Saint of the day

Saint of the day

May 30: Saint Joan of Arc

Obedient to the voice of God

A “strong” woman who followed the impulse of the Spirit and obeyed the voice of the Lord asking her to free her people and to restore faith for those in desolation. A laywoman, consecrated to virginity yet not cloistered, Joan of Arc was involved in the most dramatic conflicts of the Church and society of the time. Condemned as a heretic through a purely political show trial, she was sentenced to a tragic death even before her trial began - burned at the stake in the old market square of Rouen.

May 29: Saint Bona of Pisa

The pilgrim in search of God

She made pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela no fewer than nine times and spent ten years in the Holy Land. She became a hermit and later an oblate, eventually becoming a spiritual point of reference for the entire city. Her name was Bona.

May 28: Saint Emilio, martyr

Emilio - martyred like St. Stephen

There is no certain information about the life of Emilio. Tradition places him as having lived around the 1st century and having been Bishop of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia.

Saint Emilio, together with Saints Felix, Priamo and Feliciano, is celebrated today and is most likely one of the four Sardinian martyrs who are commemorated in the Martyrology of St. Jerome. In Sardinia he is venerated in various places, especially in the town Sestu.

May 26: Saint Philip Neri

“Brothers, be cheerful, laugh, joke as much as you want, but do not sin!”

He was known and loved by the populace of Rome for his cheerful and peaceful character, able to involve the entire city in his spiritual journey, beseeching charity towards the weakest and most neglected of society. He is Philip Neri, born in Florence on July 21, 1515, to Francesco and Lucrezia da Mosciano Neri. His father was a notary when he lost his wife in 1520. He remarried Alessandra di Michele Lensi, who took care of little Philip, who attended public school and was educated by the Dominicans of the convent of San Marco.

May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi

The mysticism of the love of God

Perhaps they took her for a madwoman when she pealed the bells of the monastery to call her Sisters and all creatures to the love of God. She shouted: “Come, souls to love love!” It was May 3rd, 1592, when Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, running through the corridors of the monastery, invited people to love Christ.

Impressed by her “excesses of love for God”, the religious authorities of the time asked the nuns of the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence to faithfully transcribe the words she pronounced during her ecstasies and to document what she saw and felt.

May 24: Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians

A Mother close to her children 

To invoke Mary, with the title of Help of Christians or Help of Christians, means to recognize her as Mother and Queen. It expresses, in particular, the filial affection of the faithful towards She, who was the first Disciple of the Son.