Chair of Saint Peter

Feast date: Feb 22

The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter celebrates the papacy and St. Peter as the first bishop of Rome. St. Peter’s original name was Simon. He was married with children and was living and working in Capernaum as a fisherman when Jesus called him to be one of the Twelve Apostles.

Jesus bestowed to Peter a special place among the Apostles. He was one of the three who were with Christ on special occasions, such as the Transfiguration of Christ and the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was the only Apostle to whom Christ appeared on the first day after the Resurrection. Peter, in turn, often spoke on behalf of the Apostles.

When Jesus asked the Apostles: “Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?”

Simon replied: “Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

And Jesus said: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood have not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you: That you are Peter [Cephas, a rock], and upon this rock [Cephas] I will build my Church [ekklesian], and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven”. (Mt 16:13-20)

In saying this Jesus made St. Peter the head of the entire community of believers and placed the spiritual guidance of the faithful in St. Peter’s hands.

However, St. Peter was not without faults. He was rash and reproached often by Christ. He had fallen asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane instead of praying, as Jesus had asked him to do. He also denied knowing Jesus three times after Christ’s arrest.

Peter delivered the first public sermon after the Pentecost and won a large number of converts. He also performed many miracles and defended the freedom of the Apostles to preach the Gospels. He preached in Jerusalem, Judaea, and as far north as Syria.

He was arrested in Jerusalem under Herod Agrippa I, but miraculously escaped execution. He left Jerusalem and eventually went to Rome, where he preached during the last portion of his life. He was crucified there, head downwards, as he had desired to suffer, saying that he did not deserve to die as Christ had died.

The date of St. Peter’s death is not clear. Historians estimate he was executed between the years 64 and 68. His remains now rest beneath the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

St. Peter Damian

Feast date: Feb 21

On Feb. 21, Catholics honor Saint Peter Damian, a Benedictine monk who strove to purify the Church during the early years of its second millennium.

In his Sept. 9, 2009 general audience on the saint, Pope Benedict XVI described him as “one of the most significant figures of the 11th century … a lover of solitude and at the same time a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of reform.”

Born during 1007 in the Italian city of Ravenna, Peter belonged to a large family but lost both his father and mother early in life. An older brother took the boy into his household, yet treated him poorly. But another of Peter’s brothers, a priest, took steps to provide for his education; and the priest’s own name, Damian, became his younger brother’s surname.

Peter excelled in school while also taking up forms of asceticism, such as fasting, wearing a hair shirt, and spending long hours in prayer with an emphasis on reciting the Psalms. He offered hospitality to the poor as a means of serving Christ, and eventually resolved to embrace voluntary poverty himself through the Order of Saint Benedict.

The monks he chose to join, in the hermitage of Fonte Avellana, lived out their devotion to the Cross of Christ through a rigorous rule of life. They lived mainly on bread and water, prayed all 150 Psalms daily, and practiced many physical mortifications. Peter embraced this way of life somewhat excessively at first, which led to a bout with insomnia.

Deeply versed in the Bible and the writings of earlier theologians, Peter developed his own theological acumen and became a skilled preacher. The leaders of other monasteries sought his help to build up their monks in holiness, and in 1043 he took up a position of leadership as the prior of Fonte Avellana. Five other hermitages were established under his direction.

Serious corruption plagued the Church during Peter’s lifetime, including the sale of religious offices and immorality among many of the clergy. Through his writings and involvements in controversies of the day, the prior of Fonte Avellana called on members of the hierarchy and religious orders to live out their commitments and strive for holiness.

In 1057, Pope Stephen IX became determined to make Peter Damian a bishop, a goal he accomplished only by demanding the monk’s obedience under threat of excommunication. Consecrated as the Bishop of Ostia in November of that year, he also joined the College of Cardinals and wrote a letter encouraging its members to set an example for the whole Church.

With Pope Stephen’s death in 1058, and the election of his successor Nicholas II, Peter’s involvement in Church controversies grew. He supported Pope Nicholas against a rival claimant to the papacy, and went to Milan as the Pope’s representative when a crisis broke out over canonical and moral issues. There, he was forced to confront rioters who rejected papal authority.

Peter, meanwhile, wished to withdraw from these controversies and return to the contemplative life. But Nicholas’ death in 1061 caused another papal succession crisis, which the cardinal-bishop helped to resolve in favor of Alexander II. That Pope kept the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia occupied with a series of journeys and negotiations for the next six years.

In 1067, Peter Damian was allowed to resign his episcopate and return to the monastery at Fonte Avellana. Two years later, however, Pope Alexander needed his help to prevent the German King Henry IV from divorcing his wife. Peter lived another two years in the monastery before making a pilgrimage to Monte Cassino, the birthplace of the Benedictine order.

In 1072, Peter returned to his own birthplace of Ravenna, to reconcile the local church with the Pope. The monk’s last illness came upon him during his return from this final task, and he died after a week at a Benedictine monastery in Faenza during February of that year.

Never formally canonized, St. Peter Damian was celebrated as a saint after his death in many of the places associated with his life. In 1823, Pope Leo XII named him a Doctor of the Church and extended the observance of his feast day throughout the Western Church.

St. Robert Southwell

Feast date: Feb 21

Saint Robert Southwell, SJ (c. 1561 – February 21 1595,) an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, is one of the 40 martyrs of England & Wales murdered during the English anti-Catholic Reformation.

Robert was born in Norfolk, the youngest of eight children in a well-to-do family with Catholic sympathies in the midts of the anti-Catholic sentiment started by the Anglican reformation.

In 1576, he was sent to France to study with the Jesuits at the English college at Douai. After completing his education, he requested to join the Society of Jesus, but was rejected because he was too young and the Jesuit seminary was temporarily closed because of the growing confrontations between French and Spanish forces.

But in a show of his conviction, in 1578, set off on foot to Rome to make his case for becoming a Jesuit.

After being admitted to the probation house of Sant’ Andrea on 17 October 1578, and after the completion of the novitiate, Southwell began studies in philosophy and theology at the Jesuit College in Rome, and was ordained in 1584.That same year, Queen Elizabeth had passed an edict establishing the death penalty for any British Catholic priest or religious who joined a religious order abroad to remain in England longer than forty days.

Two years later, Southwell requested to be sent back to England as a clandestine Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnet.

Southwell preached and ministered successfully for six years, publishing Catholic catechism and writing spiritual poetry that would make him one of the most important Barroque English poets.

But the Queen’s cheif priest-hunter, Richard Topcliffe, pressured a young Catholic woman he had raped to betray Southwell. Once captured, he was initially jailed in Topcliffe’s personal prison and tortured 13 different times, trying to get him to name Catholic families involved in the clandestine Catholic mission. Fr. Robert did not betray a single name.

Transferred to the infamous Tower of London, Southwell endured cold and solitude for two and a half years, reading the Bible, the works of St. Bernard and praying the Breviary. During that time he also wrote the most important portion of his poetry.

In 1595, Southwell was finally put on trial accused of treason. During the trial, he admitted being a Jesuit to minister to Catholics, but strongly denied ever being involved in “designs or plots against the queen or kingdom.”

After the predictable guilty verdict, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

On 21 February 1595, in Tyburn, the Jesuit was allowed to address the crowd about his mission as a Catholic priest, then pronounced the words of Psalm 30 prayed in Complines: in manus tuas commendabo spiritum meum (Into your hands i commend my spirit) and made the sign of the cross.

After he was hanged and his severed head presented to the crowd, the traditional shout of “traitor” was replaced by utter silence.

Soon after his martyrdom, his body of poetry started to circulate in manuscripts among Catholics, and later in 1595 his “St Peter’s Complaint” and other poems were printed. By 1636, 14 editions had been printed, and other collections of poems, including “Mary Magdalen’s Funeral Tears” and Maeoniae.

Southwell was canonized in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Many critics believe that the poem that expresses the best of his dramatic message to his fellow persecuted Catholics in England is “Life is But Losse,” which he wrote in prison:

By force I live, in will I wish to dye;
In playnte I passe the length of lingring dayes;
Free would my soule from mortall body flye,
And tredd the track of death’s desyred waies:
Life is but losse where death is deemed gaine,
And loathed pleasures breed displeasinge payne.

…..

Come, cruell death, why lingrest thou so longe?
What doth withould thy dynte from fatall stroke?
Nowe prest I am, alas! thou dost me wronge,
To lett me live, more anger to provoke:
Thy right is had when thou hast stopt my breathe,
Why shouldst thoue stay to worke my dooble deathe?

…..

Avaunt, O viper! I thy spite defye:
There is a God that overrules thy force,
Who can thy weapons to His will applie,
And shorten or prolonge our brittle course.
I on His mercy, not thy might, relye;
To Him I live, for Him I hope to die.

Sts. Francisco and Jacinta Marto

Feast date: Feb 20

Francisco, 11, and Jacinta, 10, are the youngest non-martyrs to be canonized in the history of the Church. The brother and sister, who tended to their families’ sheep with their cousin Lucia Santo in the fields of Fatima, Portugal, witnessed the apparitions of Mary, now commonly known as Our Lady of Fatima.

During the first apparition, which took place May 13, 1917, Our Lady asked the three children to say the Rosary and to make sacrifices, offering them for the conversion of sinners. The children did, praying often, giving their lunch to beggars and going without food themselves. They offered up their daily crosses and even refrained from drinking water on hot days.

In October 1918, Francisco and Jacinta became seriously ill with the Spanish flu. Our Lady appeared to them and said she would to take them to heaven soon.

Bed-ridden, Francisco requested his first Communion. The following day, Francisco died, April 14, 1919. Jacinta suffered a long illness as well. She was eventually transferred to a Lisbon hospital and operated for an abscess in her chest, but her health did not improve. She died Feb. 20, 1920.

Pope John Paul II beatified Francisco and Jacinta May 13, 2000, on the 83rd anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima.

Pope Francis on May 13, 2017 officially declared Francisco and Jacinta Marto saints of the Catholic Church in front of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at Fatima, Portugal – teaching us that even young children can become saints.

St. Conrad of Piacenza

Feast date: Feb 19

Conrad was born into a noble family in northern Italy. He married the daughter of a nobleman, Euphrosyne.

One day, while he was hunting, Conrad ordered his attendants to make a fire. The wind carried the flames, which set fire to nearby fields, forests, towns and villages. Upon seeing this, Conrad ran away in fear.

Because he ran, an innocent man was convicted for spreading the fire and was condemned to death as punishment.

Upon hearing of this, Conrad stepped forth to accept the blame, saving the innocent man’s life. He paid for the damaged property and he and his wife gave everything they owned to the poor in recompense.

Conrad then left to join a group of Franciscan hermits, and his wife joined the Poor Clares.

Word eventually spread of Conrad’s holiness, piety and gift of healing.

When many visitors began to destroy his life of silence and solitude, he moved to Sicily where he lived and prayed as a hermit for 36 years.

Legends say that when the Bishop of Syracuse visited him, the bishop asked Conrad if he had any food to offer guests. Conrad went to his cell and returned with newly made cakes, which the bishop accepted as a miracle.

Conrad visited the bishop later to make a general confession to him. As he arrived, Conrad was surrounded by fluttering birds.

Conrad died kneeling before a crucifix.

St. Simon

Feast date: Feb 18

A relative of Jesus’, possibly a first cousin. He is in the Gospel of Matthew, and is one of the brethren of Christ mentioned in Acts who was present at the birth of the Church on the first Pentecost.

Reported to have been at the martyrdom of Saint James the Lesser, he was chosen to succeed James as bishop of Jerusalem. In 66, before the city fell to the Romans, the Christians received a divine warning, and evacuated to nearby Pella, with Simon as their leader.

In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, Simon led the Christians back to the city where they flourished, performed miracles, and converted many.

Simon was eventually arrested, tortured and martyred for the twin crimes of being Jewish and Christian.

His death was that of crucifixion.

St. Flavian

Feast date: Feb 18

On Feb. 18, the Roman Catholic Church remembers Patriarch Saint Flavian of Constantinople, who is honored on the same date by Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine tradition and by Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Known to Eastern Christians as “St. Flavian the Confessor,” the patriarch endured condemnation and severe beatings during a fifth-century dispute about the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. Though he died from his injuries, his stand against heresy was later vindicated at the Church’s fourth ecumenical council in 451.

St. Flavian is closely associated with Pope St. Leo the Great, who also upheld the truth about Christ’s divine and human natures during the controversy. The Pope’s best-known contribution to the fourth council – a letter known as the “Tome of Leo” – was originally addressed to St. Flavian, though it did not reach the patriarch during his lifetime.

Flavian’s date of birth is unknown, as are most of his biographical details. He was highly-regarded as a priest during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II (which lasted from 408 to 450), and he became Archbishop of Constantinople following the death of Patriarch Saint Proclus in approximately 447.

Early in his patriarchate, Flavian angered a state official named Chrysaphius by refusing to offer a bribe to the emperor. The ruler’s wife Eudocia joined the resulting conspiracy which Chrysaphius hatched against Flavian, a plot that would come to fruition in an illegitimate Church council and the patriarch’s death.

As head of the Church in Constantinople, Flavian had inherited a theological controversy about the relationship between deity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. In an occurrence that was not uncommon for the time, the doctrinal issue became entangled with personal and political rivalries. Flavian’s stand for orthodoxy gave his high-ranking court opponents a chance to act against him by encouraging the proponents of doctrinal error and manipulating the emperor in their favor.

The theological issue had arisen after the Council of Ephesus, which in 431 had confirmed the personal unity of Christ and condemned the error (known as Nestorianism) that said he was a composite being made up of a divine person and a human person. But questions persisted: Were Jesus’ eternal divinity, and his assumed humanity, two distinct and complete natures fully united in one person? Or did the person of Christ have only one hybrid nature, made up in some manner of both humanity and divinity?

The Church would eventually confirm that the Lord’s incarnation involved both a divine and a human nature at all times. When God took on a human nature at the incarnation, in the words of Pope St. Leo the Great, “the proper character of both natures was maintained and came together in a single person,” and “each nature kept its proper character without loss.”

During Flavian’s patriarchate, however, the doctrine of Christ’s two natures had not been fully and explicitly defined. Thus, controversy came up regarding the doctrine of a monk named Eutyches, who insisted that Christ had only “one nature.” Flavian understood the “monophysite” doctrine as contrary to faith in Christ’s full humanity, and he condemned it at a local council in November of 448. He excommunicated Eutyches, and sent his decision to Pope Leo, who gave his approval in May 449.

Chrysaphius, who knew Eutyches personally, proceeded to use the monk as his instrument against the patriarch who had angered him. He convinced the emperor that a Church council should be convened to consider Eutyches’ doctrine again. The resulting council, held in August 449 and led by Dioscorus of Alexandria, was completely illegitimate, and later formally condemned. But it pronounced against Flavian and declared him deposed from the patriarchate.

During this same illicit gathering, known to history as the “Robber Council,” a mob of monks beat St. Flavian so aggressively that he died from his injuries three days later. Chrysaphius seemed, for the moment, to have triumphed over the patriarch.

But the state official’s ambitions soon collapsed. Chrysaphius fell out of favor with Theodosius II shortly before the emperor’s death in July 450, and he was executed early in the reign of his successor Marcian.

St. Flavian, meanwhile, was canonized by the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451. Its participants gave strong acclamation to the “Tome of Leo” – in which the Pope confirmed St. Flavian’s condemnation of Eutyches and affirmed the truth about Christ’s two natures, both divine and human.

Seven Founders of the Order of Servites

Feast date: Feb 17

These seven men were born in Florence, Italy and led lives as hermits on Monte Senario. They had a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

On Friday, April 13, 1240, the hermits received a vision of Our Lady. She held in her hand a black habit, and a nearby angel bore a scroll reading “Servants of Mary.”

Mary told them:

“You will found a new order, and you will be my witnesses throughout the world. This is your name: Servants of Mary. This is your rule: that of Saint Augustine. And here is your distinctive sign: the black scapular, in memory of my sufferings.

They accepted the wisdom of Our Lady, wrote a Rule based on Saint Augustine and the Dominican Constitutions, adopted the black habit of an Augustinian monk, and lived as mendicant friars. The men founded the Order of Servites which in 1304 received the approval of the Holy See.

They are venerated on Feb. 17 because it is said to be the day on which Saint Alexis Falconieri, one of the seven, died in 1310.

All seven were beatified December 1, 1717 by Pope Clement XI  and canonized in 1887 by Pope Leo XIII.

St. Onesimus

Feast date: Feb 16

St. Onesimus was a slave to Philemon, an influential man who had been converted by St. Paul. Onesimus offended Philemon and fled in order to escape any sort of retribution. He then met St. Paul while Paul was in a Roman prison. Shortly after, Onesimus was baptized.

Paul then sent a letter to Philemon asking for Onesimus’ freedom, so Onesimus could become one of his own assistants. This letter is the Epistle to Philemon and entreats Philemon to accept Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me.”

Philemon pardoned Onesimus and he returned to faithfully serve St. Paul. We know that St. Paul made him, with Tychicus, the bearer of his Epistle to the Colossians. (Col. 4:7-9)

Later, as St. Jerome and other fathers testify, he became an ardent preacher of the Gospel and succeeded St. Timothy as bishop of Ephesus.

He was cruelly tortured in Rome, for 18 days, by a governor who was infuriated by his preaching on the merit of celibacy. Onesimus’ legs and thighs were broken with bludgeons before he was stoned to death.

His martyrdom occurred under Domitian in the year 90.

St. Claude de la Colombière

Feast date: Feb 15

On Feb. 15 the Catholic Church honors Saint Claude de la Colombiere, the 17th century French Jesuit who authenticated and wrote about Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque’s visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

When he canonized St. Claude in 1992, Blessed John Paul II upheld him as a model Jesuit, recalling how the saint “gave himself completely to the Sacred Heart, ‘ever burning with love.’ Even in trials he practiced forgetfulness of self in order to attain purity of love and to raise the world to God.”

Born in the south of France during 1641, Claude de la Colombiere belonged to a family of seven children, four of whom entered the priesthood or religious life. He attended a Jesuit school in his youth, and entered the order himself at age 17.

As a young Jesuit recruit, Claude admitted to having a “horrible aversion” to the rigorous training required by the order in his day. But the novitiate of the Society of Jesus focused and sharpened his natural talents, and he would later take a private vow to obey the order’s rules as perfectly as possible.

After completing his order’s traditional periods of study and teaching, Claude became a priest in 1669. Known as a gifted preacher, he also taught at the college level and served as a tutor to the children of King Louis XIV’s minister of finance.

In 1674, the priest became the superior of a Jesuit house in the town of Paray-le-Monial. It was during this time, in his role as confessor to a convent of Visitationist nuns, that Claude de la Colombiere became involved in events that would change his own life and the history of the Western Church.

One of the nuns, later canonized as St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, claimed to have experienced private revelations from Christ urging devotion to his heart as the symbol and seat of God’s love for mankind. Within the convent, however, these reports met with dismissal and contempt.

During his time in Paray-le-Monial, Father la Colombiere became the nun’s spiritual director, giving careful consideration to her testimony about the purported revelations. He concluded that Sister Margaret Mary had indeed encountered Jesus in an extraordinary way.

Claude la Colombiere’s writings and his testimony to the reality of St. Margaret Mary’s experiences helped to establish the Sacred Heart as a feature of Western Catholic devotion. This, in turn, helped to combat the heresy of Jansenism, which claimed that God did not desire the salvation of some people.

In the fall of 1676, Father la Colombiere, was called away from Paray-le-Monial to England. During a time of tension in the religiously torn country, he ministered as chaplain and preacher to Mary of Modena, a Catholic who had become the Duchess of York.

In 1678, a false rumor spread about an alleged Catholic “plot” against the English monarchy. The lie led to the execution of 35 innocent people, including eight Jesuits. La Colombiere was not put to death, but was accused, arrested, and locked in a dungeon for several weeks.

The French Jesuit held up heroically during the ordeal, but conditions in the prison ruined his health before his expulsion from England. He went back to France in 1679 and resumed his work as a teacher and priest, encouraging love for Christ’s Sacred Heart among the faithful.

In 1681, Claude de la Colombiere returned to Paray-le-Monial, the site of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s revelations. It was there, during 1682, that the 41-year-old priest died from internal bleeding on the year’s first Sunday of Lent, Feb. 15.

St. Claude de la Colombiere was beatified in 1929 – nine years after the canonization of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque – and canonized 63 years later.