincent inflamed souls with the ardour of his preaching, rousing sinners to penance, lax Catholics to fervour, and converting a number of Jews to the Faith, one of them the Rabbi of Burgos who went on to become a bishop.

It was the time of the great schism with a pope in Rome and another in Avignon, a time when even saints were confused. For a time Vincent favoured Benedict XIII, or Peter de Luna, as he was popularly known, who ruled from the French city of Avignon. Vincent was also de Luna’s confessor.

But as the Church began moving to rule against the claim of Peter de Luna, and the latter remained obstinate, Vincent distanced himself from the claimant, and, eventually, played a major role in Benedict XIII’s abdication in favour of Church unity.

Vincent Ferrer preached throughout Europe as far north as the Netherlands, and his learning, ardent preaching and miracles worked numerous conversions.

In one location Vincent worked so many miracles that an hour was reserved every day for healing the sick. At Liguria in Italy he convinced the ladies to modify their fantastic headdress, which one of his biographers calls “the greatest of all his marvellous deeds”.

In Granada in Spain, then under Moorish rule, 8000 Muslims asked for Baptism after hearing him preach.

Vincent spent the last three years of his life in France, where he became ill after preaching a sermon in 1419, and died on Wednesday of Passion Week.

He was canonized in 1455 by Pope Calixtus III.

St Jean-Baptiste de la Salle

31/03/2025 by SANOL

Patron Saint of Teachers

FEAST APRIL 7

Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, the famous founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or the Christian Brothers, was born in Rheims of the noble family of la Salle.

Showing signs of a rare piety from an early age, Jean-Baptiste was destined for the priesthood, which fit well with his own inclinations regarding the future. He entered the seminary in 1670 at nineteen and was ordained in 1678.

A young man of refinement and good connections, he seemed to be destined for high office in the Church. But in 1679 he met a layman, Adrian Nyel, who had the idea of starting a school for poor boys in Rheims.

The newly-ordained Fr. Jean-Baptiste became engrossed in the project and began to guide Nyel and seven schoolmasters in the high educational ideals taking shape in his own mind. He even invited the group into his paternal home to live. But there, unwilling to submit to the discipline for which they had not bargained, they took leave.

Undaunted, the reformer waited patiently. Soon, he was joined by another group of interested men. To these Fr. Jean-Baptiste imparted a new method of teaching, which revolutionized the elementary schooling of the day.

Until then, children had been taught on an individual basis. Jean-Baptiste introduced into education the classroom setting, silence during lessons, and teaching in the vernacular rather than in Latin.

Soon requests began to arrive for teachers trained in the new method. Parish priests also began to send young men to the institute to be trained as masters for their own parish schools.

In time, Fr. Jean-Baptiste formed a novitiate and a rule of religious life.

After much prayer, he also established that his teaching institute would be constituted of lay brothers and not priests. From France the Christian Brothers spread throughout Europe and the world.

In 1717 the founder resigned as superior of his institute and lived like the humblest of brothers.

Suffering from asthma and rheumatism, Fr. Jean- Baptiste gave up none of his austerities.

Early in 1719 he met with an accident which ultimately led to his death on Good Friday of that year. He was sixty-eight years of age.

The Catholic Church set her seal of approval upon the life and apostolate of this man, a reformer and innovator of primary importance in the history of education, by canonizing him in 1900.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared him patron of all school teachers.

Saint Joseph, Martyr of Grandeur

11/03/202511/03/2025 by SANOL6

Feast Day 19 March

To even begin to comprehend the nature of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, we must bear in mind two awe-inspiring facts. St. Joseph is the virgin-husband of Our Lady and the guardian-father of Our Lord.

The husband must be proportional to the wife. Saint Joseph’s spouse is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most perfect of all creatures, and masterpiece of the Creator’s handiwork.

In her incomparable person, we find the sum of all the virtues of all the angels, and saints, indeed all creation until the end of time. Even these poor considerations, of course, fail to convey adequately the sublime perfection of the Most Holy Mother of God.

From among all men, God chose one man worthy to love and honour the Mother of His Only-Begotten Son as her husband. He was a husband proportional to his wife in love of God, purity, wisdom, justice — in every virtue. Saint Joseph was that man.

However there remains something even more incomprehensible. The father must be proportional to his son, and, as we have noted, the Son for Whom God sought an earthly father was none other than His Own.

There could be but one man fit for such an awesome responsibility, the man God created for precisely this vocation and whose soul He crowned with every virtue. That man, too, was Saint Joseph.

Saint Joseph is proportional to the Blessed Mother and her Divine Son. What greater homage could we render him? It is beyond our power to imagine the grandeur of Saint Joseph’s exaltation.

Words cannot express the depth of his union of soul with that of Our Lady and the degree of his intimacy with the Incarnate Word.

Saint Anthony of Padua is commonly depicted holding the Child Jesus. Because the Divine Child rested in his arms for a few moments, we deem Saint Anthony particularly blessed. Yet how many times did Saint Joseph hold the Christ Child in his arms?

Saint Joseph’s were the pure lips that taught Jesus and answered His questions. Consider Saint Joseph’s carpenter shop in Nazareth, where a Son learns the trade of his father.

If you can conceive of a man with the purity, humility, and wisdom to govern the Holy Family as its lord, you may begin to appreciate the sublime virtue of Saint Joseph. But how did Saint Joseph’s contemporaries react in the face of this grandeur? Saint Luke provides clear testimony. “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” — Luke 2:7

These last words reveal a bitter truth. In its petty selfishness, mankind finds it difficult to accept that which is great — much less that which is divine. We may think that people like to deal with important matters. Indeed some do enjoy such things, but in a superficial and selfish manner. What attracts man is not so much grandeur as mediocrity, a mixture of good and evil in which evil predominates.

So we can understand why the innkeepers of Bethlehem were unwilling to make room for the Holy Family. Saint Joseph and Mary showed them the most tender kindness. Their majesty was unmistakable, even in their poverty.

However distinction is only acceptable when it is accompanied by wealth, for the latter pardons the former. Moreover, greed incites flattery, which takes the place of respect. Thus, when a poor man of great distinction knocks at the door, there is no room. It would have taken but five minutes to arrange ample accommodation for mediocre rich pilgrims, but there was no room in the inn for Saint Joseph or for his spouse with Child. And even had they known that the Child was the promised Messiah, they still would not have received them. As Donoso Cortes aptly reminds us, “The human spirit hungers for absurdity and sin.”

The Child Jesus resembled Our Lady. She was the prefigure of the Redeemer. Saint Joseph also looked like Him, but there was no room in the inn for the Holy Family. Thus history records the first refusal of the Hebrew people. Our Lord knocks at the doors — at the hearts — of man through the paternal intercession of Saint Joseph and He is refused.

Saint Joseph, prince of the House of David, the royal family from which would come the Hope of the Nations — knocks at the door and is rejected. But in this rejection lies his glory. Taking another step toward martyrdom, he leads his august spouse to a poor stable, where the Lord of the Universe will be born.

To this glory would be added many others: the glory of being considered a person of little worth; the glory of taking upon himself the humiliation, ignominy, and opprobrium that was to fall upon Our Lord; or the glory of being scorned by man for the grandeur of his soul. Even to this day; that same glory leads us to implore:

“Saint Joseph, Martyr of Grandeur, pray for us!”

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