St. Sebastian is is often depicted as tied to a tree and pierced by many arrows. Ambrose says Sebastian was from Milan and was venerated there during Ambrose's episcopate in the latter part of the 4th century. It appears Sebastian died in the great persecution...
St. Vincent was a deacon of the Church of Saragossa, Spain in the first years of the fourth century. In the course of the brutal persecution of the emperor Diocletian, Vincent was apprehended and ordered to surrender the sacred books. When he refused, he was...
This prayer is an excerpt from a sermon On the Trinity by Saint Hilary of Poitiers, a bishop and early Church Father of the fourth century who struggled valiantly against the Arian heresy, defending the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity....
January 1 is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics not because it is New Years, but because it is the octave (8th day) of Christmas, the feast of Mary the Mother of God. This feast helps bring home the reality of the incarnation, that...
Leo the Great reminds us that Christmas, the nativity of the Lord Jesus, is the birthday of peace and our birthday as well, since we are members of Christ's body, the Church....
St. Thomas Becket gave his life rather than allow his king to trample the rights of God and his church. Here he exhorts fellow Christian leaders to the courage and initiative that he exemplified. Without real effort he writes, no one wins the crown. His...
The Feast of the Epiphany occurs soon after Christmas. Epiphany means revelation, appearance, or manifestation of a king. In this case it refers to the visit of the wise men to the cradle of a baby who was revealed to them as the King of...
Quodvultdeus on the story recounted in Matthew's gospel of innumerable babies in Bethlehem by Herod's soldiers in an attempt to kill Jesus, the newborn king. These children are considered martyrs and are remembered on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, the 4th...
We all know the elements of the Christmas story: Caesar's census and Herod, shepherds and Magi, ox, swaddling clothes & manger, a stable and not room in the inn, Emmanuel and the Prince of Peace. But underneath each of these people, places, and things,...
Saint Leo says the genealogy of Jesus given us in Luke and Matthew's gospels shows that Jesus was truly one of us, possessing a complete human nature. He did not merely appear in human form, as in the biblical types and scriptural symbols of the...