1 August
SAINT ALPHONUSU LIGUORI
Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church, c.1696-1787
 

 THE eighteenth century was not a happy one for the Church.  It was an age when rationalism and skepticism were dangerously threatening the faith of men; an age when such brilliant cynics as Voltaire, with his battle cry of "Crush the infamous thing!" (the "infamous thing" being the Catholic Church), were the leaders of intellectual activity.  Europe was pervaded by a poisonous moral atmosphere and Catholics were badly infected with it; some abandoned everything about their faith except the outward practice of its forms, while others were driven into a heartless rigorism fostered by the wide-spread heresy of Jansenism, Saint Alphonsus Liguori lived almost the length of the century and was plagued by all its evils; unlike so many others, however, he fought the corrupting influences and became a saint in doing so, Alphonsus was born in 1696, in the town of Marianella, near Naples.  A precocious child, he was educated in every. thing from Greek to harpsichord playing and, at sixteen, passed an examination at the University of Naples for a doctor's degree in law, He had his own practice by 1715 and was a familiar figure in Neapolitan society for the next eight years.  Love of music brought him often to the opera, although the tastefulness of the staging caused him to sit with his spectacles off, sparing his near-sighted eyes the vulgarities of the productions.  His taste for law, and for the world, lessened after a humiliating incident in court.  Alphonsus had made a brilliant speech defending a client, when a lawyer for the opposition told him that a certain document in the case completely refuted his arguments.  Alphonsus had carefully read the document, but on a second examination saw that his opponent was right and thereupon relinquished the case with a public admission of his error.  Humbled by the experience, the young man began thinking more seriously about his life and finally decided to become a priest.  His father, who was assiduously lining up marriage prospects for him, protested, but Alphonsus began his theological studies, and in 1726 was ordained.

 His first assignment was mission work in the Naples area, where he soon became noted for two things: his sermons and his manner of hearing confessions.  When Alphonsus preached, he spoke simply and directly, without the stale rhetoric that characterized most sermonizing of the day.  In the confessional where harsh severity toward the sinner was common, Alphonsus was always gentle and patient, gaining the reputation of never having refused anyone absolution.  The common people loved these qualities in him and responded to him as they did to few others.

 His missionary activity continued for several years but gradually became overshadowed by his role as a religious founder.  In 1730, in the city of Scala, Alphonsus reorganized a community of nuns (later known as the Redemptoristines), and in 1732, in the same city, founded a community of priests for missionary work among the growing masses of the poor in Italy.  The Redemptorist order was thus born and became an undertaking that was to keep Alphonsus involved in controversy for the rest of his life.  From the very beginning, he was opposed in the work by many of the hierarchy, who regarded the saint as having dangerously lax theological views, and by the government of Naples, which was militantly anticlerical in its policies.  For several years the order suffered suspicion and harassment, but survived because of the approval of its constitutions by Pope Benedict XIV, in 1749.

 Alphonsus found time for other activities, of which theological writing was the most important.  His monumental Moral Theology was published in 1748, and became an immediate success, although his enemies were ready with their usual charges; the wildest of these was that he had defended lying.  This was false, of course, and the treatise, which avoided the extremes both of laxity and of Jansenistic rigorism, was soon recognized as a safe guide in moral questions.
 The saint's duties increased in 1762, when Pope Clement XIII appointed him bishop of Sant'Agata de' Goti.  This was a small diocese with a bad reputation, which Alphonsus quickly transformed.  He forced the clergy there to abandon such practices as the careless celebration of Mass ("the sight of a Mass celebrated in this way is enough to make one lose the faith," he said) and gave the people the same charitable, intelligent attention that had marked his earlier work as a missionary.

 An old man now, Alphonsus had an illness in 1767 that left his neck permanently curved and his chin digging painfully into his chest.  An operation relieved the condition somewhat, but in 1775 he was allowed to resign his see because of his health.  A short period of peaceful retirement followed, and then Alphonsus had to face his most difficult trial: the climactic attack on his religious order.
 In 1777 the royal government, which had long sought to destroy the Redemptorists, threatened to disband them on the grounds that they were carrying on in disguise the work of the Jesuits, who had been officially suppressed in 1773.  Alphonsus refuted this charge so completely that the government relaxed its attack and there even seemed some chance of obtaining the king's approval for the order's rule.  Alphonsus signed and sent a copy of the rule to the monarch, not realizing (he was almost blind by now) that drastic alterations had been made in the copy by certain members of the order anxious to placate the king.  The altered rule was approved by the king; but when Pope Pius VI saw how far in spirit it was from the original, he condemned it and stripped Alphonsus of leadership of the order.

 This was a bitter blow to the man who had been completely innocent in the whole affair and perhaps the action contributed to Alphonsus' last cross: an agonizing siege of scruples and doubts about the faith that lasted through 1784 and 1785.  The storm passed, however, and by the time of his death in 1787, peace had returned to him.  Before he died, he foretold the restoration of his order that was to take place a few years later under Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer.  Pius VI, the same pope who had condemned him, gave Alphonsus the title of venerable in 1796 he was declared a saint in 1839, by Gregory XVI, and Doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1871.

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4 August
SAINT JOHN MARIE VIANNEY
Confessor, c.1786-1859

 THE term "saintly" seems to fit certain saints better, somehow, than others.  Those who lack all intellectual brilliance and personal charm, who exhibit in an almost terrifying isolation that underlying motive of all sanctity-the desire to live for God alone-these we more readily call "saintly," simply because no other adjective seems applicable to them.  Such a one was John Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure' of Ars; a perfect example of how little-and how much-it takes to make a saint.

 Born in 1786 into a farming family at Dardilly, near Lyons, in eastern France, Jean-Marie was a young boy during the French Revolution and shared with his family a necessity of the times: the secret practice of their religion.  His faith was strengthened by the experience, and by the time the Revolution was over he had decided to become a priest.  Many things delayed fulfillment of his aim: his father's reluctance to lose him from the farm; a confused period of military service that included an act of involuntary desertion by John Marie; and above all his own intellectual shortcomings.  With a poor memory and no ability or taste for abstract thought, he simply could not grasp the fundamentals of such subjects as Latin and theology.  Although his piety was recognized, he had to be dismissed from the seminary at Lyons, and undoubtedly would never have been ordained if he had not been helped by a friendly priest.  This was Father Balley of Ecully, who gave Jean-Marie private lessons and arranged an inter-view for him with the diocesan examiner of candidates for ordination.  The interview uncovered John Marie's academic deficiencies but also revealed something of his holiness, an attribute that made him worthier for the priesthood than any amount of textbook knowledge.  The examiner recommended ordination, and on August 12, 1815, John Marie received holy orders, a privilege that he always considered the greatest of his life.

 He was assigned to assist Father Balley at Ecully; when that priest died in 1817, Father Vianney was sent to care for the people of a small, obscure village called Ars.  When he arrived in 1818, Ars had only about 230 inhabitants.  Few of these people were outstanding for either the practice or neglect of their faith; for most of them religion was merely a formality performed regularly and thoughtlessly once a week and the rest of the time ignored.  Such mediocrity was incomprehensible to Father Vianney, and he determined to correct it.  A house-to-house visitation of the parish, catechism classes for the children, and long Sunday sermons were part of the campaign.  Taverns, blasphemous language, Sunday work, ordinary outlets for frivolity or sin-were denounced vehemently by him as distractions from the essential business of salvation.  All this would have had no effect without the Cure's own example, which was ultimately what transformed Ars.

 When the people learned of the nightly scourgings which he inflicted upon himself, of the long fasts broken by no more than one or two cold potatoes, when they heard his voice, trembling with emotion, speaking of the love of God, and above all when they found themselves in the confessional with the man, they realized they had a saint in their midst.  Slowly things changed; the taverns closed, the church became crowded even on weekdays, and the line to the confessional grew always longer.  In that small stuffy box the priest relieved people of the burden of their sins in a way that could only be called Christ-like.  Forgotten sins, concealed sins, grave sins, slight sins-all were brought to light by the priest and dismissed by him with absolution and a few compassionate words that often changed the whole course of the penitent's life.  This marvelous gift of the unlearned priest for seeing into the depths of the soul brought the world to Ars.  People from the neighboring villages, from Lyons, finally from all France and beyond, swarmed into the tiny village.  From 1830 on, the Cure' averaged twelve to sixteen hours a day in the confessional.  Healing of the sick, foretelling the future, and other marvels were attributed to him time after time.

 Popular success, of course, was something the Cur'e neither wanted nor enjoyed his life was so absorbed in God that it was only with difficulty (and this was the measure of his heroism) that he could immerse himself in the world of men.  Three times he left Ars to retire to a monastery, but he always returned, urged by his own conscience and touched by the pleas of the people.  Besides his grueling pastoral activities he had other crosses to bear.  An orphanage and girls' school he had founded in 1824 were taken out of his hands for reasons that are still obscure.  Many of his less zealous fellow priests branded his whole life as "mad." (When the bishop of the diocese heard the malicious comments, he merely said, "I wish all the clergy of my diocese had a small grain of this madness.") The devil himself evidently persecuted the Cure, as is indicated by the noises, bed-burning, and physical assaults that took place at night in his room for years.  "The grappin (devil) and I are almost old comrades," the Cure once remarked to a friend.

 The forty years in Ars were full of these sufferings, always accompanied by his own self-mortification, for he held himself to be the worst sinner in the village.  When he died on August 4, 1859, Ars had already become a place of pilgrimage and continued as such in succeeding years.  Pope Pius XI canonized the Cur'e in 1925 and in 1929 named him, very appropriately, patron of all parish priests.

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7 August
SAINT SIXTUS II AND COMPANIONS
Pope and Martyrs, c.-258

IN the year 257, Saint Sixtus II was chosen to succeed Saint Stephen I as pope; the latter had been one of the first martyrs in Emperor Valerian's persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.  Sixtus was a "good and peaceable priest, " according to one of his contemporaries, and he was to have a very short pontificate.  About all we know of his reign is that he acted leniently toward some Eastern and African Christians who had been erroneously denying the validity of baptism when administered by heretics.  The dispute had begun in the reign of Stephen I, and Sixtus refrained from using any disciplinary action against the parties concerned, although he urged them to accept the true teaching of the Church in the matter.

 In 258 Valerian inaugurated a second, even harsher, phase of his campaign against the Christians, for it was directed chiefly against the bishops, priests, and deacons, and against liturgical assemblies, and again it was the pope who was one of the first to suffer.  Sixtus had united the faithful in the catacombs of Saint Callistus for the celebration of Mass.  A band of soldiers rushed in.  To prevent a wholesale arrest, Sixtus offered himself with his deacons to the executioners.

 Powerless, the faithful witnessed the decapitation of their courageous pope.  Four deacons, Januarius, Vincent, Magnus, and Stephen-were martyred with Sixtus and buried with him in the catacombs of Saint Callistus.  Felicissimus and Agapitus, two other deacons, were pursued and martyred in the cemetery of Praetextatus.

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8 August
SAINT DOMINIC
Confessor, c.1170-1221

MEDIEVAL Europe had many bad features, but also many and perhaps more-good ones; the best and most remarkable of its assets was simply the fact that its life was largely shaped and controlled by men and women who were saints.  One of the most famous of these saints was Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans as the order is usually called.
 Dominic was a Spaniard, born into a family of the Castilian nobility at Caleruega, in 1170.  His childhood attraction to the religious life was encouraged by his mother, Dona Juana, and in 1195, after several years of study in the liberal arts and theology, he was ordained.  His first years as a priest were spent at the cathedral of Osma as one of its canons.

There Dominic began to be noticed for the spiritual qualities that were to characterize his life: a completely selfless love of God, a profound understanding of the needs of the soul, and a warm desire to help other men satisfy those needs by bringing them the word of God.

In 1203 Dominic was sent with Diego de Acevedo, bishop of Osma, on a mission to Denmark for Alfonso VIII, the king of Castile.  The way led through Languedoc in southern France, where the Albigensian heresy was flourishing, and on the journeys to and from the northern country the two men had many contacts with heretics.  The experience so aroused the zeal of the travelers that, when their work for the king was over, they went to Rome and requested Pope Innocent III to send them as missionaries to the pagans of the Volga region.  The pope, however, persuaded them to return to France and fight the Albigenses, who were spreading rapidly.  This heretical sect first appeared at Albi (whence its name) but the principal centers became Toulouse and Carcassonne, from which the heresy spread through Languedoc.

 When Diego and Dominic went back to Languedoc, they joined forces with the Cistercians, who had been combating the heresy for some time, but with poor results.  Dominic soon saw the reason for this: the Albigenses, who believed that matter was evil and that earthly existence was best ended by suicide, led lives of fanatical austerity; the Cistercians were not nearly as self-denying and went about the country with servants and rich equipages.  To the people, it seemed obvious which group had the more Christian spirit; so far as they were concerned, the monks' angry denunciations of the heretics had a hollow ring.

 Dominic determined to remedy this situation.  He insisted that monks who preached against heresy should themselves be living examples of a true Christian spirit: they should own nothing and should travel on foot, depending on the alms of the faithful for support; they should preach, not merely with zeal, but with understanding and charity; above all, they should do the work out of love for God and man, not any lesser motive (too often, hatred seemed to be the compelling force for zealous heretic hunters).  Even with this new spirit, the struggle remained a difficult one, and Bishop Diego finally in discouragement left for Spain.

 Dominic stayed, however, and in 1206, at Prouille, established a group that was to be the forerunner of his order.  This was a convent of nine nuns, all converts from the heresy, and a small monastery of "brothers" (probably priests) who directed the nuns' spiritual life.
 In 1208 civil war broke out in Languedoc between orthodox and heretic.  Dominic followed the orthodox army, doing what he could to bring a little mercy into the conduct of the war, which was fought with viciousness on both sides.  As time passed, the military action and Dominic's own preaching, which he continued incessantly, broke the strength of the heretical movement. (There is no contemporary evidence that Dominic used devotion to the rosary in the campaign, and all the stories attributing the origin of the rosary to a vision in which our Lady gave the rosary to Dominic are of a much later date.  The devotion, in some form, was in use long before his time.)

 With the lessening of danger from heresy, Dominic began to formulate more clearly the ideas his experiences had given him for a new religious order.  This order was to be linked with traditional monasticism, in that its members would be professed religious, with contemplation and prayer at the heart of their existence; its radically new feature was to be the sharing with others of the fruits of that contemplative life by teaching and preaching.
 Late in 1215 Dominic went to Rome to obtain approval for his order; the pope gave it verbally, and Dominic returned to Prouille, where he drew up a rule for his men based mainly on that of Saint Augustine.  In August of the next year, 1216, the tireless saint went back to Rome to receive formal approval for the order from Pope Honorius III.  At Prouille, in August of 1217, Dominic assembled his followers for a last address and then sent them to establish houses at various places in France and Spain.  Dominic himself returned to Rome, once more hopeful of being sent to the East as a missionary.  Pope Honorius, however, asked him to stay in Rome, and in the six months he remained there he became a popular figure.  He taught theology, preached in Saint Peter's, and is said to have restored the dead to life on three occasions.

From 1218 to 1220, he traveled about in Spain, France, and Italy, founding more houses for his order.  Several of these were in university towns, reflecting Dominic's conviction that the best intellectual training and much study were essential for priests whose mission it was to preach and to combat heresy.  This use of reason in the service of faith has remained one of the hallmarks of the Dominican Order.  A general chapter was held in 1220, at Bologna, and Dominic took up residence there.  He visited Saint Francis in Cremona later that year (the two had met and become friends earlier in Rome), and the next year held his last general chapter.  On August 6, 1221, Dominic died, only fifty-one years old.

 His order, together with that of Saint Francis (who died five years after Dominic), was to bring a new spirit into every branch of European life in the succeeding years.  Art, learning, social life, religious expression: through the work of the mendicant friars, all these were to feel the transforming effect of the Christian poverty and brotherly love that Dominic and Francis had lived so nobly.

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10 August
SAINT LAWRENCE
Martyr, c.-258

THE popular legend that portrays Saint Lawrence lying on a gridiron and giving instructions for his own roasting may be no more than a myth; Lawrence himself, however, is a reality, and legends only point to the widespread devotion to him among early Christians.

 He was one of seven deacons in Rome during the pontificate of Sixtus II, and was martyred on August 10, 258, four days after Sixtus himself had been put to death by the emperor Valerian.  As a deacon, Lawrence had charge. of caring for the property of the Church and distributing alms to the poor.  According to the legend, when he was ordered by the Roman prefect to hand over the treasures of the Church, he asked for time to gather together this wealth, and then went about the city distributing the Church's money to the poor and the sick and selling its property for the same purpose.  When he came before the prefect again and was told to produce his riches, he pointed to the crowd of beggars, cripples, and other unfortunates who had followed him there and who had received the benefit of the Church's material goods.  It was this piece of audacity, the legend says, that enraged the prefect and led him to order Lawrence's unique execution.  Stretched out on a gridiron over a bed of fiery coals, the saint calmly told his torturers, "Turn me over now, I'm done enough on this side."

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11 August
SAINT CLARE
Abbess and Virgin, c.1194-1253

THE history of Saint Clare, who was born in Assisi in 1194, does not really begin until she was about 15 years old, when she first saw and heard the future saint, Francis Bernardone, after his conversion.  Clare was a beautiful blond girl, a member of the wealthy and aristocratic Offreduccio family, and her relatives seem to have been arranging a marriage for her at the time.  Whatever attention she might have been giving to this project vanished, for she decided to serve God under the direction of Francis.  This young man, formerly one of the town's gayest blades, now a ragged, unshaven beggar-monk, spoke with such joy to the people of Assisi about his new love, "Lady Poverty," that many, like Clare, resolved to join him in his way of life.

 She met Francis privately, was encouraged in her decision by him, and on Palm Sunday of the year 1212 took the decisive step.  In the evening she slipped out of her home and hurried by torchlight to the small chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis and his men lived.  There, after Francis cut off her long, golden hair and gave her a rough woolen gown to wear, she took the vows of religious life and put herself under his direction.  He first placed her in a convent of Benedictine nuns; then when the family uproar over her action died down, placed her, together with a few other women who had chosen the same life, in their own convent near the Church of San Damiano.  This was the beginning of the Second Order of Saint Francis, the Order of Poor Ladies or "Poor Clares" as they came to be called.  In 1215 Francis made Clare abbess of the convent, a position she retained until her death nearly forty years later.

 Her years in the convent were strictly cloistered, and we have little information about them; there are stories about her saving both the convent and Assisi itself from pillaging soldiers, by praying with her nuns and displaying a monstrance with the sacred host in it at the convent gates (in pictures she is often shown holding a monstrance); but such events, if they did happen, had little significance in her life.  More important to her than anything else was an inflexible adherence to the ideal of evangelical poverty that she had learned from Francis.

 "Evangelical poverty" was a dignified label for a hard, humiliating way of life.  To own nothing, to depend on the charity of others for the necessities of life-this was either madness or shameful laziness according to the popular viewpoint.  Despite the impact made by Saint Francis on his time, poverty as a way of life seemed no more attractive to most men than it does now.  The pressure of public opinion forced his own order into compromises with ownership that he never entirely approved, and after his death in 1226, Clare faced similar demands for more "reasonable" standards in her religious life.

 In 1219 Cardinal Ugolino, a friend of Francis, had drawn up the first rule for the Order of Poor Ladies (Francis himself never gave the order a rule) and in it had said nothing about the ideal of absolute poverty.  When Ugolino later became Pope Gregory IX, and rather pointedly offered to dispense Clare from her vow of strict poverty, she replied, "I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ.  " In 1228 she obtained a concession from the same pope: the right not to be forced by anyone to accept possessions!  Common ownership of property was accepted by other convents of the growing order, however, and the principle was even embodied in a revision of the rule approved by Innocent IV in 1247.  Clare still kept fighting for a rule that would prohibit all ownership of property, and finally, two days before her death, obtained such a rule for San Damiano from Innocent IV.  This difference of opinion on the question of property ownership has kept the Poor Clares, just as it has the other Franciscans, divided into different groups throughout their history.

 Clare's constant effort was to remain faithful to the example of "her holy father, Francis." All her life she lived the Franciscan spirit with a devotion unmatched by anyone except the Poverello himself.  With her nuns at San Damiano she carried on an obscure, dedicated, and profoundly humble existence; they wore nothing on their feet, slept on the ground, never ate meat, talked only when necessity demanded it.  The physical suffering that filled the last twenty-seven years of Clare's life she accepted joyfully as another means to unite herself more closely to God.  Before she died in 1253, after a long and agonizing illness, among the last things she said was, "God be blessed for having created me!  " Her funeral was presided over by Pope Innocent IV, who had to be dissuaded from declaring her a saint on the spot!  Canonization was not long in coming, however, taking place two years later under Pope Alexander IV.  Clare's body was buried in a church dedicated to her at Assisi, and her bones are still venerated there.

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14 August
SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE
Franciscan, 1941

ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, Polish Conventual Franciscan, who gave his life at forty-seven by voluntarily replacing a younger man-the father of a family-in the starvation bunker of the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. On the vigil of the Assumption, still conscious after fourteen days, he was dispatched by a lethal injection, realizing in this way the martyrdom he had chosen at the age of ten during a childhood crisis when the Blessed Virgin appeared with a white crown of purity and a gold crown of martyrdom and asked him to make a choice. He took both.

 Becoming a friar in Poland at sixteen, he passed through a period of intense scruples, contracted tuberculosis during priesthood studies in Rome, and there-as a means of counteracting anti-Catholic influences in society and of keeping untarnished the high ideals of youthful friars-established the Militia of the Immaculate, apostles who would convert and sanctify souls through the mediation of Mary. Over his prie-dieu he kept the picture of some saint to whom Mary had appeared.

 The life of this sickly but indefatigable worker illustrates one of his favorite sayings that "good is more contagious than evil." By 1939 his monthly review Knight of the Immaculate reached a circulation of one million and his headquarters, Niepokalanow near Warsaw, with its 700 Franciscans, was the largest religious house in the Catholic world. He also established a Marian Center in Japan and India. "Sanctity," he told his friars, "is not a luxury, but a simple duty. It is one of Christ's first principles: 'Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.'

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16 August
SAINT STEPHEN OF HUNGARY
King and Confessor, c.969-1038

IN eleventh-century Europe, when political wrangling was the order of the day, the wise man chose his allies carefully.  Powerful, calculating kings joined forces to further their aims, and sanctity was often relegated to the cloister, appropriately clad in ecclesiastical garments.  But when sanctity showed itself in Saint Stephen of Hungary, in royal garments and soldier's gear, it was because he had chosen the most powerful ally of all.

 The son of a Magyar prince nominally converted to Christianity at his marriage with the Catholic sister of the duke of Poland, Stephen was baptized with his father and succeeded him in 997 as ruler of the Magyars.  It was his object to establish Hungary both politically and ecclesiastically.  In an area that was a bridge between East and West he chose to establish firm relations with the West and bring his nation in contact with its Christian culture.  He himself married Gisela, daughter of the emperor Henry II; after his death she became a Benedictine.  Stephen built churches, monasteries, and hospices for pilgrims.  He levied taxes for the support of the Church and decreed that every tenth town in his domain should build a church and support a priest.  Ending the chaos of old idolatrous religions, Stephen firmly established the organized Church.  Revolts, invasions, and plots to murder him he faced and dealt with as a soldier of nobility and a man of sanctity.

 Stephen was an approachable king, dispensing aims, in disguise, to his poorer subjects.  His sanctity touched those about him, and one of his family, his son Emeric, was canonized at the same time as he.  Stephen's ideal had been that which Saint Augustine had laid down: to be a just king, devout and peaceful.  A man of unlimited power, he had nevertheless been obedient to the laws and teachings of the Church.  Hungarians have ever since honored him not only as lawgiver and father of the nation, but also as a guide and model, and one whose intercession can bring strength and aid in difficult times.  This wise and holy king had chosen an ally who was incomparable.  "If God is for us, who is against us?" (Rom. 8:31).

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19 August
SAINT JOHN EUDES
Confessor, c.1601-1680

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY France was in a deplorable state.  The wars of religion in the previous century and the inroads of Protestantism had brought the practice of religion, already weakened by long-standing abuses, to an almost hopeless state.  Churches were deserted and uncared for; religious practices had given way to magic and superstition among large groups of the faithful; the clergy as a whole was ignorant and often corrupt.  It was a sad period, but it had its saints and in their hands lay the fate of Christian France: Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint John Francis Regis, Saint Peter Fourrier, Saint John Eudes, and other zealous apostles.  Preaching, works of charity, and the education of the clergy were the great means of revival.

 Saint John Eudes' field of action was Normandy and he easily found his way to the hearts of the people.  A man of noble and majestic appearance, with a sonorous voice, an expressive face, an astonishing facility with words, Father Eudes was the finest preacher in France.  He conducted no less than 110 parish missions, most of which lasted a month and a half or longer.  But preaching was not his only activity. He also founded, in 1641, the community of Sisters of Refuge to provide homes for women who had lived sinfully but who wished to do penance, and from 1640 was in the midst of the complications of founding an ecclesiastical society for the education of the clergy, the Society of Jesus and Mary.

 It was during the formation of this society that Father Eudes first advocated the devotion that was an answer to the worst enemy of all, the vicious heresy of Jansenism: the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Preaching several years before the revelations of Saint Margaret Mary, he was "the institutor of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Heart of Mary," as Pope Leo XIII described him in 1903.
 His parents, Isaac Eudes and Martha Corbin, were devout farm people of the town of Ri in Normandy.  John, the eldest of their six children, was given an excellent education.  After graduating from the Jesuit college at Caen in 1621, he was accepted in the Congregation of the Oratory of France in 1623.  Here also he was very fortunate, for he was placed under the direction of two of the finest educators in France, Father Pierre de Berulle, the founder of the congregation, and later, Father de Condren, the future director.

 Ordained on December 20, 1625, John endeared himself to the diocese by his heroic work during a plague, and soon became renowned for his extraordinary gifts as a mission preacher.
 The single little house John rented in 1641 as a refuge for repentant women, under the direction of the Visitandine nuns of Caen, grew to become an order in its own right in 1650.  Today it comprises the order known as the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, and its daughter order, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, with refuges and homes throughout the world.

 Most of all, however, Father Eudes realized that there was need of better education for the clergy.  Therefore, in 1643, after much consultation with his superiors, he severed his connection with the Oratorians to establish a society of secular priests dedicated to the erection and administration of diocesan seminaries.  Father Eudes felt that the seminaries would be more useful if they were under the direct authority of the bishop of each diocese and open to all candidates for the priesthood.  He prescribed special devotion to the hearts of Jesus and Mary, and the men trained in his seminaries contributed to the downfall of Jansenism.

 John's earthly life ended on August 19, 1680, but his deeds are still effective in the works of his two foundations and his many writings on devotion to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.

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21 August
SAINT PIUS X
Pope and Confessor, c.1835-1914

THE last pope to be canonized before our time was Pius V, in 1712; he had been pope from 1566 to 1572.  Although there were many men of high virtue who have served as vicar of Christ during the last two hundred years, the twentieth century can boast of a great pope who was clearly worthy of canonization.  The mighty, the powerful, and the successful can be saints, of course, but in our time the glory of canonization has more often come to the lowly peasant, the solitary men, the least known of God's children.

 Perhaps that is the very secret of Pius X's sainthood.  He never, in his own mind, ceased to be a peasant, humbly convinced of his own lack of importance.  All his life, from the time of his ordination in 1858, he had one view of himself: he was a pastor concerned with the spiritual welfare of his flock.  As he was appointed, in turn, curate at Tombolo, pastor of Salzano, canon of the cathedral of Treviso, chancellor of the diocese, bishop of Mantua, and finally cardinal-patriarch of Venice, he did not change.  Only the size of the flock changed.

 Pius X never ceased to be the simple son of Joseph and Margarita Sarto, poor and pious people of the village of Riese in northern Italy.  From the time Giuseppe Sarto was born on June 2, 1835, he was taught to do whatever work was his as perfectly as he could.  No matter how important the honors that were heaped upon him, his first concern remained the welfare of his people.
 When, on August 4, 1903, he was elected pope, this remained his first concern.  In his first encyclical, four months later, he declared that his primary aim was "to restore all things in Christ." This was not a small aim.  Other popes had reigned in times when the authority of the Church was denied.  In his reign men denied the authority of God.  Having denied the very existence of God, men now seemed determined to destroy the only thing left-mankind itself.  This vicar of Christ carried the burden not only of widespread heresy, but of widespread ungodliness and the first of the world wars.

 The weapons he used to combat these evils were the weapons given by Christ.  The most powerful of these was Christ Himself.  Men had grown away from the frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist, claiming in mistaken humility that they were unworthy.  It was Pius X who declared that the less worthy a man the greater was his need.  In a decree of 1905 Pius X reinstated the practice of frequent, even daily, Communion.  It was he who allowed children to receive the Sacrament as soon as they reached the age of reason instead of waiting until they were twelve or fifteen years old.  It was because of this work that he has deserved a title that is perhaps the most beautiful that any saint has ever received: "Pope of the Eucharist."

 In 1904 Pius X set up the commission that gave the Church its present Code of Canon Law.  He revived the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and directed its propagation, for he saw clearly that Catholic impact upon the world depended upon the education of the Catholic people.  He reorganized the Roman Curia, promulgated new regulations regarding papal elections, and worked for a revival of the liturgy in the lives of the people.
 Above all, he saw the need of an active laity.  In a time of spiritual and social crisis in the world, the work of the clergy alone was not sufficient.  Every Catholic was needed in order " to restore all things in Christ." One day he was asked what thing was most necessary to save modern society.  He answered, "What is most necessary at the present time is to have in each parish a group of laymen at the same time virtuous, well-instructed, determined and really apostolic."

 Pius X knew that Catholic Action would displease some timid souls, but he continued to insist that the laity must share in the apostolic mission of the Church.  Catholics of today have seen the fruit of this insistence.  Movements like the Young Christian Workers and the Christian Family Movement have sprung up in the last thirty years.  They are the arm of the Church reaching into secular society, where the priest cannot always go.  "In other times," said Pius X, "it was the popes and bishops who intervened in the defense of their children . . . today it must be the children who rise up in defense of their father."

 His Holiness Pope Pius X died on August 20, 1914, Still the poor man that he had chosen to remain in the splendid surroundings of the pontificate as he had as cardinal-patriarch and as country priest.  All who knew him came to realize that his paternal gentleness and understanding, his firm and resolute decisions, his serene confidence in the providence of God all arose from his intimate union with God.  His very appearance radiated his holiness.  Never since his first entombment in the crypt of Saint Peter's had offerings of flowers been lacking, or prayers both to him and for his canonization.  People from all over the world, one of the greatest throngs ever to fill the piazza before Saint Peter's, in Rome for the Marian Year, joyfully witnessed his canonization on May 29, 1954.

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23 August
SAINT ROSE OF LIMA
Virgin, c.1586-1617

IF ROSE OF LIMA was radical for the sixteenth century, she
is no less extreme according to present-day standards.  In the matter of appearance, for example, while women through the ages, in her day no less than ours, have sought to enhance their beauty, Rose tried to destroy hers, fearing that such beauty might be an occasion of temptation to herself or others.

 Rose was Spanish, born in Lima, Peru, in 1586.  She was christened Isabel, but was known as Rose because of her soft, pink complexion.  Devoted to God even in childhood, she fasted several days in the week.  One day her mother tried to show off this beautiful daughter by adorning her with a garland of roses; the girl stuck a pin through the garland into her head.  She learned to play the lute and to write poetry.  But when a woman commented on Rose's beautiful hands, the girl rubbed them in lime until they were so sore that she was unable to use them for a month.

 Rose was penitential in her daily life, working day and night at flower-raising and embroidery to support her parents.  When she was twenty she became a Dominican tertiary, and from this time on always sought to prove her love of God.  She took a vow of virginity and became a recluse, living in a crude hut she had built in her garden and wearing on her head a slender silver band studded on the inner surface with thornlike prongs.  In her charity she had an ardent desire to bring Christ to the Indians of Peru, and often left her solitude to help the poor and the sick.  Rose also suffered mental anguish and temptations from the devil, and was tortured by a lingering illness.  Her constant prayer was, "Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Thy love in my heart."

 Saint Rose died on August 24, 1617, at the age of thirty-one.  Her last words were, "Jesus!  Jesus!  Be with me." She was beatified in 1668 and canonized in 1671.  Pope Clement X named her patroness of the Philippines and the Americas, fittingly recognizing America's first saint as its special protector.

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24 August
SAINT BARTHOLOMEW
Apostle (New Testament)

WE know only one thing about Bartholomew.  He was one of the twelve apostles.  He followed our Lord, sat at His feet, listened to His parables, learned from Him directly.  He was one of those twelve pillars upon which the Church was built.

 We do not even know his given name; Bartholomew merely means "son of Tolmai." Many biblical scholars believe he is the Nathanael, a native of Cana in Galilee, of whom our Lord said, "Behold a true Israelite in whom there is no guile!" (John 1:47).

 Early writings tell us that Bartholomew planted the faith in India.  To the early writers, however, India meant any of a number of places outside the Roman Empire-Arabia, Ethiopia, Libya, Parthia, or Persia.  Most likely his teaching took place in Ethiopia or Arabia, or both.  He left home, family, and possessions to follow Christ.  Fired with that zeal that assured the expansion of the early Church, he went into strange lands with neither worldly learning nor material assistance, his only wealth being a deep love of his Redeemer and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

 Bartholomew is the patron saint of Armenia, and it is a tradition that he died there.  How fitting a place for Bartholomew to have begun the work of the Church!  There it was that the Ark came to rest.  There it was that the dove of peace carried its olive branch to humanity.  There the gospel of the Prince of Peace should, from the beginning, have been presented to humanity.

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25 August
SAINT JOSEPH CALASANZ
Confessor, c.1556-1648

JOSEPH thrived on a dream.  He worked and worked, until the dream became reality.  But with the fulfillment of the dream came disaster.  At the time of Joseph's death, an evil enemy had destroyed his work.
 Joseph Calasanz, was born in Aragon in 1556.  Even when he was a boy he was very religious.  For this trait his fellow students ridiculed him.  Nor were his parents joyous when Joseph announced his desire to become a priest.
 Joseph was ordained in 1583.  Although he was happy working at reform and administration in the Spanish Church, an inner voice kept calling him to Rome.  After nine years he went there, and for five years led a hidden life of prayer and of service in hospitals and prisons.  When he saw how ignorant the children of the poor were, his true vocation in Rome became apparent to him.

 In 1597 Joseph opened a free school.  His project grew rapidly and before long he had established many schools.  In 1617 Joseph conferred the religious habit of Clerics Regular of the Religious Schools (known as the Piarists) upon his fourteen assistants.  The next year it was made a mendicant order.

 Difficulties arose when a priest, Mario Sozzi, contrived to have Joseph arrested and then made himself head of the order.  The Piarists and their schools were thrown into confusion.  Finally an investigation by the pope served to re-instate Joseph.  His joy at this was short-lived; other troublemakers arose, and the Piarists became simply a society of priests without vows.  Joseph, grief-stricken at seeing his work destroyed, died shortly afterward, in 1648.  He was 92 years old, and had suffered innumerable outrages with Christ-like patience and humble obedience.  Immense crowds came to his funeral.

 Joseph's dream became a reality after his death.  In 1669 the foundation was reconstituted as a religious order, and his ideal, the education of children, is being carried out today by the Piarists.

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28 August
SAINT AUGUSTINE
Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church, c.354-430

SAINT MONICA persevered in spite of the monotony the monotony of a prayer repeated over and over for many years.

 The prayer was for the conversion of a sinner, and Monica had a special reason for her persistence, for the sinner was her son Augustine.

 Saint Augustine was born in 354. at Tagaste, a town in North Africa known today as Souk-Aras.  Although his mother taught him Christian principles, his baptism was deferred, a custom of the time.  Augustine first went to school in Madaura, a city twenty miles from Tagaste.  He was a poor student, not from lack of intelligence, but from lack of effort.  In 370, when the boy was 17, he was sent to school at Carthage, and he soon became head of the class.  He admits in his Confessions that his motive in studying was pride.  His brilliant success opened up a career as teacher, and he taught at Tagaste and at Carthage.

 More important in the events of Augustine's stay at Carthage was his fall into vicious habits, swearing, impurity, and heretical thinking.  He had a mistress, who later bore him a son.  Heresy attracted him when he began to study philosophy.  At first led to the Scriptures, he put them aside because of their unpolished style and turned instead to the Manicheans, who maintained that they could lead men to God and free them from error by reason alone.  Throughout these years he was in great mental turmoil, for his thoughts kept turning to the Catholic faith and he was being driven to face its claims.  Though he was still unaware of it, he wanted God more than anything else.

 By 383 Augustine tired of the Manicheans, and went to Rome, where he opened a school of rhetoric.  When his students failed to pay their tuition, he accepted a commission to teach in Milan.  Monica followed her son to Milan and finally persuaded him to give up his mistress.  But this seemed to do little good for him spiritually; he was still troubled by doubt and sin.

 Saint Ambrose was bishop of Milan at the time, and Augustine often went to hear him preach, not from any interest in religious matters, but for the eloquence of the speaker.  The sermons produced an effect; Augustine began to read the Bible, particularly the Epistles of Saint Paul, and became convinced of the truth of Christianity.  But for Augustine, as with all men, the ascent to God was more than amatter of knowing the truth; he found it difficult to live according to its demands.  There arose in him a long struggle between the intellect and the flesh, and for a time un-chastity continued to overpower him.

 The circumstances of his conversion were unusual.  One day in September 386, as he walked in his garden with his friend Alypius, Augustine heard what he thought was a child's voice chanting, "Take up and read." Finding the book of Saint Paul's Epistles open, his eyes fell on the passage: not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the flesh, take no thought for its lusts" (Rom. 13:13-14).  All hesitation was gone, his doubts had vanished.  Alypius also picked up the book and found the next words: "But him who is weak in faith, receive." The two ran to tell Saint Monica the good news, and her joy was unbounded in finding that her prayer had at last been answered.  Her son was now thirty-two.

 The two friends, along with Monica, Augustine's brother Navigius and his son Adeodatus, moved to a country home, where they prayed and studied.  Augustine was solemnly baptized by Saint Ambrose on the vigil of Easter, in 387.  The joyful family and friends decided to return to their native Africa but Monica died on the way.  The grieving Augustine returned to Rome and sometime later went on to Tagaste, where he lived in fasting and prayer for three years with his son Adeodatus and his friend Alypius.  He sold his inheritance there and gave the proceeds to the poor.

 In 391 the saint made a journey to Hippo.  There was a scarcity of clergy in Africa at this time, and holy men were often conscripted for the priesthood by popular demand.  When the people of Hippo witnessed Augustine's faith, they clamored for his ordination.  Since he had no such desire, Augustine protested, but was at last ordained in 392 and appointed as an aide to the bishop, Valerius, whom he later succeeded.  His chief duty as a priest seems to have been writing and delivering sermons-over four hundred of them are preserved.

 Augustine's life as a bishop was exemplary.  He was particularly noted for his humility, but his greatest contribution to Christianity was in doctrine.  The African Church was infested with heresies, and the bishop devoted himself to refuting them.  He pioneered in formulating many of the basic doctrines, e.g. on grace, original sin, and free will.

 The death of the saint occurred during the period when the Vandals, having invaded Rome, were moving on to destroy religion and culture in Africa.  Augustine, in his seventy-sixth year, died a few months before Hippo was captured in 430.

 One can learn much about Augustine by reading the most famous of his writings, the Confessions, in which he relates the story of his early life and conversion.  It is a work characteristic of his humility written not for the curious, nor to show how saintly Augustine was to make his sins public, but for those who would praise God's mercy for allowing such a sinner to become a defender of His truth.  The theme of the life of this "Father of the West" may be found in his own words: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee!"