I've been working on the website for the Society of St. Gregory the Great, a group interesting in bringing and supporting the Traditional Latin Mass to Johnson County, Kansas.

As part of this project, I wanted to introduce the namesake to people who might be interested. Pope St. Gregory the Great is one of the most notable figures in Catholic history and worth getting to know.

Here is the story of Pope. St. Gregory the Great, reprinted from the Society's website.

Pope St. Gregory the Great was the 64th Pope of the Catholic Church. He was a monk, deacon, priest, pastor, papal nuncio, abbot and later pope, saint and Doctor of the Church.

Gregory was born in 540 as a citizen of Rome. By the time he was 30 years old, he had a successful political job as the Prefect of Rome, but decided to leave it for the monastic life. By all accounts, he loved living as a monk, dedicating his life to quiet contemplation of God and trying to make himself fit for Heaven by self-imposed discipline and long periods of fasting. He was called out of his cloistered monastic life by Pope Pelagius II when the Holy Father appointed Gregory as a Deacon of Rome in 579.

As Deacon (a job that is defined very differently than today), he served as an ambassador to the Court of Byzantium in Constantinople. It was a very tumultuous time for Rome, the Church and Gregory. The Lombards, enemies of Rome, were making military advances toward the city. The Church was encouraging political alliances with Tiberius in the Byzantine Court. And Gregory was trying to live a monastic life in a political job to the best of his ability, keeping time for prayers and scriptural study in additon to his duties to the Court. About 6 years later, when his appointment was over, he returned to his monastic life in Rome and soon became abbot of his community.

In this time, he learned of a youth slave trade in what is now England. The practice upset him so much that he set out to convert the Anglo world, getting permission from Pope Pelagius II, he took a handful of fellow monks and set out to convert Britain. It was here that he coined the clever phrase, "They are not Angles, but Angels"; Gregory is one of the patron saints of England.

By the time Gregory was 50 years old, Pelagius died and Gregory was elected as the Pope-- a job he reluctantly accepted. Pope Gregory would reign as pontiff for the next 14 years.

There were a number of different liturgies of the Church at this time with widely variant practices. Gregory is most notably known for sorting through these different liturgies and assembling a standard Mass for Christianity-- Scholars agree that this is the first thing that is fully recognizable as the Holy Mass, incorporating standard rubrics and fixed prayers that are still in use today. Even the style of Chant still used in Catholic liturgies today had its origin with this pope, the style is even still called "Gregorian Chant"!

Pope Gregory also taught and developed the doctrine of Purgatory, helped mould the papacy into a more authoritative office and is known as a great reformer of the Church. He presided over Christianity as it faced threats from the Huns, Goths and Lombards, he drained the papal treasury to ransom prisoners from the Lombards and Franks and gave abundant charity to the sick and poor.

In summing up his legacy, the Catholic Encyclopedia states it nicely:

It is beyond the scope of this notice to attempt any elaborate estimate of the work, influence, and character of Pope Gregory the Great, but some short focusing of the features given above is only just.

First of all, perhaps, it will be best to clear the ground by admitting frankly what Gregory was not. He was not a man of profound learning, not a philosopher, not a conversationalist, hardly even a theologian in the constructive sense of the term. He was a trained Roman lawyer and administrator, a monk, a missionary, a preacher, above all a physician of souls and a leader of men. His great claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he is the real father of the medieval papacy.

When he died on March 12, 604, St. Gregory was immediately canonized by public acclaim.

Pope St. Gregory the Great was the first person to be named "Doctor of the Church", the first monk to be elected to the papacy and the first pope to carry the title of "The Great". He personally founded seven monasteries, was one of the first popes to send missionaries out to foreign lands and gathered unity over lands in Europe to form what would later be called the "Papal States".

He is the patron saint of the papacy, the patron of school children, choirs and educators. He is the patron of a number of countries, of stone masons, of musicians. He is considered the founder of the ancient Mass and is the namesake of the Society of St. Gregory the Great.

St. Gregory the Great, ora pro nobis!

If you live in Johnson County and are interested in supporting the Traditional Latin Mass, please visit the website to find out what is going on with our group. We're making a lot of progress, but really need to show good broad-based support from people in our part of the Archdiocese. Please look into the Society and help by praying for us. We'll pray for you too!

Today is the the feast day of St. Lawrence of Rome. You can read more about St. Larry in this post where I named him patron.

St. Lawrence is the patron of brewers, comedians, barbeque and WhollyRoaminCatholic.com.

Today I'm going to smoke some pork ribs and drink a little beer in his honor. (That's my kind of saint!)

St. Lawrence, pray for us!

As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm a big fan of the saints. Not a New Orleans football fan, mind you, but the saints of Christian history. They're like God's Hall of Fame--people who dedicated their lives to His work deserve a bit of credit and notoriety, if you ask me.

As a matter of definition, a "saint" is simply a person who made it to heaven. So in that respect, all Christians aspire to be saints--we'd all like to get our number called after we die. But this should not be confused with a "canonized saint", which is basically what most of us think about when we consider saints. Canonization is the formal process that the Church goes through to recognize saintliness and a feast day to added to the Church calendar-- to be listed in the "canon", if you will. There are millions and millions of saints, that is, souls in heaven. The number of "canonized" saints can change from time to time as the Church tinkers with her calendar--but saints given a feast day can be recognized on that day, even if the Church isn't going to mention it at Mass that day.

Today has a saint tied to it. Every day has a saint tied to it. In fact, every day has a NUMBER of saints tied to it, as a day might be shared by a dozen or more saints. But of course, some days and some saints are more notable than others.

Today is kind of a hodgepodge day, a mishmash of lesser-known saints like Saint Gallicanus and Saint William of Vercelli. Good people, I'm sure. But they're not exactly household names.

The process of canonization was not always a rigorous affair like it is today. Wikipedia has a nice description of the current process that has been developing since the 15th Century, but it wasn't always like that. People were declared saints by a kind of "popular acclaim". A bunch of living people who knew the dead person all kind of just agreed that that person was saintly. They'd share the deceased's stories with other people and it'd go from there. As you can imagine, sometimes the stories would get a little worked up. Take Saint Febronia of Nisibis, for example. Today is her feast day. Saint Febronia was almost certainly a real person--arrested for being a Christian in the dangerous days of early Christianity. She was likely tortured or murdered under the reign of the Roman Emperor Caesar Diocletian (how do you think Rome kept finding enough people to be slaughtered in the Coliseum?). Most of the verifiable story ends here, but Tradition sometimes goes further. We'll skip the extravagantly gruesome tales of torture and mutilation, but suffice to say that she's often pictured with a pair of shears used to cut off her breasts. It's a pretty gross story which was likely embellished in the retelling.

These were the days before journalism, sometimes history has some other stuff added in there.

Take the story of Saint Christopher--one of the most famous saints in the Christian tradition, despite some modern opinions that St. Christopher might have been more legend than human.

Saint Christopher, whose feast day is a month from today, is a perplexing figure. His story might be a conflation of several people, he might have been an exaggeration of an actual person, he might be a total figment. There is some verifiable evidence that an actual person was born in the 3rd Century named "Offero".

The story holds that Offero was a brute of a man who decided that if he was going to serve a king, he would serve the greatest king he could find. Offero found a strong and wealthy military ruler and enlisted in his army--but noticed that whenever mentioned the devil, the king worriedly blessed himself with the Sign of the Cross. Intrigued by this act, Offero decided to serve the devil--who was so powerful that a strong and wealthy king trembled in fear at the mere sound of his name. Offero found a group of bandits, one of whom claimed to be the devil. He joined their gang to rob travelers and abuse their countryside, when one day they came upon a cross at the side of the road. The one who claimed he was a devil ran in fear when he saw the cross--Offero wondered what the cross meant and why it made the strong devil into a running coward. So he left the gang and wandered alone until he found a hermit monk who taught him about Christ and told Offero that he was to find Jesus and serve Him. It was a confusing order for Offero, who could never actually find this person the hermit told him about. In the meantime, Offero went around helping and serving any person he came across, always seeking to serve Jesus Himself. One day, he came across a young boy by a river who asked Offero to help him across. The brute picked up the child, put him on his shoulders and set out to wade across the river, staff in hand. As the water got deeper and deeper, the boy became heavier and heavier. He was a crushing weight on Offero's shoulders and Offero struggled against the strong current. He exclaimed that this boy was like having the weight of the world on his shoulders and demanded to know who the child was--the child replied that he was Jesus Christ and that Offero would thenceforth be known as Christ's Bearer--or Christopher. The boy baptized Christopher with water from the river.

There was an actual martyr named Christopher who was captured and beheaded during the reign of the Roman Emperor Decius. Some historical evidence for this person exists and, like most fantastic stories, the fantasy is grounded in some measurable fact. But facts here are scarce and it's possible that most of the legend of Saint Christopher might simply be made up. Are he and Offero the same person? Again, it gets murky. Accordingly, Saint Christopher was de-listed in the Roman Canon and the Church no longer makes a big deal out of his feast day. This process, called de-canonization, does not mean that Christopher is no longer a saint, just that he's not a major part of the calendar anymore.

So what, then, is a Catholic to think of a possibly fictional saint? Saint Christopher is the patron of travelers, boatmen, bachelors, porters, toothaches and motorists; generations of Catholics have asked for Saint Christopher's intervention, they've held his medals during turbulent airplane rides and asked for his prayers on stormy seas. Was all of it for naught? Well, no. A saint is, simply, a person in heaven--and no calendar editing can change that! And if the story of a 3rd Century Christ-bearing giant is a fanciful tale, our Lord in heaven still hears our pleas and holds us closely.

Like the Irish (and those who aspire to be Irish) will always revere Saint Patrick on his day and how lovers (and those who aspire to be lovers) will always remember Saint Valentine on his day, so we can turn to the Communion of Saints every day of the year. They're to serve as role-models for our lives in some capacity or another--since we all aspire to go to Heaven in the end. It's our Hall of Fame, and we all hope to get that call one day.

School begins again tonight.

For the last several months, I've been taking night class as part of some post-baccalaureate work. It's mostly been re-taking Community College classes that I abandoned years ago and taking "easy-A" classes where I could pluck some low-hanging fruit from the GPA tree. Tonight starts something different: I'm taking a class at Avila University for some specific coursework. I'd rather not go into it too deeply on this blog, but if we hang out sometime, I'll tell you more.

I'm kind of excited and nervous to start this next phase in my academics. In a sense, I've been working to this point for a couple years now. In another, this is something that I've never done before. I was never a very good student--I couldn't really commit or focus on my studies, now I've really got to dig in and do something different.

Avila University is a private college in Kansas City. It's run by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet, (St. Louis Province), a community of nuns that also run an all-girls high school in KC. I don't know much about these nuns and wonder if I'll have a chance to learn more about their order by going to the school.

The school itself is named for Saint Teresa of Avila, one of the most famous women in Catholic history and one of the few saints to carry the title "Doctor of the Church".

Teresa was born in Avila, Spain in 1515. She was raised by a rigid somber father and a fanciful yet pious mother who often told stories to their children about the great saints of Christian history. Teresa and her brother were thought to be innocent troublemakers, one day they decided to be like the great martyrs and saints--and decided to sneak away to "the land of the Moors and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there". It's a noble act to be killed in the name of Christianity, and these two souls figured no one kills Christians more certainly than Muslims. Their plan was foiled when their uncle spotted them sneaking out of the famous walls of the city of Avila and returned them to their father for a certain measure of discipline.

As a teenager, Teresa was pretty typical. She was into boys, clothes, flirting sneaking around behind her fuddy-duddy parents (some things never change). The life was enough for her father who sent a 16-year-old Teresa to the convent of some Augustinian nuns. She lasted about a year and a half at the convent, owing mostly to some health trouble before she left. The convent was less strict than her father, so when she left, Teresa lived with some relatives, including an uncle who taught her about the Letters of Saint Jerome. This inspired Teresa to re-try a religious life, figuring that she was such a sinner that a convent was the only place safe for a girl like her.

She joined the Carmelites and commenced a life of study and writing. She wrote lots of eschatological books about sin and redemption--some of which were well received and some were not. Today, her writings are considered the most amazing and remarkable mystical literature in the history of the Church. But in her day, she had an uneven reputation. She eventually ended up leaving her cloister, thinking that they'd become too lax. Teresa formed a new cloister of Carmelite nuns that was stricter than her previous convent that revived some old ignored Carmelite rules and added some other like ceremonial flagellation and forgoing shoes for wooden sandals, giving this new convent the name "Discalced Carmelites".

Teresa's convent (and the subsequent monastery founded by St. John of the Cross--a fascinating dude) did not have it easy in the beginning. The Carmelite cloister than she broke from was highly distrustful of Teresa's new community, and if not for the local bishop, would have certainly been closed. She was a rabble-rouser and was considered by the more mainstream Carmelites as a person that shouldn't be trusted. She saw amazing visions of Jesus throughout her life, some people thought these visions were diabolical tortures of the devil, though Teresa steadfastly maintained they were from heaven, she was subject to the infamous Spanish Inquisition and to the scrutiny of the King of Spain.

Her last days were miserable. Tired, sick and tormented by her superiors, she was persecuted alongside of her friends and fellow nuns of the convent. She was sent on various tasks around the Spanish countryside at the request of the Archbishop, eventually succumbing to illness and death on a useless trip to attend to a noblewoman during her childbirth, to arrive after the child had already been born. Theresa would pass away shortly thereafter.

Saint Teresa of Avila is revered as one of the finest mystics and writers of the Counter-Reformation. Known alternately as St. Teresa of Jesus, St. Theresa of Avila, the Roving Nun and Saint Terri, she is the patroness of Spain, headache sufferers, lace makers, children without parents and people ridiculed for their piety. She is the namesake of the Avila University. Her famous prayer is a plea to heaven as a guide in life, to correct for a wasted life and the rededication to a life to the Lord:

O my God! Source of all mercy! I acknowledge Your sovereign power. While recalling the wasted years that are past, I believe that You, Lord, can in an instant turn this loss to gain. Miserable as I am, yet I firmly believe that You can do all things. Please restore to me the time lost, giving me Your grace, both now and in the future, that I may appear before You in "wedding garments." Amen.

Amen, amen, amen!

Saint Teresa of Avila, ora pro nobis!

A friend of mine whom I have never met just had a newborn baby son! He is beautiful, but is sick. Please take a moment and say the prayer to Saint Philomena for this fragile child.

Verifiable history of Saint Philomena is hard to come by, but tradition holds that was a young girl of Grecian royalty. She was courted by the Roman emporer Diocletian who offered to settle a war between Rome and Greece if he could marry Philomena. She refused the pleas of the emporer and her parents, saying she had promised her virginity and fideility to Christ. She was imprisoned, beaten and martyred by drowning. Her remains were discovered in 1802 and she was canonized by Pope Gregory XVI sometime around 1834.

O faithful virgin and glorious martyr, Saint Philomena, who works so many miracles on behalf of the poor and sorrowing, have pity on me. Thou knowest the multitude and diversity of my needs. Behold me at thy feet, full of misery, but full of hope. I entreat thy charity, O great saint! Graciously hear me and obtain from God a safe and healthy start for this baby boy. I am thoroughly convinced that through thy merits, through the scorn, the sufferings, the death thou didst endure, united to the merits of the passion and death of Jesus thy spouse, I shall obtain what I ask of thee and in the joy of my heart I will bless God, who is admirable in his saints. Amen.

Saint Philomena, patron of newborns and the sick, pray for us.

I'm sure you've heard about the disastrous earthquake and aftershocks that has been inflicting China. This morning, the official death estimate was around 15,000 people, other estimates point north of 20,000 people were killed. That's a lot of people. We're talking REAL TRAGEDY here.

Rod Dreher in his CrunchyCon blog writes:

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a Chinese immigrant friend here in Dallas about China's rise. She told me not to be so sure of that. She said there are lots of bad things going on in China that never make the news -- natural disasters, man-made disasters and so on -- but news of which trickles out through word of mouth and the Internet. She said that the Chinese authorities are terrified of losing stability, and that to believe China is a rising monolith is really a mistake.

To hear that China is just a "paper tiger" means that they are totally unprepared to handle this mass tragedy, even if the country projects that they are strong and capable. They're going to be in a bad way, and may be that way for a very long time. Please take a minute and say a prayer for them-- they're in a Hell on Earth right now.

I took a second to look up who the patron saint is for China. There are 3 generally accepted patrons: Mary, St Joseph, and St. Francis Xavier. Mary and Joseph are patrons of everything, so I took a moment to look up St. Francis Xavier.

St. Francis Xavier is called the "Apostle to the Far East", and dedicated most of his life to preaching the Gospel to the farthest corners of the known world. Born to Basque nobility in 1506 (it seems like a lot of major saints were born rich!), the family castle and wealth was captured in one of the wars that would eventually unify Spain. Francis was ordained to the priesthood in Italy and studied and taught Philosophy at the great University of Paris (again with the U of Paris!). There he met Ignatius of Loyola (and a few others) and founded the once-illustrious Society of Jesus, which we commonly call the Jesuit order.

Xavier would travel the world, teaching around the horn of Africa, on the coasts of India and throughout Southeast Asia. Most Christians in the East have been touched by the history of Francis Xavier. He was asked by King John of Portugal to Evangelize to the people of the East Indies, then largely Portuguese territory from where they would capture slaves; Francis agreed to go, but famously admonished the King, saying "You have no right to spread the Catholic faith while you take away all the country's riches. It upsets me to know that at the hour of your death you may be ordered out of paradise."

His mission trip was a 10-year whirlwind, surviving shipwrecks, disease and infidels, he baptized thousands, ministered to the sick and taught the poor. Tradition holds that he could calm storms, speak in tongues and raise the dead! His reputation as a miracle worker brought thousands to the Faith, to which mankind could turn when the rest of life overwhelmed them.

Gentle reader, life still overwhelms mankind.

These are sad days for the Chinese. Thousands and thousands of homes are destroyed, thousands and thousands of people are dead or missing. People turn to their government to help, but in no one's estimation can the Chinese government help. I doubt that many governments could help if such tragedy was dumped into their lap. Central China is a mix of foreboding deserts and impenetrable mountains, the central Chinese are poor peasants without half the blessings of modernity. These are sad days, indeed.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

I've never been an exceptionally good student. I'll save you the details, but suffice to say that school and I have never been totally compatible.

But I've been slowly beginning some post-Baccalaureate work at night after I get off work and I have a big final tonight that I do not feel well prepared to tackle. If you get a chance today or this afternoon, drop a quick prayer in for me tonight, I'd appreciate it.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is one of the great "Doctors of the Church". His unfinished opus, Summa Theologica is considered one of the finest theological works in religious and philosophical history.

Thomas was born in Italy in 1225, the wealthy son of Italian nobility. As a Dominican friar, he was a master theologian and lecturer in Rome, theology professor and regent of studies at the University of Paris, he was an advisor to both popes and kings. Though Thomas was respected as an academic, he wasn't really well liked by his fellow friars. Aquinas did not actively partake the Domenican practice of mortification, and wasn't reputed as much of a conversationalist. Some of the other friars gave him the nickname The Dumb Ox; Saint Thomas Aquinas was fat and had slow speech-- an uncharacteristic trait for Domenicans, the Order of Preachers, known for their skill in oratory and rhetoric.

Summa Theologica is his penultimate work, covering Epistomology and Ethics. The "Summary of Theology" was designed as an introductory text to the study of God, and it still read and taught in philosophy and theology classes. It is considered one of the finest works in the Western Canon. The Summa is set up in a "Question and Answer" format, where he posits a question, then answers it. If you've read a lot of Philosophy, Aquinas is nice because his format is clear, but so dense that my eyes gloss over if I read some of the long sections. The work was considered so important that at the great Council of Trent, Summa Theologica was placed on the altar with the Holy Bible and the Decretals of the Church.

But before the Summa was finished, Thomas Aquinas experienced a divine revelation that changed his life. He didn't say much about what he saw, but indicated that his vision was so fantastic that everything he had ever written-- including the great Summa-- was like "straw in the wind"; he abandoned his famous life's work. Overweight, overworked and in failing health, he was sent to the Second Council of Lyons to work for unity between the Latin and Greek churches. Within a few months, Thomas was dead.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is the patron of academics, scholars, students and learning, schools, colleges and universities, against storms and lightning. He is the patron saint of publishers, book sellers and pencil makers. He is the namesake of countless cities, schools and colleges.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

St. Lawrence (also called St. Lawrence of Rome, St. Laurence, Saint Larry, San Lorenzo) was a third-century martyr, a Deacon of Ancient Rome, a caretaker of the poor, and a reputed wise-cracker.

In the first few centuries of the church, it was pretty dangerous to be a Christian. The Romans had a habit of persecuting, torturing and killing any person who admitted or was accused of being a Christian; even meeting with other Christians was strictly prohibited by Roman law. The Church rapidly expanded despite this, and some of the most vigorous champions of the Church come from this era.

Lawrence was one of the people in charge of administering the church budget, and was chiefly in charge of ministering to the care of the poor. Roman emperor Valerian demanded that all the assets of the Church be turned over to the Roman prefect and that Lawrence must surrender the wealth of the church. Lawrence agreed, but said he’d need a few days to gather the money together—in the meantime, he gave all the Church’s money to the poor and hid the Church’s documents with other trustworthy Christians. Then he called together all the sick, aged, widowed, orphaned and poor Christians he could find, bringing them to the Roman prefect declaring “These are the treasures of the Church!”

Predictably, the Romans were pretty mad about this stunt. He was tortured for information and then promptly executed.

St. Lawrence was martyred by being burned alive on a gridiron. According to legend, St. Lawrence defiantly refused to surrender to the Romans, and just before he succumbed to death he shouted to his torturers “Turn me over! I am done on this side!”

It’s wise to note that the stories of the Church from this era are often unreliable (from a history point of view), and some of the accounts are closer to legend than journalism. In fairness, St. Lawrence’s life and death was one of the most attested stories of the early church—though a historian would be smart to accept some stories with a fair amount of skepticism. But nonetheless, if it wasn’t for these traditions, all the stories would have been lost; here, I will not parse fact from fable.

St. Lawrence is considered one of the great saints of Rome, his feast day is August 10. He is the patron of brewers, comedians, and barbeque and generally my kind of guy. Saint Lawrence, pray for us!