April Saints and Feasts

Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska

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).

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)

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)