A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

Saint Gabriel was born at Assisi in 1838. He was guided by Our Lady into the Passionist Orderfounded by Saint Paul of the Cross, and became a veritable Apostle of Her Sorrows. He was avery great and truly contemplative soul, whose only preoccupation was to unite himself to God atall times. He allowed no distractions to enter his spirit, and even though Italy, his country, was ina state of ferment when he entered religion, he wanted to know nothing of it.

The way to attain union with our Saviour and our God was, for Saint Gabriel, as for Saint Louisde Montfort, his Heavenly Mother. He wrote home to his father, from the first month of hisnoviciate, “Believe your son, whose heart is speaking by his lips; no, I would not exchange onesingle quarter of an hour spent near the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our consolatrix, ourprotectress and our hope, for a year or several years spent in the diversions and spectacles of theearth.” Among his resolutions was that of visiting Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament each day,and praying for the gift of a tender and efficacious devotion to His Most Holy Mother. He wrotea beautiful Credo, worthy to be printed in letters of gold, expressing all that he believed of theMother of God.

At twenty-four years of age Saint Gabriel died of tuberculosis, having already attained heroicsanctity by a life of self-denial and great devotion to our Lord’s Passion and the Compassion ofHis Mother.

Although his life was without any miraculous event, after his death in 1862 many miraclesoccurred at his tomb in Isola di Gran Sasso, Italy. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in1920, and his feast was extended to the entire church by Pope Pius XI in 1932. He is the patronof youth, and especially of young religious.

St. Leander

Saint Leander was born of an illustrious family at Carthagena in Spain. He was the eldest of fivebrothers, several of whom are numbered among the Saints. He entered into a monastery ofSeville very young, where he lived many years and attained to an eminent degree of virtue andsacred learning. These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville; but hischange of condition made little or no alteration in his way of life, though it brought on him agreat increase of solicitude.

Spain at that time was held in possession by the Visigoths. These Goths, being infected withArianism, established that heresy wherever they came, in such wise that at the time Saint Leanderwas made bishop, it had already reigned in Spain a hundred years. This was his great affliction. Nonetheless, by his prayers to God and by his most zealous and unwearied endeavors, he becamethe happy instrument of the conversion of that nation to the Catholic faith, as his story makesclear.

The holy archbishop had converted, among others, his own nephew Hermenegild, who was theking’s eldest son and heir apparent, and for this he was banished by King Leovigild, his ownbrother-in-law. The pious Catholic prince, now known as Saint Hermenegild, was put to death inprison by his unnatural father in the following year, for refusing to receive Communion from thehands of an Arian bishop. Afterwards, touched by grace and filled with remorse, the king recalledSaint Leander.

When Leovigild fell sick and found himself past hopes of recovery, he sent for Saint Leander, andrecommended to him his other son Recared. This son, by listening to Saint Leander, became aCatholic, and finally brought the whole nation of the Visigoths to the faith. The new kingRecared also brought the Suevi back to Catholic unity; they were a people of Spain whom hisArian father Leovigild had perverted.

Saint Leander was no less zealous in the reformation of morals than in restoring the purity offaith, and planted the seeds of the zeal and fervor which produce martyrs and Saints. He receivedfrom Saint Gregory the Great a painting of the Mother of God by the hand of Saint Luke,Evangelist, since known as Our Lady of Guadelupe (of Spain). It is he who, as a refutation ofArianism, added to the liturgy of Spain the recitation during Mass of the Nicene Creed, whichpractice spread to Rome and then to the entire Church. This holy doctor of Spain died about theyear 596, on the 27^th of February.

St. Lupicinus

Saint Romanus, born in the late fourth century, left his relatives and spent some time in themonastery of Ainay at Lyons, near a large church at the conflux of the Saône and Rhone. Thefaithful had built it in honor of the famous martyrs of that region, whose ashes were thrown intothe Rhone. His purpose for this retreat was to study all the practices of monastic life, and heobtained from the Abbot of Ainay some recently written books on the lives of the Desert Fathers.

At the age of thirty-five, Romanus retired into the forests of Mount Jura, between France andSwitzerland, and fixed his abode at a place called Condate, at the conflux of the rivers Bienne andAliere, where he found a plot of ground fit for culture, and some trees which furnished him withwild fruit. Here he spent his time in praying, reading, and laboring for his subsistence. Lupicinus,his brother, came to him there, accompanied by several other disciples, who then were followedby still others, drawn by the fame of the virtue and miracles of these two Saints. Othermonasteries became necessary. Saint Romanus, when he was 54 years old, was ordained a priestby Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers; he remained simple in his conduct and never sought anyprivileges among his brethren.

As their numbers increased, the brothers built several monasteries as well as a convent for theirsister and other women, called La Baume; before Saint Romanus died, there were already fivehundred nuns cloistered there in prayer and sacrifice. They kept strict silence, and like theirbrothers, sons or relatives in the nearby monastery of Lauconne, considered themselves as personsdead to the present life.

The two brothers governed the monks jointly and in great harmony, though they were of differentdispositions; the gentleness of the first was balanced by the severity of the other, according toneed. When a group of rebellious monks departed, Saint Romanus, by his patience and prayer,won them back, and if they departed a second or even a third time, received them with the samekindness. When Lupicinus, whose habits were very mortified, reproached him for his leniency, hereplied that God alone knew the depths of hearts, and that among those who never departed,there were some whose fervor had declined, whereas some of those who returned after leavingeven three times, were serving God in exemplary piety; and finally, that among the brethren whoremained outside the monastery, certain ones had religiously practiced the maxims they hadlearned in the monastery, even becoming priests and authorities for other religious functions oroffices.

Saint Romanus died about the year 460, and Saint Lupicinus survived him for twenty years.

St. Oswald

Oswald was of a noble Saxon family; he was endowed with a very rare and handsome appearanceand with a singular piety of soul. Brought up by his uncle, Saint Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury,he was chosen, while still young, as dean of the secular canons of Winchester, at that time verylax. His attempt to reform them was a failure, and he saw, with that infallible instinct which sooften guides the Saints in critical times, that the true remedy for the corruption of the clergy wasthe restoration of monastic life.

He therefore went to France and took the habit of Saint Benedict. When he returned to England itwas to receive the news of Odo’s death. He found, however, a new patron in Saint Dunstan,Archbishop of Canterbury, through whose influence he was nominated to the see of Worcester. To these two Saints, together with Ethelwold of Winchester, the monastic revival of the tenthcentury is mainly due.

Oswald’s first care was to deprive of their benefices all disorderly secular clerics, whom hereplaced as far as possible by religious priests. He himself founded seven religious houses. Considering that in the hearts of the secular canons of Winchester there were yet some sparks ofvirtue, he would not at once dismiss them, but rather reformed them through a holy artifice. Adjoining their cathedral church he built a chapel in honor of the Mother of God, causing it to beserved by a body of strict religious. He himself assisted at the divine Office there, and hisexample was followed by the people. The canons, finding themselves isolated and the churchdeserted, chose rather to embrace the religious life than continue to injure their own souls, and bealso a mockery to their people, through the contrast offered by their worldliness and the regularityof their religious brethren.

Later, as Archbishop of York, Saint Oswald met a like success in his efforts. God manifested Hisapproval of his zeal by discovering to him the relics of his great predecessor at Worcester, SaintWilfrid, which he reverently translated to the church of that city. He died while washing the feetof the poor, as he did daily during Lent, on February 29, 992.

St. Romanus and Lupicinus

Saint Romanus, born in the late fourth century, left his relatives and spent some time in themonastery of Ainay at Lyons, near a large church at the conflux of the Saône and Rhone. Thefaithful had built it in honor of the famous martyrs of that region, whose ashes were thrown intothe Rhone. His purpose for this retreat was to study all the practices of monastic life, and heobtained from the Abbot of Ainay some recently written books on the lives of the Desert Fathers.

At the age of thirty-five, Romanus retired into the forests of Mount Jura, between France andSwitzerland, and fixed his abode at a place called Condate, at the conflux of the rivers Bienne andAliere, where he found a plot of ground fit for culture, and some trees which furnished him withwild fruit. Here he spent his time in praying, reading, and laboring for his subsistence. Lupicinus,his brother, came to him there, accompanied by several other disciples, who then were followedby still others, drawn by the fame of the virtue and miracles of these two Saints. Othermonasteries became necessary. Saint Romanus, when he was 54 years old, was ordained a priestby Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers; he remained simple in his conduct and never sought anyprivileges among his brethren.

As their numbers increased, the brothers built several monasteries as well as a convent for theirsister and other women, called La Baume; before Saint Romanus died, there were already fivehundred nuns cloistered there in prayer and sacrifice. They kept strict silence, and like theirbrothers, sons or relatives in the nearby monastery of Lauconne, considered themselves as personsdead to the present life.

The two brothers governed the monks jointly and in great harmony, though they were of differentdispositions; the gentleness of the first was balanced by the severity of the other, according toneed. When a group of rebellious monks departed, Saint Romanus, by his patience and prayer,won them back, and if they departed a second or even a third time, received them with the samekindness. When Lupicinus, whose habits were very mortified, reproached him for his leniency, hereplied that God alone knew the depths of hearts, and that among those who never departed,there were some whose fervor had declined, whereas some of those who returned after leavingeven three times, were serving God in exemplary piety; and finally, that among the brethren whoremained outside the monastery, certain ones had religiously practiced the maxims they hadlearned in the monastery, even becoming priests and authorities for other religious functions oroffices.

Saint Romanus died about the year 460, and Saint Lupicinus survived him for twenty years.

Daily Mass