St Brigid of Kildare Abbess of Kildare [c. A.D.525]

With St Patrick, St Brigid is our very cherished patron saint.  There can be no doubt that Brigid must be numbered among the greatest and most highly venerated of the saints whose virtues lent glory to Ireland and helped, at least indirectly, to christianize Europe.  Her memory, as it lived in the hearts of the people, was identified with an extraordinary spirit of charity.

St Brigid was born about 451 at or near the present Umeras between Rathangan and Monasterevan.  Her father Dubthach was a pagan chieftain of Leinster and her mother Brocca was a christian Pict who had been baptised by St Patrick. 
Brigid showed signs of great holiness from an early age.  Brigid became a nun, and beneath a beautiful oak tree she built her first church, and ever since it has been named Cill Dara [Kildare]  the church of the oak.  [The oak tree under which St Brigid built her oratory was preserved with great veneration down to the tenth century, when it succumbed to age and the violence of a winter storm].

St Brigid's monastery flourished and soon became famous as a place of pilgrimage, and helped spread christianity through Ireland and beyond her shores.

St Brigid was famous for her great compassion and her hospitality, she never turned anyone in want away.  She prayed and the food would multiply, and would be enough for everybody who came to her door.

St Brigid was blessed by God with the gift of healing. Many are the stories of her healing people and animals.  She cured people of leprosy, blindness, so many healings but I think this one stands out:
" One evening as the sun went down, Brigid sat with sister Dara, a holy nun who was blind, and they talked of the love of Jesus Christ and the joys of Paradise.  Now their hearts were so full that the night fled away whilst they spoke together, and neither knew that so many hours had passed.  Then the sun came up from behind the Wicklow mountains and the pure white light made the face of earth bright and happy.  Then Brigid sighed, when she saw how lovely were earth and sky, and knew that Dara's eyes were closed to all this beauty.  So she bowed her head and prayed, and extended her hand and signed the dark orbs of the gentle sister.  Then the darkness passed away from them, and Dara saw the golden ball in the east and all the trees and flowers glittering with dew in the morning light.  She looked a little while, and then, turning to the abbess, said, " close my eyes again, dear Mother, for when the world is so visable to the eyes, God is seen less clearly to the soul".  So Brigid prayed once more, and Dara's eyes grew dark again".

St Brigid is patron of Milkmen, poets, cows, and yard animals, blacksmiths and healers.

Her feastday is 1st February.

St Dominic Savio

Dominic was born on 2nd April 1842 in Riva, near Turin, one of 10 children born to poor parents.  His father was a blacksmith, and his mother was a seamstress.  When Dominic was twelve he joined the school of St John Bosco at Turin.  Under the guidence of St John Bosco, Dominic grew in sanctity.  Dominic was outstanding for cheerfulness and friendliness.  He said "I can't do big things, but I want all I do, even the smallest thing to be for the greater glory of God."

We get the most facts about Dominic's life from the account written by St John Bosco about the spiritual experiences that were given to Dominic such as supernatural knowledge - of people in need, of their spiritual state, of the future.  St John Bosco tells us that the needs of England had an important part in Dominic's prayers.  Dominic saw a wide mist-shrouded plain, with a crowd of people groping about in it, then came a figure carrying a torch that lighted up the whole scene, and a voice said "This torch is the Catholic faith which shall bring light to the English people."  At Dominic's request St John Bosco told this to Pope Pius 1X who declared that it confirmed his resolution to give great care and attention to England.

Dominic's delicate health got worse, on the evening of March 9th 1857, he asked his father to read the prayers for the dying, suddenly his face lit up with a smile of intense joy, and he said "I am seeing most wonderful things!"  They were his last words.  Dominic was beatified in 1950, and canonized in 1954.

Saint Elizabeth Seton [American Saint]

St Elizabeth Seton  [August 28th 1774 - January 4th 1821] was the first native-born citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Church. [September 14th 1975]
Elizabeth was born on 28th August 1774 in New York.  She was raised in the Episcopal Church.  Her mother died when Elizabeth was 3 years old.
In 1794 Elizabeth married William Seton.  They were very happy and had five children.  But William got ill and his doctors advised him to go to Italy for the warmer climate. Elizabeth and their eldest daughter went with him, but William died of tuberculosis on 27th December 1803.
While staying with the Italian family[William's Italian business partners] Elizabeth was introduced to the actual practice of Roman Catholicism.

After her return to America she converted to Catholicism.  Elizabeth supported herself and her children by starting an academy for ladies but when news of her conversion to Rome spread, however, most of the parents withdrew their children due to the anti-Catholic sentiment of the day.  Around this time Elizabeth met a visiting priest the Abbe Louis Dubourg, S.S., who was a member of the French emigre community of Sulpician Fathers.
In 1809 after trying and difficult years Elizabeth established in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the St Joseph's Academy and Free school, a school dedicated to the education of Catholic girls.  In July that year Elizabeth established a religious community in Emmitsburg, dedicated to the care of the children of the poor.  It was the first congregation of Religious Sisters to be founded in the United States, and its school was the first free Catholic school in America.

From that point on Elizabeth was known as "Mother Seton".  The rest of her life was spent leading her new congregation.  She advised her sisters "To do the will of God, to do it in the manner He wills it, and to do it because it is His will.
Elizabeth had a heart full of love for the poor, the Eucharist, Mary our Mother and her community.  She died of tuberculosis on January 4th 1821 at the age of 46.  Her remains are entombed in the Basilica that bears her name:  the Basilica of the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Seton.

Elizabeth was beatified by Pope John XX111 on 17th March 1963 and she was canonized by Pope Paul V1 on 14th September 1975. 

St Thomas More Husband and Martyr

St Thomas was born in London in 1478.  Thomas studied at Oxford University and then embarked on a legal career.  In 1505 he married Jane Colt and had four children, 3 daughters and a son.  The marriage was a very happy one but Jane died in 1511.  Shortly after Thomas married a widow Alice Middleton, who was a woman full of common sense and a good stepmother for his children.

Thomas was a many-sided personality, made up of intellectual sophistication, moral honesty, gentleness, loyalty to his king and affection to his wife, friends and children.  Thomas was always a man of prayer with daily recitation of the Little Office, he wore a hairshirt all his life.

King Henry V111, impressed by Thomas's ability appointed him to a succession of high posts, and finally made him Lord Chancellor in 1529.  Thomas resigned in 1532 at the height of his career, when Henry persisted in holding his own opinions regarding marriage and the supremacy of the Pope.
Thomas was imprisoned in the Tower on 13th April 1534,[with his good friend St John Fisher] where he stayed for the remaining 15months of his life.

Many efforts were made to induce Thomas to conform, but in vain, he was condemned to death.  He was executed on Tower Hill on 6th July 1535.  His last words were that he died for the Catholic Church and was the king's good servant, but God's first.  Thomas was beatified in 1886[with John Fisher] and canonized in 1935.

St John Fisher Bishop and martyr

John was born in Yorkshire, England.  He went to Cambridge University and was ordained priest at 22years of age.  In 1502 he became chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry V11.

Under John's guidence Lady Margaret became a great benefactress for Cambridge.  Together they reformed and re-endowed Cambridge University.  When John first went to Cambridge its scholarship had sunk to a low ebb; no Greek or Hebrew was taught, and the library had been reduced to 300 volumes.  He endowed scholarships, he re-introduced Greek and Hebrew into the curriculum, and he brought Erasmus over to teach and to lecture.

In 1504 he was elected chancellor of the university - a post he held until his death.  In the same year[1504] King Henry V11 nominated him to the bishopric of Rochester, he was only 35.  He carried out his pastoral duties with zeal.  He held visitations, visited the sick, the poor, distributed alms himself.  He lived very simply with very plain food, allowing himself only 4 hours sleep at night.

John lost the King's favour [Henry V111] when he opposed his marriage to Anne Boleyn.  John was now in danger, and warnings of friends and threats of his enemies, were not needed to bring home to him the risks he now ran by his opposition to the ruling powers.  He was arrested and put in the Tower in April 1534. John's physical health was now very poor, but his ill health did not affect his heroic courage. The next year he was made a Cardinal by Pope Paul 111 and King Henry retaliated by having John Fisher beheaded within a month.

John was beheaded on 22nd June 1535.  On the scaffold John declared he was dying for the faith of Christ's holy Catholic Church, and he asked the people to pray that he might be steadfast to the end.

Of all the English bishops, only John Fisher of Rochester publicly opposed Henry V111's mandatory Oath of Allegience, which unlawfully declared King Henry the head of the Church of England.  The bishop's stand ultimately cost John his life.
John was beatified by Pope Leo X111 in 1886, and he was canonized by Pope Pius X1 in 1935.

Your Guardian Angel- your greatest friend

Greetings all, Glory here. You have a great and powerful friend in your guardian angel.  He was given to you by God Himself, he will never leave you.

The angels are finite pure spirits modelled on the INFINITE, PURE,  SPIRIT WHICH IS GOD.

In our world we look around at the beauty and variety in nature different trees, flowers, birds, especially ourselves - none of us are exactly alike - but the beauty in our world dims into plainness compared to the angelic world.  St Thomas Aquinas tells us that the difference in each individual angel is immense, as different as a man and a rose or a fly and an elephant!

The angels are a luminous image of DIVINITY'S  PERFECTIONS  - STUPENDOUS  in its beauty - STAGGERING in its wide variety.  Yet all this is no more than a foggy outline of  the BEAUTY OF GOD.

God Himself gives each of us a guardian angel.  Your angel burning with love for God and full of intense love for you, interceding constantly for you to God.
Our guardian angel may not interfere with our free will, but he will do his very best urging us to correct our weaknesses, he is ever on the alert to protect us from danger and to turn our thoughts to God.  His efforts on our behalf are unceasing.  Love him, he never forgets you!
Our guardian angel's knowledge is all that our own is not - accurate, complete, absolutely firsthand, coming to him from TRUTH  ITSELF - GOD.

ST JOSEPH [first century]

Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary
He has two feastdays, his main one is on 19th March and on 1st May we celebrate him as St Joseph the worker.
Our facts about St Joseph comes from the New Testament.
Matt.[1:18-25] "Mary was betrothed to Joseph but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally.  He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said: "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins". So Joseph did what the angel said and took Mary home as his wife.

Joseph was in the stable in Bethlehem when
 Jesus was born.  What a joy for this holy man to take into his arms this tiny trembling little baby! To hear his first faint cry.  To this saint was given charge of the King of the Universe and His holy Mother!  Joseph must have wished with all his heart for better lodgings for the little one and his mother, but God chose to be born in extreme poverty in a stable!

We next hear of Joseph when he is again visited by an angel in a dream.  Matt. [2:13-15] "Get up take the child and his mother with you and escape into Egypt and stay there until I tell you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him".  So Joseph got up and taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt, where he stayed until Herod was dead.

When Jesus was 12 years old he went up to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover with Joseph and Mary but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing, it took Mary and Joseph 3 days to find him. What heartache and grief did this holy couple go through!  They searched for their greatest treasure Jesus, finally they found him in the temple, sitting among the doctors listening to them, and asking them questions and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his answers.  They were overcome when they saw him and his mother said to him "My child why have you done this to us?  See how worried your father and I have been looking for you.  "Why were you looking for me?   Did you not know that I must be busy with My Father's business?  But they did not understand what he meant.  Jesus then went with them to Nazareth.

It was Joseph who guided the boy Jesus's first attempts at carpentry. It would have been his dear foster father who helped with the first things he made who encouraged him when he was learning.

Joseph it is believed, died before Jesus started his public life.  He would have died in the arms of Jesus and Mary, that is why he is the patron of a happy death.
Devotion to St Joseph has increased down the years, especially owing to the zeal of such saints as St Bernard, St Gertrude, St Bridget of Sweden.  St Teresa of Avila dedicated the mother-house of her reformed Carmelite convent at Avila to St Joseph and had great devotion to this great man.  St Ignatius of Loyola also had great devotion to St Joseph.
On December 8th 1870, Pope Pius 1X declared St Joseph "Patron of the Universal Church".  His name was added to the Canon of the mass by Blessed John XX111 in 1962.  Pope Leo X111 wrote a great Encyclical QUAMQUAM PLURIES [on devotion to St Joseph] on 15th August 1889.

He is also the patron saint of Fathers, of manual workers, and of social justice.