St. Mother Théodore Guérin Feast date: Oct 03 St. Théodore Guérin, SP, was born Anne-Therese Guerin at Etables, Brittany in France on October 2, 1798. As she was growing up, the French government was virulently anti-clerical, closing down seminaries and churches and arresting priests and religious.  Her cousin was a seminarian who lived in hiding in her parents’ devout Catholic home. He instructed her thoroughly in the faith and she displayed an advanced knowledge of theology, even at a young age.Anne-Thérèse entered the Sisters of Providence at 26 and devoted herself to religious education. Her intellectual capacities were formidable, and she was even recognized by the French Academy for her acheivements.In 1840 Mother Théodore Guérin was sent to Indiana, in the USA to found a convent of the Sisters of Providence in the diocese of Vincennes.  There she pioneered Catholic education, opened the first girls’ boarding school in Indiana, and fought against the anti-Catholicism prevalent in the day.She was well known for her heroic witness to faith, her hope, and her love of God. The fledgling years of the convent of Our Lady of the Woods were difficult, with the ever present danger of it being burned down by anti- Catholics. The persecution also came from within the Church, from her own bishop, who, on not being allowed to tamper with the order’s rule, excommunicated her.  The excommunication was eventually lifted by his successor.James Cardinal Gibbons said of her in 1904, that she was “a woman of uncommon valour, one of those religious athletes whose life and teachings effect a spiritual fecundity that secures vast conquests to Christ and His holy Church.”She died on May 14, 1856 after a period of sickness, and her feast day is celebrated on October 3.She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 25, 1998, and canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic church on October 15, 2006, by Pope Benedict XVI.

Our Lady of Sorrows Feast date: Sep 15 The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows commemorates the seven great sorrows which Mary lived in relation to Her Son, as they are recorded in the Gospels or through Tradition. Today we are invited to reflect on Mary's deep suffering:1. At the prophecy of Simeon: "You yourself shall be pierced with a sword - so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." (Luke 2:35).2. At the flight into Egypt; "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt." (Mt 2:13).3. Having lost the Holy Child at Jerusalem; "You see that your father and I have been searching for you in sorrow." (Luke 2:48).4. Meeting Jesus on his way to Calvary; 5. Standing at the foot of the Cross; "Near the cross of Jesus there stood His mother." (John 19:25).6. Jesus being taken from the Cross; 7. At the burial of Christ.Prior to the Second Vatican Council, there were two feasts devoted to the sorrows of Mary. The first feast was insitituted in Cologne in 1413 as an expiation for the sins of the iconoclast Hussites.  The second is attributed to the Servite order whose principal devotion are the Seven Sorrows.  It was institued in 1668, though the devotion had been in existence since 1239 - five years after the founding of the order.

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross Feast date: Sep 14 The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates two historical events: the discovery of the True Cross by Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, in 320 under the temple of Venus in Jerusalem, and the dedication in 335 of the basilica and shrine built on Calvary by Constantine, which mark the site of the Crucifixion. The basilica, named the Martyrium, and the shrine, named the Calvarium, were destroyed by the Persians in 614. The Church of the Holy sepulcher which now stands on the site was built by the crusaders in 1149. However the feast, more than anything else, is a celebration and commemoration of God's greatest work: his salvific death on the Cross and His Resurrection, through which death was defeated and the doors to Heaven opened. The entrance antiphon for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is: "We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection: through him we are saved and made free."

St. John Chrysostom Feast date: Sep 13 “If the Lord should give you power to raise the dead, He would give much less than He does when he bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and a sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves, understands what I say.” -St. John ChrysostomBorn in Antioch, c. 347, Saint John Chrysostom (Golden-mouthed) was perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of the Church, thus the name given him, and the most prominent Greek father of the Church.He grew up in Antioch, received an excellent classical Greek education, and upon meeting the holy bishop Meletus, he decided to devote his time to the study of religious works and the Sacred Scriptures. He received Baptism after three years of study and set out for the desert to live the ascetic life of a hermit.His extreme mortifications left him in fragile health, and he thus returned to Antioch after two years of recovery, and devoted himself to studying for the priesthood. He was ordained in 386 and served in the Cathedral of Antioch for 12 years, winning widespread fame for his sublime preaching.In 398 he was forcefully appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, and fast became very popular with his flock through his example of preaching and courage in front of the imperial power, whose corruption and decadence he never shirked from criticizing in public.This attitude naturally made an enemy of the empress, Eudoxia as well as Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, who had him condemned on false charges in 403. He was exiled to Armenia where he continued to be a great presence in the Church of the East through his many letters. He was exiled from Armenia to an isolated place along the Black Sea. He died during the journey in 407 in Pontus, his ill health unable to endure its rigors. In 438 the Emperor Theodosius II of Constantinople had John’s body returned to Constantinople, and did penance for the sins of his mother Eudoxia.Chrysostom's many writings, especially homilies and commentaries on the Gospels, are still extant and have exerted great influence over the centuries.“When you are before the altar where Christ reposes, you ought no longer to think that you are amongst men; but believe that there are troops of angels and archangels standing by you, and trembling with respect before the sovereign Master of Heaven and earth. Therefore, when you are in church, be there in silence, fear, and veneration.” - St. John Chrysostom

Blessed Apollinaris Franco Feast date: Sep 12 Blessed Apollinaris was born in Old Castile, Spain where he joined the Franciscan order.  He was sent to Japan to head the Japanese Franciscan mission in 1614, the year that the new Japanese shogun had instituted a nationwide ban on Christianity and declared being a Christian a capital offense.Friar Apollinaris Franco evangelized covertly until he was arrested in 1617 and thrown into prison in Nagasaki along with other priests and laymen, for five years to await his execution. The conditions in the prison were exceedingly harsh in an attempt to force the prisoners to reject the faith.Apollinaris ministered to the other prisoners and converted some of the jailers through his example and teaching. On September 12, 1622, he was burned at the stake along with other Franciscans and Jesuits.

Feast date: Sep 11 On Sept. 11, the Catholic Church honors Saint Paphnutius, an Egyptian monk who became a bishop, endured torture for the faith, and participated at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea in its confirmation of Christ's divinity. While there is no record of Paphnutius' early life, it is known that he – like many other men of his day – became a disciple of the monk Saint Anthony of the Desert, whose direction of a community of fellow hermits marked the beginning of traditional Christian monasticism. Having spent several years pursuing spiritual illumination in the austerity of the desert under Anthony's direction, Paphnutius was eventually chosen to become a bishop for the Upper Thebaid region. This placed him in direct conflict with Maximinus Daia, the Roman imperial ruler of Egypt and Syria from 305 to 313, who persecuted the Church in these regions and attempted to undermine it by strengthening the institutions of paganism. Under Maximinus Daia's rule, Paphnutius had his left leg partly mutilated and his right eye put out, in an unsuccessful effort to make him renounce the Catholic faith. Not yielding before torture, he was condemned to manual labor in the mines. Imperial policy toward Christians shifted between 311 and 313, in the midst of a power struggle between the various co-emperors of the time. The Emperor Constantine began to embrace the faith in 312, and he proclaimed its legality the following year, during which Maximinus Daia also died. Since he survived the ordeal of persecution, Paphnutius was regarded with reverence by the first Christian leader of the Roman Empire. Constantine is said to have met frequently with the bishop from the Upper Thebaid, showing his respect by kissing the wound left by the loss of his eye. The Egyptian bishop is also reputed to have played a role at the First Ecumenical Council, which condemned Arianism and promulgated the Nicene Creed. While celibate himself, Paphnutius successfully resisted an effort by some council participants to change the Eastern Churches' traditions regarding married members of the clergy. During the years of doctrinal confusion that followed the Council of Nicea, Paphnutius stood in defense of Christian orthodoxy alongside Saint Athanasius of Alexandria and other Church leaders who upheld the doctrine of Jesus' eternal preexistence as God. In 335 Paphnutius joined a large group of Egyptian bishops in attending the regional Council of Tyre, where they found the majority of bishops adhering to the Arian heresy. Paphnutius was especially distressed to see his fellow bishop Maximus of Jerusalem mingling with the Arian clergy, since Maximus, like himself, had once suffered torture rather than compromise his faith. The Egyptian bishop took his fellow confessor aside, and personally persuaded him to back St. Athanasius in the struggle against Arianism. The year of St. Paphnutius' death, like that of his birth, is unknown. He should not be confused with another prominent Egyptian monk of the same name (who appears in the “Conferences” of Saint John Cassian), nor is he the same

St. Nicholas of Tolentino Feast date: Sep 10 Born in 1246 in Sant' Angelo, Italy, Nicholas became an Augustinian friar at the age of 18 after hearing an Augustinian hermit preach. He was ordained seven years later and quickly gained a reputation as a great preacher and confessor.He practiced severe mortifications and fasted strictly. He was known for obtaining healings for many of the sick who lived in Tolentino, where he spent the last 30 years of his life. St. Nicholas' bread, a roll of dough with a cross in the center, has its origin in the bread he used to give to the sick to eat after he had prayed for the Virgin Mary's healing intercession.St. Nicholas died September 10, 1306 and was canonized by Pope Eugene IV in 1446.

St. Peter Claver Feast date: Sep 09 On Sept. 9, the Catholic Church celebrates St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary who spent his life in the service of African slaves brought against their will to South America during the 17th century.Peter Claver was born into a farming family in the Spanish region of Catalonia during 1581. He studied at the University of Barcelona as a young man, and joined the Jesuits as a novice at the age of 20. While studying philosophy in Tarragona, Peter developed a friendship with an older Jesuit lay brother, Alphonsus Rodriguez. Although Alphonsus spent his days doing menial work as a door-keeper, he had immense insight into spiritual matters and encouraged Peter to become a missionary in the Spanish colonies. Pope Leo XIII would later canonize both men on the same day, almost two centuries later. In 1610, Peter Claver – now a priest – arrived in Cartagena, a port city in present-day Colombia. Despite Pope Paul III's repeated condemnations of slavery during the previous century, European colonists continued importing African slaves, often sold by their own rulers, to work on plantations and in mines. Those who survived the ship journey could expect to be worked to death by their masters.Peter was determined to sacrifice his own freedom to bring material aid and eternal salvation to the African slaves, in keeping with his vow to become “the slave of the blacks forever.” The young priest made and kept this resolution despite his own health problems (aggravated by Cartagena's tropical climate) and the language barrier between himself and the population he served.Many Spanish Royal officials in Cartagena appreciated Claver's work, and made contributions toward the slaves' relief and religious education. The slave traders, on the other hand, found the priest and his interpreters to be a nuisance. Meanwhile, some Spanish expatriates who sought out the priest because of his holy reputation, refused to enter the same church or confessional as the black slaves. In order to minister to speakers of a foreign language, Claver often employed pictorial representations of Catholic truths. He also communicated by means of generosity and expressions of love, giving food and drink to the ailing workers and visiting them during bouts of sickness that often proved fatal. “We must speak to them with our hands,” he reasoned, “before we try to speak to them with our lips.”In keeping with his vow of “slavery,” Peter survived on minimal amounts of food and sleep. His life of humility and penance led to miraculous occurrences – as when he healed the sick with the touch of his cloak, or appeared surrounded by a supernatural light during his hospital visits. St. Peter Claver's work came to an end with his death on September 8, 1654. He had baptized and taught the faith to more than 300,000 slaves during his four decades in Cartagena. During the Vatican's Synod for Africa in 2009, Cartagena's Archbishop Jorge Enrique Jiménez Carvajal lamented the fact that his city had been the

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Feast date: Sep 08 The Catholic Church celebrates today the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anne.The circumstances of the Virgin Mary's infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church. These accounts, although not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, outline some of the Church's traditional beliefs about the birth of Mary.The “Protoevangelium of James,” which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary's father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anne, by their childlessness. “He called to mind Abraham,” the early Christian writing says, “that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac.” Joachim and Anne began to devote themselves extensively and rigorously to prayer and fasting, initially wondering whether their inability to conceive a child might signify God's displeasure with them. As it turned out, however, the couple were to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah, as an angel revealed to Anne when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth, and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.” After Mary's birth, according to the Protoevangelium of James, Anne “made a sanctuary” in the infant girl's room, and “allowed nothing common or unclean” on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when she was one year old, her father “made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel.”“And Joachim brought the child to the priests,” the account continues, “and they blessed her, saying: 'O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations' . . . And he brought her to the chief priests, and they blessed her, saying: 'O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be for ever.'”The protoevangelium goes on to describe how Mary's parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated Virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic and historic significance, and an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.

St. Cloud Feast date: Sep 07 On Sept. 7, the Catholic Church honors the memory of Saint Clodoald, popularly known as Saint Cloud, who escaped from violent political intrigue to pursue holiness as a monk and priest. Born in 522, Clodoald was the grandson of the Frankish King Clovis I, whose conversion to orthodox Christianity – rather than the Arian heresy – made him the first Catholic ruler of present-day France. After Clodoald's father Clodomir was killed in 524, he and his brothers Theudovald and Gunthar were raised by their grandmother Queen Clothilde, whom the Church now honors as St. Clothilde. Clovis' kingdom had been divided equally among his four sons following his death in 511. In an effort to secure Clodomir's share of the territory after his death, two of Clodoald's uncles plotted to kill the three boys who were under the protection of the queen. While the uncles managed to kill Gunthar and Theudovald, Clodoald fled and was taken in by the archbishop Saint Remigius of Rheims, Forced into seclusion by the plot against him, the young man became determined to renounce the power and wealth that had brought grief to his family. Placing himself in God's service, Clodoald lived in a small monastic cell where he pursued a life of asceticism and contemplative prayer. He gave his inheritance to the poor, and eventually became a disciple of the hermit St. Severinus near Paris. No longer pursued by his uncles, Clodoald appeared before the bishop of Paris in 542. He formally received the monastic habit from the bishop, who cut off the long hair that had signified his Frankish royal origins. Clodoald eventually left Paris to live as a hermit in the forest for several years, growing closer to God in his contemplative vocation and studying Sacred Scripture extensively. During these years, pilgrims began making their way to the hermitage, seeking his prayers which were known to work miracles. Though he had left Paris to live in anonymity and solitude, the hermit now sensed a need to return to the city, where he was ordained a priest in 551. His two murderous uncles are said to have repented of their deeds during the time of his ministry. In 554 Clodoald returned to the monastic life, founding and leading a community of monks in the village of Nogent near Paris. There, he was known for his generosity toward the poor, and his attention to the work of religious instruction among the people. He died on Sept. 7, 560, at the age of 38. Under the name of “St. Cloud,” Clodoald became the namesake of several cities and towns. These include the Parisian suburb of Saint-Cloud, and later St. Cloud, Minnesota, whose Catholic diocese has been placed under his patronage.