Saint Catherine cut her hair and put aside her elegant clothing as an act of modesty, to shun the worldly attention of potential suitors and devote her life to Christ.
Tag: Dominican saints and blesseds
Saint Catherine of Siena
Saint Catherine of Siena writes:
I want your security to be in Christ gentle Jesus. He has clothed us in the sturdiest garment there is, a garment of love….The very first garment we ever had was love, for it was only by love that we were created in God’s image and likeness.
(Letter 185-86)
When I think of Saint Dominic I immediately think of Saint Catherine of Siena. She is an attractive and inviting personality, unique among many of the church’s holy ones.
When in Rome you ought to visit her tomb at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Among the Dominicans, Catherine was a Dominican Tertiary (a lay person who had permission to wear a distinctive garb).
In 1970, the Servant of God Pope Paul VI honored her with the title “Doctor of the Church,” one of 4 women with the same title. With St Francis of Assisi, Catherine is a patron saint of Italy. Catherine is credited as one of the people to have ended the Western Schism.
A brief video gives a good intro….
Rose Hawthorne’s cause for sainthood advances
The process of becoming a saint, if you are not a John Paul II or a Mother Terese can take some time. When I heard the news of the completion of US side of Rose Hawthorne’s cause for canonization was made, the other day from a Dominican priest friend, a “praise God” rang out! The last significant ecclesial judgement made on the sanctity of Rose Hawthorne was in 2003 when she was declared to be a Servant of God.
Servant of God Rose Hawthorne (1851-1926), was founder of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, led unusual life as a wife, mother, and convert. Rose was born in Lenox, MA, and died in Hawthorne, NY. In religion she is known as Mother Mary Alphonsa, OP. Rose worked to comfort the poor dying of cancer. The diocesan phase for cause of canonization was opened by Cardinal Edward Michael Egan. Rose Hawthorne was declared Servant of God on February 4, 2003. Father Gabriel B. O’Donnell, OP, is the postulator. On 9 April, the necessary documentation signed by the archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan. On 20 April 2013 Father O’Donnell will be delivering this phase concerning Rose’ heroic virtue and the writing of the historical report to Rome’s Congregation of Saints. For more info: www.hawthorne-dominicans.org
The Catholic New York reports the story.
Hawthorne is one 10 people with connections in the State of New York who are being considered for sainthood.
A patron saint for Catholic reverts: Blessed Anthony Neyrot
Leave it to a Capuchin friar to pick up the obvious: we need a patron saint for reverts. To my knowledge, there are no heavenly patrons except for Blessed Anthony Neyrot, who gave up the faith, and came back home. Perhaps now Blessed Anthony’s currency will increase. Special thanks to my friend and fellow Elm City-ite, Friar Charles, who wrote the following post on his blog, A Minor Friar, earlier today:
Today is the feast of Blessed Anthony Neyrot, OP. I think he could make a fine heavenly patron for ‘reverts’ to the faith.
Here’s his entry in the Martyrology today:
At Tunis on the coast of northern Africa, blessed Anthony Neyrot, priest of the Order of Preachers and martyr, who, taken by pirates to Africa, apostatized, but, helped by divine grace, publicly took up again the religious habit on Holy Thursday, which atoned for his crime by covering it with stones.
Some other things I read on the internet said that during his apostasy he had become a fairly devout Muslim and had even made a socially advantageous marriage. Holy Week 1460, however, found him inspired to repent of his apostasy. Having made his confession he was re-invested in the Dominican habit and then, on Holy Thursday, was stoned to death for his re-version to the faith.
Here is the Mass prayer for Blessed Anthony I posted in 2010.
Blessed Anthony, pray for us!
Saint Raymond Penyafort
O God, who
adorned the Priest Saint Raymond with the virtue of outstanding mercy and
compassion for sinners and for captives, grant us, through his intercession,
that, released from slavery to sin, we may carry out in freedom of spirit what
is pleasing to you.
The wags will say that Saint Raymond is the only certified canon lawyer who is in heaven and that we ought to pray that Saint Raymond to guide other canonists to holiness.
From a letter by Saint Raymond Penyafort
The preacher of
God’s truth has told us that all who want to live righteously in Christ will
suffer persecution. If he spoke the truth and did not lie, the only exception
to this general statement is, I think, the person who either neglects, or does
not know how, to live temperately, justly and righteously in this world.
Translation of the Relics of Saint Dominic
O Light of the Church, teacher of truth, rose of patience, ivory of chastity; you freely pour forth the waters of wisdom, preacher of grace, unite us with the blessed.
(Magnificat antiphon for Vespers; O Lumen)
In Churches administered by the Order of Friars Preachers (the Dominicans) the faithful would have heard the Mass prayers not for Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter but for the Translation of the Relics of Saint Dominic. That is, the observance of a secondary feast of Saint Dominic.
What is celebrated is not the mere moving of a coffin from one place to another but the recognition by the Church that the person in question has the “odor of sanctity.” That is, he or she is infallibly with the Blessed Trinity. The Dominican friars did in fact, move the body of their holy father from a humble place of burial to a more noble one, but this feast really marks an ecclesial event recognizing the sign that Dominic was holy man.
It ought to be noted, however, Dominic was buried as he wished, “under the feet of his brothers. in the Church of Saint Nicholas de Vineis. Known among the faithful to be a blessed man who loved everyone and was in turn loved by all, Dominic asked the Lord to heal people of their infirmities. Miracles happened and were acknowledged by many except for the Dominicans; they in fact destroyed the offerings left as gifts of thanksgiving at the grave of Father Dominic. Pope Gregory IX, on 24 May 1233, sanctioned the moving of the body that happened in the presence of the archbishop of Ravenna, Theodoric and the second Master of the Order Blessed Jordan of Saxony to a new marble tomb during the Dominican’s General Chapter held in Bologna. This gesture inaugurated the process of canonizing Dominic which happened on 3 July 1234 by Gregory IX.
God so desires her (our) salvation
In these days following the feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, I thought I would post this rather beautiful extract from one of the saint’s Dialogues. It shows the depth of love that Catherine knew she had with her Savior, her lover.
“O eternal, infinite Good! O mad lover! And you have need of your creature? It seems so to me, for you act as if you could not live without her, in spite of the fact that you are Life itself, and everything has life from you and nothing can have life without you. Why then are you so mad? Because you have fallen in love with what you have made! You are pleased and delighted over her within yourself, as if you were drunk with desire for her salvation. She runs away from you and you go looking for her. She strays and you draw closer to her. You clothed yourself in our humanity, and nearer than that you could not have come.”
Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, tr. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press 1980) 325.
Saint Catherine of Siena
Today is the transferred feast of the great Dominican saint, Catherine of Siena.
Since her feast day is April 29th, and this year the 29th was Good Shepherd Sunday, and the Sunday celebration is rarely trumped by a saint, the feast moved to the next available day.
Being that I work at a Dominican church, we celebrated Catherine’s gift to the Church with great solemnity. Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Sister Elaine Goodell, PBVM were honored with the “Saint Catherine of Siena Award” and Brother Ignatius Perkins, OP was inaugurated with the new chair of Catholic Ethics at the Dominican House of Studies. Brother Ignatius is currently a professor of Nursing at Aquinas College, Nashville.
Here for the celebration were the Dominican Friars, a secular priest, a Jesuit priest, with several congregation of sisters including the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, the Hawthorne Dominicans, the Dominicans of Nashville, the Sparkhill Dominicans, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Sisters of Life.
“Set the world ablaze”
Blessed John of Fiesole –Fra Angelico
Too many in the world know today’s Dominican blessed for a nickname given to him more than his religious name. The Dominicans celebrate Blessed John of Fiesole, the post modern world would know him as Fra Angelico (1387-1455), people in his time also knew him as Guido. His talent and grace was indeed rare among people. Only in 1982 did the Church with Pope John Paul II recognize John’s holiness.
A prior post gives a very brief history and the liturgical prayer for Blessed John’s feast day here and a 2009 post is here.
Recently, a Dominican friar of the English Province spoke to Vatican Radio saying this of his friar:
“…is to give to others the fruit of our contemplation and painting…first to be communicated and then to be precisely the fruit of contemplation…. because vision is one of the elements of contemplation…traditionally for us heaven will mean the beatific vision…”
Blessed John, Fra Angelico as he’s known, was the angelic friar: “… because of the purity, the holiness of his own life…the subject matter…the extraordinary beauty, purity reflected…”
Father Robert Ombres, OP
Raymond of Penyafort Fellow in Canon Law at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford
Blessed Jordan of Saxony
In the Order of Friars Preachers today is the feast of day of Blessed Jordan of Saxony. Blessed Jordan, from Paderborn, Germany (a Saxon noble) known for his piety and charity, was educated at the famed University of Paris. In 1220, he was admitted to the Order by Saint Dominic himself in and a year later was the Prior Provincial for the friars in Lombardy, and a year later he succeeded Dominic as the Master of the Order.
Blessed Jordan’s preaching was known to be powerful to the point of bringing Saint Albert the Great to the Order and by extension you might say that he brought Thomas Aquinas to the fraternity. Jordan died in a shipwreck off the coast of Syria in 1237 on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Leo XII beatified Jordan in 1825.
The Collect is noted here.
