Our Lady of Guadalupe - Dec 12
...as appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1531.
While Luther et al. were disrupting and ripping the over-one-thousand year-old fabric of Catholicism in Europe, the Blessed Mother stepped up and assisted in the conversion of millions of others in the Americas.
Immaculate Conception - Dec 8
Immaculata Conceptio est hodie sanctae Mariae Virginis
The Feast of the "Conception" of the Virgin was, from the eighth century, celebrated in the East on December 9th, from the ninth century in Ireland on May 3rd, and from the eleventh century in England on December 8th.
This feast is continued to be celebrated in the 1100s in Anglo-Saxon monasteries, as well as by the Benedictines and Franciscans in the 1300s. The Sistine Chapel was erected in the honor of her conception by Pope Sixtus IV in the 15th century.
On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX officially proclaimed this great dogma by summing up the words of the angel:
Ave, Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus!
Today is a Holy Day of Obligation.
-St. Andrew's Daily Missal, 1943, St. Bonaventure Publications, 1999.
Saints of the Day - December 4
Saint Francis Xavier, Confessor, 1506-52
Touched, after long resistance, by the words constantly repeated to him by St. Ignatius Loyola:
"What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and suffers the loss of his own soul?"
Upon enlisting in the newly-formed Society of Jesus, the preaching and miracles of St. Francis added to the Church the nations of the Indies, Japan, and over 50 kingdoms, converting innumerable pagans.
SAINT PETER CHRYSOLOGUS, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor
d. A.D. 450, Imola, Italia
"Chrysologus" - speech of gold.
ST. BARBARA, Virgin & Martyr
d. around A.D. 235 in Asia Minor
-St. Andrew's Daily Missal, 1943, St. Bonaventure Publications, 1999.
