July 31 : St Ignatius of Loyola, Class III

St Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) founded the Jesuits. 

Originally a soldier by profession, he underwent a conversion process induced by a long period of recovery from broken bones.

His famous spiritual exercizes drew heavily on a Benedictine set of exercizes, but in general it must be said that, while at various times attempts to combine Benedictine and Ignatian spirituality have been made with some success, in their fundamentals, such as approach to liturgy, they are deeply at odds!

July 30: SS Abdon and Sennen, Martyrs, Memorial

SS Abdon and Sennen were early Persian martyrs.  The Golden Legend relates their story:

"Abdon and Sennen suffered martyrdom under Decius the emperor. When Decius the emperor had surmounted Babylon and the other provinces, he found some christian men within the city, and brought them with him to the city of Corduba. And made them there to die by divers torments. And then Abdon and Sennen, which were as governors of the country, took the bodies and buried them.

Then were they accused and brought to Decius, and he did do lead them with him bound in chains to Rome. Then were they brought before Decius, and before the senators. Then was it commanded that they should do sacrifice, and they should have all their things freely, or else they should be devoured by bitings of wild beasts.

But they despised to make sacrifice, and spit against the false idols and statues; and then were they drawn to the place of martyrdom, and made to be brought to them two lions and two bears, which did to them no harm, nor touched them, but rather kept them from harm. Then began they to cast spears and swords at them, and at last they were all torn with swords, and then they were bound by the feet and drawn through the town unto the idol of the sun, and when they had lain there three days, Quirinus, sub-deacon, took the bodies up and buried them in his house. And they suffered death about the year of our Lord two hundred and fifty-three."

July 29: SS Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrice, Martyrs, Memorial

c14th manuscript

Today's saints are all early martyrs - Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrice were siblings martyred under Diocletian around 302. Nothing is known of St Felix beyond his name, not least because of a longstanding confusion between him and an antipope of the same name.

July 26: SS Joachim and Anne, Class III

Tradition, drawing on the (non-canonical but very early) Gospel of James, gives us Saints Joachim and Anne as the names of the father and mother of the Mother of God.

In the Protoevangelium of James, Joachim is described as a rich and pious man of the house of David who regularly gave to the poor and to the temple (synagogue) at Sepphoris.  However, as his wife was barren, the high priest rejected Joachim and his sacrifice, as his wife's childlessness was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure. Joachim consequently withdrew to the desert where he fasted and did penance for forty days. Angels then appeared to both Joachim and Anne to promise them a child. Joachim later returned to Jerusalem and embraced Anne at the city gate.

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that "the apocryphal character of these writings, that is to say, their rejection from the canon, and their ungenuineness do not imply that no heed whatever should be taken of some of their assertions; side by side, indeed, with unwarranted and legendary facts, they contain some historical data borrowed from reliable traditions or documents; and difficult though it is to distinguish in them the wheat from the tares, it would be unwise and uncritical indiscriminately to reject the whole."

July 25: St James the greater, Class II

St James the Moorslayer
Anonymous, 18th century, Cuzco School of Peru

St James was the son of Zabadee and Salome, and brother of St John.  He was executed by the sword on the orders of Herod around 44 AD (Acts 12).  His remains are at Compostela in Spain, the destination of many of the major pilgrimage routes of Europe.

Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on the apostle in 2006:

"We are continuing the series of portraits of the Apostles chosen directly by Jesus during his earthly life. We have spoken of St Peter and of his brother, Andrew. Today we meet the figure of James. The biblical lists of the Twelve mention two people with this name: James, son of Zebedee, and James, son of Alphaeus (cf. Mk 3: 17,18; Mt 10: 2-3), who are commonly distinguished with the nicknames "James the Greater" and "James the Lesser".

These titles are certainly not intended to measure their holiness, but simply to state the different importance they receive in the writings of the New Testament and, in particular, in the setting of Jesus' earthly life. Today we will focus our attention on the first of these two figures with the same name.

The name "James" is the translation of Iakobos, the Graecised form of the name of the famous Patriarch, Jacob. The Apostle of this name was the brother of John and in the above-mentioned lists, comes second, immediately after Peter, as occurs in Mark (3: 17); or in the third place, after Peter and Andrew as in the Gospels of Matthew (10: 2) and Luke (6: 14), while in the Acts he comes after Peter and John (1: 13). This James belongs, together with Peter and John, to the group of the three privileged disciples whom Jesus admitted to important moments in his life.

Since it is very hot today, I want to be brief and to mention here only two of these occasions. James was able to take part, together with Peter and John, in Jesus' Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the event of Jesus' Transfiguration. Thus, it is a question of situations very different from each other: in one case, James, together with the other two Apostles, experiences the Lord's glory and sees him talking to Moses and Elijah, he sees the divine splendour shining out in Jesus.

On the other occasion, he finds himself face to face with suffering and humiliation, he sees with his own eyes how the Son of God humbles himself, making himself obedient unto death. The latter experience was certainly an opportunity for him to grow in faith, to adjust the unilateral, triumphalist interpretation of the former experience: he had to discern that the Messiah, whom the Jewish people were awaiting as a victor, was in fact not only surrounded by honour and glory, but also by suffering and weakness. Christ's glory was fulfilled precisely on the Cross, in his sharing in our sufferings.

This growth in faith was brought to completion by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that James, when the moment of supreme witness came, would not draw back. Early in the first century, in the 40s, King Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, as Luke tells us, "laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the Church. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword" (Acts 12: 1-2).

The brevity of the news, devoid of any narrative detail, reveals on the one hand how normal it was for Christians to witness to the Lord with their own lives, and on the other, that James had a position of relevance in the Church of Jerusalem, partly because of the role he played during Jesus' earthly existence.

A later tradition, dating back at least to Isidore of Seville, speaks of a visit he made to Spain to evangelize that important region of the Roman Empire. According to another tradition, it was his body instead that had been taken to Spain, to the city of Santiago de Compostela.

As we all know, that place became the object of great veneration and is still the destination of numerous pilgrimages, not only from Europe but from the whole world. This explains the iconographical representation of St James with the pilgrim's staff and the scroll of the Gospel in hand, typical features of the travelling Apostle dedicated to the proclamation of the "Good News" and characteristics of the pilgrimage of Christian life.

Consequently, we can learn much from St James: promptness in accepting the Lord's call even when he asks us to leave the "boat" of our human securities, enthusiasm in following him on the paths that he indicates to us over and above any deceptive presumption of our own, readiness to witness to him with courage, if necessary to the point of making the supreme sacrifice of life.

Thus James the Greater stands before us as an eloquent example of generous adherence to Christ. He, who initially had requested, through his mother, to be seated with his brother next to the Master in his Kingdom, was precisely the first to drink the chalice of the passion and to share martyrdom with the Apostles.

And, in the end, summarizing everything, we can say that the journey, not only exterior but above all interior, from the mount of the Transfiguration to the mount of the Agony, symbolizes the entire pilgrimage of Christian life, among the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God, as the Second Vatican Council says. In following Jesus, like St James, we know that even in difficulties we are on the right path."

July 23: Our Lady on Saturday; St Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr, Memorial



c6th mosaic,
Basilica of St Apollinaris in Classe, Ravenna

 St Apollinarius was the first bishop of Ravenna, appointed by St Peter according to tradition.

One of the first great martyrs of the Church, his forthright preaching against paganism led to him being  was beaten up and left for dead on the seashore.  Although kept in hiding for a while by his fellow Christians, he was captured again and compelled to walk on burning coals and a second time expelled from the city. But he remained nearby, and continued to preach. 

When he returned to Ravenna a third time, he was captured, hacked with knives, had scalding water poured over his wounds, was beaten in the mouth with stones because he persisted in preaching, and then, loaded with chains, was flung into a horrible dungeon to starve to death; but after four days he was put on board ship and sent to Greece.

After three years of preaching there, he returned once more to Ravenna. At this time the Emperor Vespasian issued a decree of banishment for all Christians, and as the bishop was passing out of the gates of the city, he was set upon and savagely beaten, probably at Classis, a suburb, but he lived for seven days, foretelling meantime that the persecutions would increase, but that the Church would ultimately triumph.

The precise date of his consecration cannot be ascertained, but he was Bishop of Ravenna for twenty-six years.

July 22: St Mary Magdalen, Class III

Today is the feast of the most famous penitent saint, St Mary Magdalene. 

Few saints have attracted so many attempts at revisionist history. On the one hand, protestant horror at the idea of a sinner turned saint has gained new followers amongst those attempting to make her a feminist heroine; while on the other, assorted conspiracy theorists have seized on apocryphal works on her life. The traditional Latin liturgy, however, insists on her identity as both the penitent woman and the sister of Lazarus and Martha.  Tradition holds that St Mary and her brother went to Provence after the Resurrection, where St Mary became a hermit.

In a General Audience on 'Women at the service of the Gospel', Pope Benedict XVI commented:

"The Gospels then tell us that the women, unlike the Twelve, did not abandon Jesus in the hour of his Passion (cf. Mt 27: 56, 61; Mk 15: 40). Among them, Mary Magdalene stands out in particular. Not only was she present at the Passion, but she was also the first witness and herald of the Risen One (cf. Jn 20: 1, 11-18).

It was precisely to Mary Magdalene that St Thomas Aquinas reserved the special title, "Apostle of the Apostles" (apostolorum apostola), dedicating to her this beautiful comment: "Just as a woman had announced the words of death to the first man, so also a woman was the first to announce to the Apostles the words of life" (Super Ioannem, ed. Cai, 2519)."