#saintportrait

Happy Feast Day

Saint Anthony the Abbot (St. Anthony the Great)

251-356

Feast Day: January 17

Patronage: bakers, farmers, farm animals, cemetery workers, basket weavers, monks, butchers, protection against skin rashes and diseases, epilepsy, amputees

Saint Anthony the Abbot was the founder of Christian monasticism and it’s first Abbot. Considered a Desert Father, he led a life of severe asceticism and strove for complete solitude. After hearing the Gospel of Matthew 19:21 he gave away all his possessions and lived as a hermit. Through his intercession, he brought about miraculous healings, comforts to the suffering and wise guidance to his followers. He was a friend of St. Paul the Hermit and St. Athanasius wrote his biography.

Happy Feast Day

Saint Hilda of Whitby

614-680

Feast Day: November 17

Patronage: learning, culture, and poetry due to her patronage of Caedmon. The National Cathedral School for girls in Washington D.C.

Saint Hilda was an English princess, who at 33, consecrated her life to God as a nun. St. Bede chronicled her life of virtue and intellectual brilliance. She was the Abbess of a double monastery of monks and nuns that was a religious center that revered Scripture studies in Whitby. The last 7 years of her life she suffered from a high fever that didn’t stop her from doing her work. She died peacefully in 680.

Saint Juliana of Liege

1192 - 1258

Feast Day: April 6

Patron of the feast of Corpus Christi

Saint Juliana of Liege (also known as Juliana of Cornillon) was orphaned when she was 5 years old and placed in a Belgium Norbertine community, eventually receiving the veil of an Augustinian nun and becoming the superioress. As a mystic, she had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the Sacred Passion, care of the sick, and the Blessed Sacrament, strongly promoting a solemn liturgical feast day of Corpus Christi for the Church. In 1264, Pope Urban instituted the solemnity for the universal Church.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Doctor of the Church

1225-1274

Feast Day: January 28  (new), March 7 (Trad)

Patronage: Academics; against storms; against lightning; apologists; booksellers; Catholic academies, schools, and universities; chastity; philosophers; publishers; scholars; students; theologians.

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest. Also honored as a Doctor of the Church, Thomas is considered the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. Pope Benedict XV declared: "This (Dominican) Order ... acquired new luster when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master, and patron of Catholic schools."

Happy Feast Day

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne

1769-1852

Feast Day: November 18

Patronage: perseverance amid adversity, Dioceses of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, MO.

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in France and lived through the French Revolution. In 1804 Rose befriended St. Madeleine Sophie Barat and entered the Society of the Sacred Heart. She dreamed of serving the Native Americans and at age 49 she and four sisters were sent as missionaries to the Louisiana Territory to establish the Society’s presence in America. With Divine grace, courage, an iron will and a lot of faith she started free schools for girls and Native Americans in Missouri and Kansas. The Native Americans called her "Woman Who Prays Always.” St. Rose is the first canonized female saint west of the Mississippi.

Saint Agnes of Rome

291 - 304

Feast Day: January 21

Patronage: Betrothed couples, chastity

St. Agnes was a Roman girl who was only twelve or thirteen years old when she suffered martyrdom for her Faith. Agnes made a promise to God never to stain her purity. When the Prefect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son and she refused, he condemned her to death. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. She is the patron saint of chastity, gardeners, girls, engaged couples, rape victims, and virgins.

Saint Dwynwen

Died 460

Feast Day: January 25

Patronage: lovers, sick animals, Welsh St.Valentine

Daughter of Welsh king Brychan Brycheiniog, Saint Dwynwen fell in reciprocal love with a young man named Maelon, ultimately rejecting him for her deep desire to join the religious life. In a dream, she was given a drink which freed her from Maelon's attention, at the cost of turning him to ice. She then prayed that Maelon would be released, that all lovers find happiness, and that she never have the desire for marriage. Saint Dwynwen became a nun and lived out her days on Llanddwyn Island off the west coast of Anglesey.

Saint Martin of Tours

316 - 397

Feast Day: November 11

Patronage: against poverty, against alcoholism, beggars, equestrians, France

Saint Martin was born of pagan parents in what is now Hungary and raised in Italy. As a conscientious objector, he was forced at the age of 15 to serve in the army. He became a Christian catechumen and was baptized at 18. He was discharged at age 23 and went to be a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers. He was ordained an exorcist, became a monk and later ordained a bishop. He was one of the first saints not to be a martyr.