Saint Ignatius Of Loyola - 31 July

Quoted from Christianity.com [1]:

Top 10 Events in the Life of Ignatius

1. Ignatius was born in 1491 in a castle at Loyola in the Basque region of Spain. The youngest of 13 children, his mother died when he was very young, and his eldest brother, Juan Perez, died fighting in the “Italian Wars.”

2. In 1508, Ignatius became a page for a relative, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, treasurer of the kingdom of Castile.

3. In 1517, he became a knight for Antonio Manrique de Lara, Duke of Nájera and Viceroy of Navarre.

4. In 1521, Ignatius suffered a broken leg from a cannonball in Pamplona and began an extended time of treatment and recovery.

5. In 1522, Ignatius was well enough to leave his family and make a holy pilgrimage to Montserrat, where he confessed his sins and left his weapons with the statue of the Virgin Mary. In an extreme version of asceticism, he then chose to live as a homeless beggar for a time.

6. While living in a cave in Manresa, Ignatius had many visions and wrote his first work, The Spiritual Exercises. This is a series of prayers, meditations, and practices aimed at stretching and conditioning the soul. Ignatius compares the spiritual life to that of an athlete and promotes a life of training through spiritual disciplines.

7. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Ignatius returned to Europe, where he studied to improve his education in Barcelona. There he studied Latin and theology. During this time, Ignatius caught the attention of the Spanish Inquisitors as a possible heretic. He was imprisoned and interrogated but was eventually released. He would have other encounters with the Spanish Inquisition.

8. Ignatius furthered his education in Paris, and there, he took the name Ignatius and developed a following of like-minded souls. Eventually, he and his followers would take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.

9. In 1539, Ignatius formed the Society of Jesus with Peter Faber and Francis Xavier. In 1540, they gained the approval of the Pope. Eventually, there would be Jesuits in major cities across Europe, living according to the order’s vows and serving the dying through hospice care, advocating for the poor, caring for orphans, and opening schools.

10. Ignatius of Loyola died in Rome on July 31, 1556, at 64 years old, likely dying from malaria. He was beatified in 1609 by Pope Paul V, canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, and declared patron of all spiritual retreats by Pope Pius XI in 1922. His annual feast day is July 31.

[1] https://www.christianity.com/wiki/people/what-you-should-know-ignatius-of-loyola.html, quoted without hyperlinks, bold type and large fonts, italics original.

Saint James The Greater Feast Day - 25 July

Quoted from Christianity.com [1]:

Saint James the Greater was one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and the brother of St. John the Evangelist (Mark 1:19-20). James and John, along with the Apostle Peter, were part of Jesus’ “inner circle,” witnessing key events that the other apostles did not witness (Mark 5:35-43; Matthew 17:1-8, 26:36-46).

After James was martyred, legend places his remains in Spain, where they are supposedly enshrined in a cathedral known as the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

Since the Middle Ages, people have walked from certain starting points across Europe to his tomb along pilgrimage routes that have become known as the Way of St. James.

Who was St. James the Greater?

James the Greater was the son of Zebedee and Salome and the brother of John the Evangelist. Scripture recounts that after calling Simon Peter and Andrew to be his first disciples, Jesus then called James and his brother John to follow Him (Mark 1:16-20). Upon being summoned by Jesus, the brothers immediately left everything behind to follow Christ (Mark 1:20).

James and John were believed to have fiery tempers. In fact, Jesus nicknamed them the “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17) perhaps because of the zealous temperament the brothers showed in wanting to destroy a Samaritan village that had refused to show Jesus hospitality (Luke 9:51-56); or because of their brazen request to be seated on the right and left of Jesus in heaven (Mark 10:35-40).

The Apostle James the Greater is not to be confused with the other Apostle James, referred to as James the Lesser. To distinguish between the two, it’s believed that James the Greater was given his title simply because he was either taller or older than James the Lesser.

Some believe that James the Greater was Jesus’ cousin, noting that there is evidence in Scripture of their mothers being sisters (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-42; John 19:25). Whether Jesus and James were related or not, James —along with his brother John and the Apostle Peter—were Jesus’ three most trusted disciples. As part of Jesus’ “inner circle,” these three apostles were allowed to know His identity and power more extensively than the other disciples.

In particular, Jesus gave James the Greater, John, and Peter the privilege of witnessing three key moments in His ministry:

The raising of Jairus’ recently deceased daughter (Mark 5:35-43),

The transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-8), and

Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46).

The Death of James the Greater and the Legend of His Remains

James the Greater was the first apostle to be martyred and the only apostle aside from Judas Iscariot whose death is recorded in the Bible (Acts 12:1-2). Scholars believe that King Herod Agrippa ordered the beheading of James in 44 A.D. in Jerusalem.

The Bible is silent as to the resting place of James’ remains. However, a medieval legend holds that James the Greater had preached in Spain during his lifetime and that, after his death, his remains were transported to Spain for burial. In the ninth century, the tomb of St. James (known as Santiago in Spanish) was believed to have been rediscovered in Spain. Those remains were later enshrined in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (northwestern), Spain, where they remain today.

[1] https://www.christianity.com/wiki/people/who-was-st-james-the-greater-what-is-the-way-of-st-james.html, quoted without hyperlinks, bold type and large fonts.

Saint Mary Magdalen Penitent - 22 July

Quoted from Catholicism.org [1]:

In order to know what great love is, one should study the beautiful penitent, who washed the feet of Jesus with the water of her tears, and dried them with the towel of her hair.

Saint Mary Magdalen’s audacity, her courage, her eagerness, gave Christian love a true impetus in all the saints that followed her. She was an outstanding girl, the love-flamings of whose heart, the love-anguishings of whose soul, consoled Our Lord when He needed comfort most ­ when His feet were pierced by nails, His head by thorns, and His heart by man’s ingratitude.

God would gladly make the world for the love one girl can give. Our Blessed Lady is God’s perfect maiden. But next to Our Lady, Saint Mary Magdalen is the girl in the life of Our Lord whom He most loved. She was His overwhelming favorite, because her love was the kind that never counts the costs. Her bright eyes were always full of tears ­ for Jesus alive and sitting at a feast, for Jesus dead and laid in a tomb.

How Saint Mary Magdalen first met Jesus, we are told in the Gospel of Saint Luke. Saint Mary Magdalen learned that Jesus was dining, one night, at the house of Simon, a Pharisee, and without waiting for an invitation or an introduction of any kind, she burst through the guests to get to Him. Her only thought was to show Jesus how thorough her love had made her sorrow and her repentance, for Mary Magdalen, the daughter of a rich and noble family, was reputed a great sinner.

Never once did she think of the reproaches and rebukes which the Jews would heap upon her, in the house of a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed that all sinners remained sinners; they believed that all except themselves were sinners. Unmindful of their scorn, Saint Mary Magdalen knelt behind Our Lord while He was seated in this house full of bearded misogynists, and washed His feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. And, kissing His feet, she anointed them with precious ointment.

Tears and kisses, the highest priced oils that money could buy, and hair which was her crown ­ these were her substitutes for words. And they were a thousand times more eloquent.

When Simon, the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to dinner, complained within himself saying: “This man, if He were a prophet, would surely know who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him, that she is a sinner,” Our Lord quickly defended Saint Mary Magdalen.

“Simon,” He said, “I have something to say to thee. . . . I entered into thy house, thou gavest Me no water for My feet, but she with tears hath washed My feet, and with her hair hast wiped them. Thou gavest Me no kiss; but she, since she came in, hath not ceased to kiss My feet.”

And then Our Lord uttered His glorious tribute: “Wherefore I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much.” And turning, Jesus said to Saint Mary Magdalen, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.”

[1] https://catholicism.org/mary-magdalen.html

Saint Vincent de Paul Confessor - 19 July

Quoted from Britannica [1]:

St. Vincent de Paul, (born April 24, 1581, Pouy, now Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, France—died September 27, 1660, Paris; canonized 1737; feast day September 27), French saint, founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists, or Vincentians) for preaching missions to the peasantry and for educating and training a pastoral clergy. The patron saint of charitable societies, St. Vincent de Paul is primarily recognized for his charity and compassion for the poor, though he is also known for his reform of the clergy and for his early role in opposing Jansenism.

Educated by the Franciscans at Dax, France, he was ordained in 1600 and graduated from the University of Toulouse in 1604. He was allegedly captured at sea by Barbary pirates and sold as a slave but eventually escaped. He spent a year in Rome to continue his studies and then went to Paris, where he remained permanently. He placed himself under the spiritual guidance of the celebrated cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, who entrusted him with the parish of Clichy.

After founding the Congregation of the Mission in 1625, Vincent de Paul established in and around Paris the Confraternities of Charity—associations of laywomen who visited, fed, and nursed the sick poor. The wealth of these women, many of noble family, aided him in establishing the foundling and other hospitals. With St. Louise de Marillac he cofounded the Daughters of Charity (Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul) in 1633. The association was patterned after the Confraternities of Charity and was the first noncloistered religious institute of women devoted to active charitable works.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, quoted without bold font and hyperlinks.

Commemoration Of Blessed Virgin Of Mount Carmel - 16 July

Quoted from Learn Religions [1]:

According to the traditions of the Carmelite order, on July 16, 1251, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock, a Carmelite. A hermit by nature, Simon Stock had became a Carmelite during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from England. It was upon his return to England that Simon received his vision of the Virgin Mary while in Cambridge, England. During the vision, she revealed to him the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, popularly known as the "Brown Scapular."  The words she spoke were: 

Receive, my beloved son, this scapular of thy Order; it is the special sign of my favor, which I have obtained for thee and for thy children of Mount Carmel. He who dies clothed with this habit shall be preserved from eternal fire. It is the badge of salvation, a shield in time of danger, and a pledge of special peace and protection."

This was a transformative moment for Simon Stock, and in the following years he transformed the Carmelite order from one of hermits to one of mendicant friars and nuns that lived in social service to the poor and sick. He was elected Superior-General of his order in 1254 CE. 

A century and a quarter later, the Carmelite order began to celebrate the day of Simon's vision, July 16, as the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

[1] https://www.learnreligions.com/feast-our-lady-of-mount-carmel-542476, quoted without hyperlink.