April Saints
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PASSION FRIDAY
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FRIDAY BEFORE THE HOLY WEEK
Summary of the homily of Pope Francis (Friday, April 3, 2020)
On this Passion Friday, before Holy Week, which commemorates Mary's sorrows, Pope Francis dedicated his homily to Our Lady of Sorrows. Today, he said, “it will do us good to think about Our Lady’s Sorrows and to thank her because she accepted to be a Mother.”The Seven Sorrows
Pope Francis recalled that, “Christian devotion has collected Our Lady's sorrows and speaks of the "Seven Sorrows.”- The first, he said, is “just 40 days after the birth of Jesus, Simeon's prophecy that speaks of a sword that will pierce her heart.”
- In the second sorrow, “she thinks about the flight to Egypt to save her Son's life.”
- The third recalls, “those three days of anguish when the boy remained in the temple.”
- The fourth and fifth sorrow, he said, see Our Lady meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary and his subsequent death on the Cross.
- Pope Francis noted that in the sixth and seventh sorrow, Mary continues to accompany Jesus when he is taken down from the Cross and then buried.
“It is good for me,” said the Pope, “late in the evening, when I pray the Angelus, to pray these seven sorrows as a remembrance of the Mother of the Church,” who, with so much pain, gave birth to all of us.
Mary as Mother
“Our Lady never asked anything for herself”, Pope Francis underlined. “She only agrees to be a Mother.” She accompanied Jesus like a disciple, because the Gospel shows that she followed Jesus: with her friends, pious women, “she followed Jesus, she listened to Jesus.” The Pope issued an invitation to “Honor Our Lady and say: ‘This is my Mother’, because she is a Mother. And this is the title she received from Jesus, right there, at the moment of the Cross… Our Lady did not want to take away any title from Jesus; she received the gift of being His Mother and the duty to accompany us as Mother, to be our Mother. She did not ask for herself to be a quasi-redeemer or a co-redeemer: no. The Redeemer is one and this title does not duplicate." Concluding his homily, the Pope invited the faithful to thank Our Lady for being a Mother, and to “stop a little and think about Our Lady's pain and sorrows.”
Link:
Pope Francis’ Passion Friday homily (begins at 13’17”)
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DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY
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Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska
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In the 1930s, a Polish nun, Maria Faustina Kowalska, received private revelations from our Lord having to do with Divine Mercy. She began to record the visions in her diary, which eventually record 14 occasions when Jesus requests the observation of a Feast of Divine Mercy. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote: “This was precisely the time when those ideologies of evil, nazism and communism, were taking shape. Sister Faustina became the herald of the one message capable of off-setting the evil of those ideologies, that fact that God is mercy – the truth of the merciful Christ. And for this reason, when I was called to the See of Peter, I felt impelled to pass on those experiences of a fellow Pole that deserve a place in the treasury of the universal Church” (Pope Saint John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 2005). In one vision, Jesus appears with his right hand raised in a blessing, his left touching his garment above his heart, from which red and white rays emanate. This is said to symbolize the blood and water that was poured out for our salvation and our sanctification. Saint Faustina conveyed the promises: “I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish” (Diary, no. 48) and “By means of this image I will grant many graces to souls” (Diary, no. 742). The Holy See declared the Sunday after East “Divine Mercy Sunday” on May 5, 2000. Further links: How to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy; Divine Mercy Novena; Divine Mercy Novena in Time of Pandemic (pdf).
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Anselm of Canterbury, bishop and doctor
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Feastday: April 21
Associated with the English Canterbury, city of his see, and the French Bec, town of his monastery, Anselm was actually an Italian, born in Aosta in the Italian alps, in 1033/34. He took his monastic vows in 1060/61, drawn to the monastery of Bec in part because of its prior Lanfranc. Anselm would later succeed Lanfranc, in 1093, as Archbishop of Canterbury. While Anselm has gained renown as a philosopher and independent thinker, he was also said to have possessed great virtue: patience, gentleness, and skill in teaching, shaping the Abbey of Bec into an influential monastic school. His best-known work is Cur Deus Homo (“Why God Became Man”).
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Mark, evangelist
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Feastday: April 25
Venice in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt have made some of the most substantial claims concerning Mark. The former is said to hold his remains in its ancient Basilica. The latter claims him as their first Bishop. We do not know with certainty which New Testament Mark, if any, is in fact the writer of this gospel. We do know that his gospel, the shortest of the four, turns directly and immediately to the principal message of the gospel, presenting Christ as the eruption of God’s kingdom into our lives. “In this almost breathless narrative, Mark stresses Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God now breaking into human life as good news (Mk 1:14–15) and Jesus himself as the gospel of God (Mk 1:1; 8:35; 10:29). Jesus is the Son whom God has sent to rescue humanity by serving and by sacrificing his life (Mk 10:45)” (USCCB introduction)
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Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor
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Feastday: April 29
Catherine was from an extremely large number of children – she was the 23rd child of Jacopo and Lapa Benincas. Born in 1347, she lived during very difficult times in the history of Europe and the Church. She entered the Dominican Third Order at the age of eighteen, devoted prayer and extreme asceticism. Her holiness came to be recognized, and she assumed more of a leadership role amongst a growing number of followers, rooted in her contemplative life. In 1378, the Great Schism began, dividing the papacy and allegiances in Christendom. Catherine spent her last years in Rome, pleading for the unity of the Church and offering herself for the Church in its agony.
Pope Saint John Paul II said the following of her: “...strengthened by her intimacy with Christ, the Saint of Siena was not afraid to point out frankly even to the Pope, whom she loved dearly as her 'sweet Christ on earth', that the will of God demanded that he should abandon the hesitation born of earthly prudence and worldly interests, and return from Avignon to Rome, to the Tomb of Peter... With similar energy Catherine then strove to overcome the divisions which arose in the papal election following the death of Gregory XI: in that situation too she once more appealed with passionate ardour to the uncompromising demands of ecclesial communion. That was the supreme ideal which inspired her whole life as she spent herself unstintingly for the sake of the Church.” (John Paul II, on declaring her one of three co-patronesses of Europe in 1999)
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