Saint of the day

Saint of the day

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.

May 23: Saint Giovanni Battista de’ Rossi

Charity towards the poor and proclamation of the Gospel

He visited the sick in Roman hospitals, managed a night shelter for the homeless, devoted himself to listening to penitents who crowded his confessional. He is Father Giovanni Battista de' Rossi, born on February 22, 1698, in Voltaggio (Genoa). At about thirteen years of age, he moved to Rome to study literature and philosophy at the Roman College and lived with a cousin who was a priest, a canon in Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

May 22: Saint Rita of Cascia

Woman of Dialogue and Peace

Wife, mother, widow, nun. It was the arduous human journey that led Rita to become a Saint. She is among the most well-known women in the world, certainly among the most loved and invoked in the ecclesial community after the Virgin Mary. An example of unshakable faith in God, passionate love, so much so that for 15 years she shared with Christ the wound of a thorn driven into her forehead.

May 21: Saint Christopher Magallanes and 24 companions martyred

Pastor to the point of sacrificing his life

The Church in Mexico had to overcome a terrible test, that of persecution and marginalization. With the law of 1917, known as the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico, inspired by anti-religious and anti-clerical hatred, the harassment of Christians was institutionally increased. Pope Pius XI dedicated the Encyclical Iniquis Afflictisque, beseeching against the prevalent persecution of the Church by the government in Mexico, attributed "arrogance" and " madness " for the intent "to undermine and crumble the house of the Lord".

May 20: Saint Bernardino of Siena

The Apostle of the Name of Jesus

He traveled throughout Italy in his time, preaching and calling for conversion, pacification and a return to God. He promoted the devotion to the Name of Jesus, which he coined in the trigram “IHS”, inserted inside the form of a sun with twelve rays. He is Bernardino of Siena, a Friar Minor of the Observance, who tried to bring back, first his fellow citizens, to a personal friendship with God and, then, throughout the Italian peninsula to the multitudes who came far and wide to listen to his sermons.