(Feast Day ~ November 9) The lives of the saints are not tales of happy days, good deeds, reverence by all, and peaceful death. More often, the lives of the saints have been filled with conflict and difficulties of all sorts in which the saint has had to rise above adversities. But these stories are […]

(Feast Day ~ November 9) When St. Patrick, the “Apostle to the Irish”, returned to that land where he had been held as a slave and had accepted God’s challenge to convert its people to the Christian faith, he knew that he needed converts with particular skills who could help in this work. He was […]

(Feast Day ~ September 16) From Saints of the British Isles by Andrew Bond and Nicolas Mabin St. Ninian was born in Scotland about the year 360, the son of a Christian chieftain. Having been baptized as a child, before he was five years old, St. Ninian could read and write, and had learnt to […]

(Feast Day ~ September 16) January in the year 250 was not a safe time for Christians. The Emperor Decius, whose harassment of those who followed Christ had been sporadic at first, suddenly began zealously carrying out persecution. He ordered all Christians, beginning with the hierarchs, to offer incense to the Roman gods or be […]

Feast Day ~ September 15 True persecution is usually preceded by less severe forms of harassment – limits on freedom, paying of “tributes”, relegation to second-class position in society, loss of legal protection – and it usually begins with ridicule. In some places around the world today, Christians are being killed by those who believe […]

(Feast Day ~ 13 September) The holy saints of God surround us with their prayers, with the examples of their earthly lives (and sometimes courageous deaths), with wise writings of benefit to their own time and to later generations. We do well to learn of these saints, these victorious warriors in the struggle for salvation, […]

(Feast Day ~ September 11) There are hundreds of thousands of people who have lived holy lives known only to their closest friends and family. These saints are not the ones who were heroically martyred or who were famous for excellent preaching or who were great teachers or evangelists. They lived their lives in humble […]

(Feast Day ~ September 7) Political controversy in the Church is not a new thing. Ever since the Apostles and other disciples experienced disagreements about practices in the infant Church, there have been occasions of rivalry, power plays, and intrigue in dioceses and in the Church as a whole. St. Sergius, pope of Rome from […]

(Feast day ~ September 4) We should never forget that saints are being made every day. Devout Christians are living holy lives, providing others with examples of Christian love and sacrifice. Often, it is one important decision in one moment that causes a person to rise to such sanctity, and it is only in retrospect […]

(Feast Day ~ September 2) It is difficult for Americans today (particularly those of us who live in the nation’s capital) to imagine the rule of a godly monarch. But history gives us numerous examples of those who – remembering St. Paul’s explanation that “there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that […]