Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos(1819-1867)
Zeal as a preacher and a confessor led Father Seelos to works of compassion as well.
Born in southern Bavaria, he studied philosophy and theology in
Munich. On hearing about the work of the Redemptorists among
German-speaking Catholics in the United States, he came to this country
in 1843. Ordained at the end of 1844, he was assigned for six years to
St. Philomena’s Parish in Pittsburgh as an assistant to St. John Neumann
[whose feast is observed on January 5]. The next three years Father
Seelos was superior in the same community and began his service as
novice master.
Several years in parish ministry in Maryland
followed, along with responsibility for training Redemptorist students.
During the Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and appealed to
President Lincoln that those students not be drafted for military
service.
For several years he preached in English and in German
throughout the Midwest and in the Middle Atlantic states. Assigned to
St. Mary of the Assumption Church community in New Orleans, he served
his Redemptorist confreres and parishioners with great zeal. In 1867 he
died of yellow fever, having contracted that disease while visiting the
sick. He was beatified in 2000.
St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
(1905-1938)
St.
Maria Faustina's name is forever linked to the annual feast of the
Divine Mercy (celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter), the divine
mercy chaplet and the divine mercy prayer recited each day by many
people at 3 p.m.
(1905-1938)
St.
Maria Faustina's name is forever linked to the annual feast of the
Divine Mercy (celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter), the divine
mercy chaplet and the divine mercy prayer recited each day by many
people at 3 p.m.
Born in what is now west-central Poland (part of Germany before World
War I), Helena was the third of 10 children. She worked as a
housekeeper in three cities before joining the Congregation of the
Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in 1925. She worked as a cook, gardener and
porter in three of their houses.
In addition to carrying out her
work faithfully, generously serving the needs of the sisters and the
local people, she also had a deep interior life. This included receiving
revelations from the Lord Jesus, messages that she recorded in her
diary at the request of Christ and of her confessors.
At a time
when some Catholics had an image of God as such a strict judge that they
might be tempted to despair about the possibility of being forgiven,
Jesus chose to emphasize his mercy and forgiveness for sins acknowledged
and confessed. “I do not want to punish aching mankind,” he once told
St. Maria Faustina, “but I desire to heal it, pressing it to my merciful
heart” (Diary 1588). The two rays emanating from Christ's heart,
she said, represent the blood and water poured out after Jesus' death
(Gospel of John 19:34)
Because Sister Maria Faustina knew that
the revelations she had already received did not constitute holiness
itself, she wrote in her diary: “Neither graces, nor revelations, nor
raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the
intimate union of the soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of
the soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its perfection. My
sanctity and perfection consist in the close union of my will with the
will of God” (Diary 1107).
Sister Maria Faustina died of
tuberculosis in Krakow, Poland, on October 5, 1938. Pope John Paul II
beatified her in 1993 and canonized her seven years later.
