December Saints

Feast December 4
Doctor of the Church

John Damascene, a personage of prime importance in the history of Byzantine Theology, a great Doctor in the history of the Universal Church. Above all he was an eyewitness of the passage from the Greek and Syrian Christian cultures shared by the Eastern part of the Byzantine Empire, to the Islamic culture, which spread through its military conquests in the territory commonly known as the Middle or Near East. John, born into a wealthy Christian family, at an early age assumed the role, perhaps already held by his father, of Treasurer of the Caliphate. Very soon, however, dissatisfied with life at court, he decided on a monastic life, and entered the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. This was around the year 700. He never again left the monastery, but dedicated all his energy to ascesis and literary work, not disdaining a certain amount of pastoral activity, as is shown by his numerous homilies. His liturgical commemoration is on the 4 December. Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him Doctor of the Universal Church in 1890. 
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Feast Day: December 6
BISHOP OF MYRA (4TH CENTURY)

One of the most popular medieval saints, both in the Eastern Church and the Church in the West, was Nicholas of Myra. Nearly nothing is known of his life aside from his being a Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor during the 4lh century. This, however, has not prevented the creation of a multitude of legends or readings, to supply the need for a colorful life of the saint. Although Myra is the site of Nicholas’ episcopate, Bari in Northern Italy is the place where his reputed remains lie, the result of the theft from his tomb by Italian merchants in 1087 in order to provide a pilgrimage center where miracles could take place through the saint’s intercession. Venice procured the relics of Saint Mark by a similar theft from Alexandria in 468 for the honor attached to the shrine of an evangelist and securing his patronage. Such pilfering is often given the euphemistic name of translation and celebrated by a special feast day commemorating the transferal.
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Feast: December 7
Father of the Church 

Holy Bishop Ambrose died in Milan in the night between 3 and 4 April 397. It was dawn on Holy Saturday. The day before, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, he had settled down to pray, lying on his bed with his arms wide open in the form of a cross. Thus, he took part in the solemn Easter Triduum, in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. "We saw his lips moving", said Paulinus, the faithful deacon who wrote his Life at St Augustine's suggestion, "but we could not hear his voice". The situation suddenly became dramatic. Honoratus, Bishop of Vercelli, who was assisting Ambrose and was sleeping on the upper floor, was awoken by a voice saying again and again, "Get up quickly! Ambrose is dying...". "Honoratus hurried downstairs", Paulinus continues, "and offered the Saint the Body of the Lord. As soon as he had received and swallowed it, Ambrose gave up his spirit, taking the good Viaticum with him. His soul, thus refreshed by the virtue of that food, now enjoys the company of Angels" (Life, 47). On that Holy Friday 397, the wide open arms of the dying Ambrose expressed his mystical participation in the death and Resurrection of the Lord. This was his last catechesis: in the silence of the words, he continued to speak with the witness of his life.
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Feast: December 12

On December 9,  1531, Juan Diego,an Indian peasant about 50 years old was walking near an ancient pagan site near Mexico City, a hill once sacred to the earth goddess, Tonanzin. Sud­denly, he saw an apparition of Our Lady, who told him to go to the archbishop and erect a church on this spot which was to be dedicated to her. In the pattern of subsequent apparitions of Our Lady in France, Portugal and most recently in Croatia, the message was greeted with skepticism until a miracle con­firmed the apparition. This took the form of roses sprouting at the site which Juan Diego gathered up in his cloak at the command of the Virgin and brought to the archbishop three days after the first vision, on December 12. When he opened his cloak, the roses fell on to the ground before the archbishop and on the cloth was a miraculous painting of Our Lady portrayed as she is in the Book of Revelation, with a crescent moon at her feet and 12 stars at her head, clad in a blue robe decorated with golden stars surrounded by rays of the sun. Supporting her is a cherub with Indian features. Mary likewise has the face of an Indian. Ever since, Our Lady has had a central place in popular devotion in Mexico, her cult spreading quickly through­out Spanish America and beyond.

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