St. Augustine is one of the greatest and most influential Church Fathers.  His writings have shaped both Catholic and Protestant theology and his greatest work The Confessions is one of the most widely translated, published and read books after the Bible.  Much is known about his life but here are ten facts you might not know about him.  If you are interested in learning more about this great saint, please read Augustine: Major Writings by Fr. Benedict Groeschel or watch his DVD presentation St. Augustine.

1.  Augusta, FL is named after St. Augustine and Santa Monica, CA is named after his mother.

2.  Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose in Milan at the Easter Vigil in 387.
3.  His words are quoted in St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings on nearly every page.

4.  His mother, Monica,  is buried in the church of St. Augustine in Rome.

5.  Augustine spent his life fighting the great heresies of the Manicheans, Pelagians, Arians, and Donatists.

6.  Augustine did not want to be a bishop so he avoided going to towns where a bishop was needed.  He founded his monastery in Hippo where Valerius was bishop, but was immediately made his auxiliary bishop.

7.  He worked with St. Jerome on the New Testament Vulgate and is largely responsible for the inclusion of Hebrews and Revelations into the Bible.

8.  He was the first theologian to say that men and women were both equal and made in the image of God.

9.  Augustine taught in North Africa, Rome and Milan.

10.  He published nearly 5 million words before the printing press.

I came to the Irish people to preach the Gospel and endure the taunts of unbelievers, putting up with reproaches about my earthly pilgrimage, suffering many persecutions, even bondage, and losing my birthright of freedom for the benefit of others. If I am worthy, I am ready also to give up my life, without hesitation and most willingly, for Christ’s name.

From the Confession of St. Patrick

Who is St. Patrick?

Saint Patrick was born Maewyn Succat at the end of the 4^th century in Scotland, and would later take the name Patrick. At the age of 16, he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave. He was sold to a chieftain in Dalriada, a territory in what is now the county of Antrim in Ireland, where he was put to work tending his master’s flocks. Alone in the hills of Ireland, Patrick spent much of his time in prayer, growing deeper in Faith, as related in his Confessio:

“The love of God and His fear increased in me more and more, and the Faith grew in me, and the spirit was roused, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same, so that whilst in the woods and on the mountain, even before the dawn, I was roused to prayer and felt no hurt from it, whether there was snow or ice or rain; nor was there any slothfulness in me, such as I see now, because the spirit was then fervent within me.”

Though he could not know it at the time, these years of service prepared Patrick for his future ministerial work. He learned to speak the language of Ireland, which would later help him to spread the Word of God tot he inhabitants. As a slave, Patrick’s master Milchu was a druidical high priest and this brought Patrick knowledge of the false religion from which he would later liberate the Irish.

Read more about St. Patrick here.

The romantic nature of February 14 seems to have been attached to the date long after it was recognized as the feast day of St. Valentine. Still, several centuries before pre-printed, mass-produced greeting cards existed, men and women sent notes, tokens, and cards to their loves on St. Valentine’s Day. The tradition certainly was in place by the late 15^th century, with French and English literature indicating the practice dated at least to the 14^th century. However it is less certain exactly how St. Valentine’s Day came to be recognized as the romantic holiday it is today. There are multiple ideas on how the custom evolved.

The legend that describes St. Valentine’s imprisonment mentions a letter he sent to the Jailer Asterius’s daughter on the eve before he was executed. According to the legend, the farewell message was affectionately signed “From Your Valentine,” a phrase now popular on Valentine greeting cards everywhere.

Read more about the history of St. Valentine’s Day, as well as the saint himself, here.

“Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.”

January 28 is the Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, widely considered the greatest theologian and philosopher of the Catholic Church. His works systematized the Truth of the Catholic Church and combined it with Greek wisdom and scholarship methods. In the several hundred years since Thomas, one of the most influential among the Church’s saints, preached, taught, and defended the Faith, his ideas and writings have become seminal to the Church.

Early Life of St. Thomas Aquinas

Thomas, son of Count Landulf of Aquino, was born 1225 in a family castle in Lombardy, near Naples. His family was related to Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II and the kings of France, Aragon, and Castile. At the age of five, Thomas’s education began when he was sent to receive training from the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. Even at this age, Thomas was meditative and prayerful.

Around the year 1236, Thomas was moved to the university at Naples at the urging of the Abbot of Monte Cassino, who wrote to Count Landulf that a boy of Thomas’s talent should not be left in obscurity. Thomas excelled in his studies, as the Catholic Encyclopedia relates:

“At Naples his preceptors were Pietro Martini and Petrus Hibernus. The chronicler says that he soon surpassed Martini at grammar, and he was then given over to Peter of Ireland, who trained him in logic and the natural sciences. The customs of the times divided the liberal arts into two courses: the Trivium, embracing grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the Quadrivium, comprising music, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy… Thomas could repeat the lessons with more depth and lucidity than his masters displayed.”

Read about the rest of St. Thomas’s life here.

Today, January 25^th, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles. Though not one of the Twelve Apostles, Paul converted after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and he preached the Gospel and wrote many letters that are part of the New Testament of the Bible. There are other feast days upon which St. Paul is honored; however January 25^th is specifically focused on his conversion.

Saul, Persecutor of Christians

“For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it”

-Galatians 1:13

Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Paul was Saul, a Pharisee who persecuted Christians. He was very zealous in his persecution, noting of himself in his letter to the Galatians that he was more zealous even than many of his peers. Saul was present at and oversaw the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr.

The Conversion of St. Paul

“Thus I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me.

And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’

And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles – to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’”

-Acts of the Apostles 26:12-18

Read the rest of this article about the conversion of St. Paul here.

Today, January 24, the Church remembers Saint Francis de Sales, bishop, confessor, and Doctor of the Church. Francis, commonly known as the ‘Gentleman Saint’ or the ‘Gentle Christ of Geneva,’ spent many years preaching and defending the Faith, and guiding Protestants back to the True Faith.

Early Life and Education

Francis was born in the Duchy of Savoy, at the Château de Thorens to an aristocratic family in 1567. He was the first-born of twelve children, and his parents expected him to become a lawyer, enter into politics and carry on in the family’s tradition of prestige and power.

Francis was sent to college at an early age, attending first the colleges of La Roche and Annecy. From 1583 to 1588, Francis studied rhetoric and humanities at the college of Clermont, in Paris; it was here that he also began to study theology. Also while at Paris, Francis experienced a period of great despair, troubled by discussions of predestination and believing himself to be destined to be condemned to Hell. The experience affected him greatly and he grew ill, until he was suddenly freed from the despair upon kneeling before a miraculous image of Our Lady at St. Etienne-des-Grès. At this point, Francis knew his life would be dedicated to God.

After his studies at Paris, Francis went to Padua, where he studied law. In 1592, Francis graduated and was admitted before the senate as a lawyer. Francis was soon to be appointed as a senator when God guided his life in a different direction.

Read about the rest of the life of St. Francis here.

According to tradition, St. Lucy was born near the end of the 3^rd century in Syracuse, Sicily, to a Roman father (who would die while she was quite young) and a Greek mother, Eutychia. The traditional stories describe the family as wealthy and connected to nobility, but from an early age the pious Lucy hoped to devote all her time and worldly goods to doing God’s work and helping the poor.

However, Eutychia had Lucy unwilling betrothed to a pagan man. Lucy begged her mother to let her remain an unwed virgin and instead give the money of her dowry to the poor. Tradition holds that after Eutychia was miraculously cured of an ongoing hemorrhage when she visited the relics of St. Agatha (who had been martyred 50 years before) with Lucy, she granted her daughter’s request.

The pagan bridegroom however, did not take kindly to the betrothal being ended, and was angered when he learned the money and jewels of Lucy’s dowry were being distributed. It is said that, incensed by these events, the man denounced Lucy as a Christian to the governor during the time of the especially fierce Diocletian persecutions. Lucy was ordered to burn a sacrifice in honor of the Emperor. When she refused, she was sentenced to be put in a brothel to be defiled.

Hearing her sentence, Lucy is said to have remained unafraid and merely replied, “No one’s body is polluted so as to endanger the soul if it has not pleased the mind. If you were to lift my hand to your idol and so make me offer against my will, I would still be guiltless in the sight of the true God, who judges according to the will and knows all things. If now, against my will, you cause me to be polluted, a twofold purity will be gloriously imputed to me. You cannot bend my will to your purpose; whatever you do to my body, that cannot happen to me.”

When the soldiers came to transport Lucy, the young woman was so filled with Holy Spirit that she had become quite immovable, heavy and stiff as a mountain. They were unable to drag her from her spot even when they tied her to a team of oxen. Since the soldiers could not move Lucy, they resolved to kill her on the spot. She suffered her eyes being cut out and she was covered with oil and burned before her persecutors were able to kill her by sword.

Read more about St. Lucy and the celebration of St. Lucia Day here.

In 1531, Our Lady appeared to a 57-year-old peasant widower, Juan Diego at Tepeyac, not far from Mexico City. On December 9, Juan, a recent convert to Catholicism, was on his way to an early Saturday morning Mass and session of catechism lessons when he heard beautiful music playing near the base of the barren and rocky hill of Tepeyac. There, a radiant, beautiful young woman called to him by name, “Little Juan,” and told him that she was the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God. She pointed to a spot on the hill and told Juan that she wanted a church to be built for the people there.

Juan went to the local bishop, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumárraga, to relay the message from Mary. Fray Juan de Zumárraga had only recently arrived from Spain and had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin but did not believe that Mary had appeared in his diocese. When Juan returned to Tepeyac, he apologized to Mary for his failure and asked that she choose a better man to perform her task. Mary said that she had chosen Juan Diego and that the message, delivered by him, would be accepted. Juan Diego once again visited Fray Zumárraga, who this time asked for some sort of proof of the events. As Juan returned home, Mary appeared again and promised to provide a sign for the bishop the next day.

However the next day, Juan Diego stayed with his uncle who had become seriously ill during the night. Juan’s uncle’s health did not improve and so the next day Juan decided to find a priest to bring to the dying man. He tried to skirt around the hill of Tepeyac, but the Virgin appeared to him a fourth time. She assured Juan that his uncle’s health would improve and told him to go to the top of the hill and gather the flowers he would find there. Juan did as he was bid and gathered the fresh Castilian roses in his tilma, a cloak worn by the native Mexicans. Mary arranged the flowers and tied the cloak, telling Juan to untie the tilma only when he met the bishop.

The Tepeyac soil was barren and the roses were out of season, so Juan believed the flowers would provide the proof that the bishop had asked for. Juan returned to Bishop Zumárraga’s presence and told him he had the proof requested. He opened his cloak, and as the flowers tumbled to the floor, the bishop and the others in the room fell to their knees. A beautiful image of the Virgin Mary had appeared on Juan’s tilma. The tilma was enthroned immediately in the bishop’s chapel until the church that Our Lady had requested could be built.

Read the full article about Our Lady of Guadalupe feast and devotion here.

On December 11 the Church remembers Saint Damasus, a pope who lived and was elected in the tumultuous first half of the 4^th century.

Early Life

Pope St. Damasus was born near the city of Idanha-a-Velha, an area that is now part of modern-day Portugal. In Damasus’s time it was part of the Western Roman Empire and his life coincided with the rise of Constantine I, the first Christian emperor. Little is known of Damasus’s mother except her name, Laurentia. His father, Antonius at some point in Damasus’s early life became a deacon then a priest at the Church of San Lorenzo in Rome. Damasus grew up in Rome, raised in service at the Church of San Lorenzo as well. Because of this, Damasus had a special devotion to the martyr St. Lawrence. Damasus became first a deacon and later a priest at San Lorenzo; he was later an assistant to Pope Liberius.

Pontificate and the Threat of Schisms

Damasus was elected Pope by a wide majority in 366 upon the death of Pope Liberius. However, there was a concentrated faction of supporters of Ursinus, who attempted to elect him instead. Papal elections in the early centuries did not take place in an organized fashion as they do now and amid rioting in the area, two elections took place – one election declared Damasus pope, the other, Ursinus. For a short time, Ursinus ruled in Rome simultaneously with Pope Damasus, before being officially declared an antipope by a synod in 368. In the early years of his pontificate, supporters of Ursinus brought false charges of adultery and murder against Pope Damasus I, but he was soon exonerated. The murder charge may have been based on the fact that several Ursinus supporters were killed by men who favored Damasus. This would not be the end of the trials and disruptions Pope Damasus would encounter. He would vigorously defend the Catholic Faith against the heresies of Apollinarianism, Macedonianism, and Arianism. He was deeply devoted to the martyrs for the Faith and had the catacombs, other tombs, and shrines to martyrs restored. He also had some local damaged churches restored and rebuilt.

Read more about Pope St. Damasus I here.

The legendary figure of Santa Claus originated at least partially from the myths surrounding St. Nicholas of Myra (or of Bari), who lived during the fourth century and died December 6, 345 or 352. While there are a great many miracles and events attributed to St. Nicholas, almost all that is known with certainty about him is that he was the Bishop of Myra. He was probably born at Patara in Lycia of Asia Minor (in what is now Turkey) around 270, and was chosen bishop of Myra, the capital of Lycia, when the episcopal seat was vacated. He became known for his extreme piety and zeal, and it is almost certain that he underwent imprisonment during the persecution of Christians under Diocletian. Some histories have said that he was present at the Council of Nicea, but because his name is not mentioned in any of the lists of bishops that attended, it is somewhat doubtful that he was actually there. He died in Myra and his body was buried in the cathedral, where it remained until 1087 at which time it was moved to Bari, Italy.

The Popular Legends of St. Nicholas

Aside from what is historically known to be true about St. Nicholas, there are a great many legends that have sprung up which are not necessarily verified, but are still popular with those who have a devotion to St. Nicholas. He was very pious in his childhood, even to the point where he is said to have eaten only once on Wednesdays and Fridays, to be in accordance with the fasts of those days. He was said to have studied in Egypt. He always had a thirst for religion, both learning about it and practicing it, and when his parents died while he was still young, Nicholas took the large inheritance they left him and committed to using it for charity. From this grew one of the most well-known stories about him. A father of three daughters who had lost all his money, and thus had no dowry for the girls so they could marry, was about to sell them into prostitution when one night a bag or ball of gold showed up inside the man’s house mysteriously. St. Nicholas had heard about the man’s story and intentions and wanted to use his money to help save the girls from an evil life. The gold sufficed as the eldest daughter’s dowry, and she was able to be married. St. Nicholas repeated this twice more for the second and third daughters, so that all three were able to be married. The man waited for St. Nicholas to show up for the third time, to see who it was that was giving his family these gifts, and when he saw St. Nicholas he was overcome with gratitude for this benevolent man who wanted no credit for what he did. It is likely from this story that the idea of Santa Claus began, because in some tellings St. Nicholas threw the bags of gold down the chimney and they may have fallen into a stocking or shoe drying near the fire. It is also for this reason that St. Nicholas is the patron saint of maidens and unmarried women, as well as brides.

Read more about legends of and devotion to St. Nicholas here.