Fascinating Facts about the Life of St. Catherine of Siena

 

From ChurchPop: April 29th is the feast day of the great St. Catherine of Siena. Here are 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the life of this incredible saint:

1) She had a twin.
Though it’s not clear whether they were identical or not, St. Catherine had a twin sister, Giovanna. They were born prematurely when her mother was forty years old. Unfortunately, Giovanna died in infancy. Her mother had another child two years later and named that child Giovanna as well.

2) She had 24 siblings.
That’s right, she was one of 25 children. And yes, they were all from the same parents. Granted, only about half of them made it to adulthood (due to a high infant mortality rate), but still, that’s quite the family.

3) She had the nickname “Euphrosyne.”
She was so joyful as a child that her family called her “Euphrosyne,” Greek for “joy.”

4) She had a mystical vision of Jesus as a young child.
An early biography written by her confessor claimed that when she was 5 or 6 year old, she was walking home and suddenly had a vision of Jesus enthroned in heaven surrounded by the Apostles Peter, Paul, and John.

5) She had a mystical vision of St. Dominic.
The two most culturally accepted paths for a woman in her time and place were marrying or becoming a cloistered nun. St. Catherine resisted both options. Apparently, St. Dominic himself appeared to her in a vision, which convinced her to be a Dominican tertiary, something that at the time was normally reserved for widows. She also got special permission to wear a habit.

6) She experienced stigmata.
First reported to have been experienced by St. Francis of Assisi a little more than a hundred years earlier, St. Catherine received a version of the stigmata in 1375 that, according to the biography written by her confessor, was only visible to herself per her request of God.

7) She was very politically active, writing letters to rulers and clergy.
In her late 20s, she started dictating letters with scribes to various rulers and clergy, begging for peace between states and for the papacy to return to Rome from Avignon, France. She was so respected, she was sent on diplomatic peace missions by various governments.

8) She survived an assassination attempt.
In early 1378, she was sent by Pope Gregory XI to Florence, Italy to seek peace between Florence and Rome. Soon after, however, Pope Gregory XI and violence broke out. On June 18th, in the midst of violence, someone tried to assassinate her, though she survived.

9) She was attacked by demons on her deathbed.
Here’s what one eye-witness reported:

[S]he began altogether to change, and to make various signs with her head and her arms as if to show that she was suffering from grave assaults of demons, and remained in this calamitous state for an hour and a half, half of which time having been passed in silence…

10) She’s co-patroness of Rome, of Italy, and of Europe.
She was made co-patroness of Rome in 1866 by Pope Pius IX, co-patroness of Italy in 1939 by Pope Ven. Pius XII, and co-patroness of Europe in 1999 by Pope St. John Paul II. St. Catherine of Siena, please pray for us!

You Took My Parking Place!

One day, a man went as a visitor to a church. He got there early, parked his car and got out. Another car pulled up near by and parked. The driver got out and said, "I always park there! You took my place!"

The visitor went inside for the service, found an empty seat and sat down.

A young lady from the church approached him and stated, "That's my seat! You took my place!"

The visitor was somewhat distressed by this rude welcome, but still said nothing.

After the service, the visitor went into the Sanctuary and sat down to pray. Another member came up to him and said, "That's where I always sit! You took my place!" The visitor was even more troubled by this treatment, but still said nothing.Later as the congregation was praying for Christ to dwell among them, the visitor stood up, and his appearance began to change. His clothing became a simple robe. Horrible scars became visible on his hands and on his now sandaled feet.

Someone from the congregation noticed Him and called out, "What happened to you?"

The visitor replied, as His hat became a crown of thorns, and a tear fell from his eye, "I took your place!"

Trash Can Smoke Rings

We are absolutely doing the trash can smoke rings soon. Skip to 4:29.

Teen Creed

Don't let your parents down;
they brought you up.
Be humble enough to obey;
you may give orders some day.
Choose companions with care;
you become what they are.
Guard your thoughts;
what you think, you are.
Choose only a date
who would make a good mate.
Be master of your habits;
or they will master you.
Don't be a show-off when you drive;
drive with safety and arrive.
Don't let the crowd pressure you;
stand for something
or you'll fall for anything.

Author Unknown

Donall and Conall Meet Richard Dawkins

First Communion Projects & Family Dinners

For any middle schoolers preparing for First Communion, here are a couple of items you need to complete your projects and family dinners. Remember, we meet this Sunday, April 12, and you should try to have all your chapters read, all your projects ready to present, and all your family dinner forms completed to turn in. To receive credit for all the great work you have done this year, these projects and forms need to be completed. It's a chance to learn about your faith, grow closer to God, and know what the Catholic Church teaches!

Click here for Family Dinner Forms (and explanation of dinners)

Click here for Project explanations and expectations

If you lost your chapters for the projects, you can read the chapters from our book by clicking on the links below. Choose topics that you have been assigned or if you can't remember which topics you were assigned, choose topics that sound interesting. Then discuss the chapter after you read it with your family over dinner, complete the Family Dinner Form, do your project, and come ready to present on Sunday.

8: The Gospels
9: Jesus Christ, True God and True Man
10: The Birth of Jesus
11: Jesus Teaches
12: Jesus Heals
13: The Death of Jesus
14: The Resurrection of Jesus

15: The Holy Spirit
16: Grace and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
17: Pentecost and the Early Church
18: The Mission of the Church
19: The Structure of the Church
20: End Things: Heaven and Hell
21: Saints and Mary

22: Introduction to Liturgy
23: Sacraments: Celebrating Christ's Presence
24: The Eucharist: The Heart of All Liturgy
25: The Eucharist: The Liturgy of the Word
26: The Eucharist: The Liturgy of the Eucharist
27: The Eucharist: Communion and Sending Forth
28: The Sacrament of Baptism
29: The Sacrament of Confirmation
30: The Sacraments of Healing
31: The Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders

32: Living the Moral Life
33: Moral Decision Making
34: Honoring God
35: Honoring Family
36: Respecting Life
37: Respecting Truth and Property
38: Respecting Sexuality
39: Working for Justice

40: Prayer: Conversations with God
41: Tuning In to God
42: The Lord's Prayer: The Perfect Prayer
43: The Lord's Prayer: A Prayer for All Time

Confirmation Letter and Patron Saint

Teens preparing for Confirmation have a couple of tasks at hand: Choose a Confirmation saint and write a letter to our priests asking to receive the sacrament. Here is the information you need to complete these important final steps of the journey:

How to: Letter to the Priests (includes sample letter)

Choosing a Confirmation Saint

Make Church Matter

Rebuilt by Father Michael White and Tom Corcoran, pp. 259-261 

You are not alone in your heartbreak as you watch people walk away from the Church in droves. You are not alone in your sadness to see it drift into irrelevance in the lives of so many people including your own family and friends. You are not alone in feeling frustrated about the current state of the local parish enterprise you serve. You are not alone in wanting things to go better.

You are not alone in believing that the Church should be a place where people connect with their heavenly Father, come to know their Savior, and learn to walk in step with the Holy Spirit. You are not alone in seeking to help lead people into a joyful and loving celebration of the Eucharist. You are not alone in your desire for the Church to provide meaning, purpose, and direction in people's lives. You are not alone in expecting life-changing outcomes from the incredible work you're already doing. You are not alone in wanting your congregation to have a greater impact on your community, connecting more people to Christ.

You are not alone. God is with you. God desires these things even more deeply than you do. And perhaps he has placed you exactly where you are "for such a time as this." And more than that, he's raising up still others who share that same passion to provide the vitality for a movement whose moment has come. Obedient to the Magisterium, this moment is all about giving fresh impetus to the directions set by the Second Vatican Council, reinvigorating the noblest efforts of the Catholic Church, and returning to what God's word itself tells us--his Church--to do.

We are called to give leadership to a movement whose moment has arrived: to rebuild parish life in the Catholic Church in the United States. It is a movement of the whole Body of Christ as well, to take back our Church from casual consumer Christians and put it in the hands of humble and bold believers transformed by their faith and transforming society.

And when you move, others will, too. Because people are hardwired to get into a movement. People love movements. God made us that way. Even if the desire is dormant, it is there, and you can awaken it.

We can call our congregations to the challenge of discipleship and get them growing as fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. We can make our parishes wellsprings of vitality and spirit that energize our disciples to help them become more convincing witnesses in our community. We can make an impact on the next generation for Christ. Instead of a stumbling block and obstacle course, people far from God can begin to see the Church as a great place to come to know him. Our growing disciples can joyfully serve one another and model missions that aim at restoring creation and renewing the face of the earth.

This book is not just about doing church differently. This is about being part of a movement to change people's experience of the Church so that our society is more and more transformed by Christ. It is not only something worth dying for, it is something worth living for--something worth giving your life to. And that is the movement of the kingdom of God. It is not a "religious" movement; it is a "kingdom movement." It's about the movement of the kingdom of of God.

The Lord's acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning--great is your faithfulness! (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Every day there are new waves of mercies and grace God is sending your way. God wants to do something in your local church community that he is not doing anywhere else. There is a great work through you and your people he will not repeat, a unique story that he will never tell again.

Great parish leadership demands the vision to see that. And that means you've got to be looking for it, hungering for it, fasting and praying for the great work God wants to do through you. There is a mission, but he is waiting on a leader. God is waiting on you to raise your hand and say, "I'll step up. I'll do the heavy lifting and the hard work. I'll take the bullets and the criticism, but I can't take the mediocrity and irrelevance anymore. I can do this!"

Think about it. This is the Church that Christ founded and died for. This is the Church that holds the fullness of the faith and teaches with uncompromising authority on moral matters. This is the Church that serves as steward of the Eucharist and the other sacraments. This is the Church that blessedly preserves and everywhere promotes devotion to our Savor's Blessed Mother. This is the Church of the apostles and their successors, the martyrs, and the heroes of the Christian centuries: Peter and Paul, Jerome and Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Thomas More, Ignatius Loyola, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul II.

This is the Body that Christ forms as his own and charges to transform society through the introduction of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It is quite simply the hope of the world. And believe it or not, you hold that hope in your hands in your local parish church. Use it.

Make church matter.

Why I Joined the Catholic Church This Easter

By Albert Little on ChurchPop

After a radical conversion to Christ at the age of about fifteen years old, I lived as a genuinely devout Protestant, earnestly seeking after Christ in my life as best I could. Sometimes, of course, doing a miserable job.

This Easter, after a long journey, I became a Catholic.

My journey began when a Protestant pastor—himself on a journey towards a more ancient faith—asked me the question, “What’s more important the Bible or tradition?” When I answered, like the good Protestant, that it was, “Of course, the Bible.” He followed up by asking, “But who put the Bible together?”

That was the tradition of the Church, of course.

I was subsequently set on a path that lasted nearly a decade. A journey which introduced me to a podcasting priest, some Catholic friends, and even saw me attending Mass a couple of times. But Catholicism held no great appeal to me, at least not until I began to read.

I began to read about Catholicism from authors who were actual Catholics, instead of reading about what Protestant authors knew, or thought they knew, about Catholicism. I found out, in a hurry, that much of what I knew about Catholicism (from the Protestant sources I’ve read, and from the few Catholics I’d met) was inaccurate, to say the least.

If I’d known what Catholics really believed, I would’ve become Catholic a lot sooner.

But I’m a Catholic now.

I read my way into the Church through authors like Louis Bouyer, Pope Benedict XVI, Scott Hahn, Stephen Ray, and G.K. Chesterton. Then I began to live like a Catholic by going to Mass and praying the Rosary and the Liturgy of the Hours.

If I were to distill my journey into only a few words I would say this: I’ve become a Catholic because I’ve found the Catholic faith to be historically, intellectually, spiritually, and aesthetically satisfying (although, “satisfying” is hardly the right word, I’ve struggled to find a better one).

Here’s what I mean:

The Catholic Church is Historically Satisfying

I don’t say this to be facetious but I have a hard time understanding a reading of the Early Church Fathers that doesn’t result in the conclusion that the Catholic Church must’ve been what Jesus had in mind.

I say this because, I believe, the Catholic Church makes the most historical sense.

Click here to continue reading

And they crucified Him

A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now crucified.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain -- the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet.

As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath.

Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.

Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.

It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.

Finally, he allows his body to die.

All this the Bible records with the simple words, "and they crucified Him" (Mark 15:24).

-- C. Truman Davis, M.D., M.S., Arizona Medicine, Vol. 22 No. 3 March 1965

How Many Christian Jokes Can You Tell in 60 Seconds?