Byline: Thomas Craughwell

St. Macrina was the grandmother of St. Basil the Great, his brothers St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Peter of Sebaste, and their sister, St. Macrina the Younger. Macrina raised all of her grandchildren (she had 10), and she took special care to give them a sound religious education. Her care paid off: Basil became a monk and wrote a monastic rule that is still followed by monks in the East. Gregory became bishop of Nyssa and then archbishop of Sebaste. Peter preceded his brother as archbishop of Sebaste. All three brothers were champions of the Catholic faith against Arianism, a heresy that was raging across the Christian world at the time. And Macrina the Younger became abbess of a small community of nuns near the Black Sea.

St. Macrina had been converted by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (the name means “wonder-worker”), a renowned preacher. It was said that when he was made bishop of Caesarea, there were only 17 Christians in his diocese, but when he died there were only 17 pagans in his diocese he had not managed to convert.

In 303, Emperor Diocletian began his empire-wide persecution of Christians. It would be the last Roman persecution of the Church, and it would prove to be the most ferocious. Thousands of Christians were killed, among them some of the most revered martyrs of the early Church, including St. Agnes, St. Sebastian, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and St. Januarius, known to Italians as San Gennaro. As was true of so many Christians, Macrina and her husband went into hiding. They fled to a remote spot in a vast forest along the shores of the Black Sea, where they remained for seven years. It was a terrible time for the couple. In addition to the constant fear that they would be discovered and dragged off to a horrible death, they often had difficulty foraging for food. Several times Macrina and her husband nearly starved to death.

Only in 311 did they feel safe enough to leave their refuge and return to civilization. Soon thereafter, Macrina’s husband died, and she filled her days raising and educating her grandchildren.

Her feast day is January 14.

St. Macrina the Elder is the matriarch of one of the Church’s most blessed families. Along with her son, St. Basil the Elder, and her daughter-in-law, St. Emmelia, four of her 10 grandchildren have been canonized as saints, including:

St. Basil the Great: Bishop of Caesarea and Doctor of the Church, St. Basil is known as a great defender of Christianity against Arianism. He was revered for his spiritual achievements and his many contributions to Christian culture in the fourth century. His feast day is Jan. 2.

The Crosiers

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Bishop of Sebaste and a prolific writer, St. Gregory is credited with being one of the most ardent orthodox leaders of his time due to his outspokenness against Arianism. His feast is March 9

Lapsed Catholics are not a modern phenomenon — the life of St. Monica teaches us that. Her son, Augustine, rejected the faith she had taught him as a child and joined the peculiar Manichean sect.

Monica (332-387) was born into a Christian family in the town of Thagaste, now Souk Ahras, in Algeria. Her husband, Patricius, appears to have been religiously indifferent, but he did not interfere with Monica’s faith and permitted her to raise their children as Catholics.

When Augustine was born, Monica did not have him baptized. During the first centuries of the Church, many Christians put off baptism until they were on their deathbed. Nonetheless, Monica did have her priest mark the infant Augustine with holy oil in the sign of the cross and sprinkle blessed salt, a sign of exorcism, on his tongue. This ceremony would have made him a catechumen, one who was taking instruction in the Faith, and Monica was Augustine’s teacher.

Monica and Patricius were ambitious for their son. They wanted Augustine to receive a classical education so he could enter one of the professions. Before Augustine went off to the university at Carthage — the Harvard of Roman North Africa — Monica pleaded with him to remain chaste. In his “Confessions,” Augustine admits he treated her “womanish advice” with contempt. He was, as he says, “in the mood to be seduced”; in fact, soon after he arrived in Carthage he found a mistress, and they moved in together. A year later, the woman (in none of his writings does Augustine ever mention her name) gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Adeodatus, meaning “gift from God.”

That news was bad enough. Augustine compounded it by abandoning the Catholic faith and joining the Manicheans, a sect that considered itself an intellectual and spiritual elite. Manicheans taught that there were two gods — one good, the other evil — who were in constant conflict for control of the universe. Throughout history many “Jesuses” had come to earth to struggle on the side of good, but none had ever triumphed over evil.

To have her son join such a sect broke Monica’s heart. She sought out a bishop who once had been a Manichean and begged him to go speak to Augustine. The bishop answered that so early in his conversion Augustine would not be willing to listen to any arguments against Manichaeism. But Monica would not take no for an answer. She pleaded and wept and made such a nuisance of herself that the bishop lost his temper. “Go away from me!” he cried. Instantly regretting his bad manners, he added, “Do not worry. It is not possible that the son of so many tears should be lost forever.”

Seventeen years passed before Augustine was ready to re-evaluate his life. By that point, he was teaching philosophy in Milan. Monica had moved there, too. In Milan, she found an ally in the city’s bishop, St. Ambrose. Augustine began attending any Mass where Ambrose was scheduled to preach. Between Monica’s prayers and Ambrose’s eloquence, Augustine renounced the Manicheans and entered the Catholic Church. On the night of April 24, 387, at the Mass of the Easter Vigil, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and Adeodatus. The prediction an irritable African bishop had made to Monica so many years before had been fulfilled at last.

St. Monica is also the patron of homemakers, married women and victims of abuse by their spouses.

Her feast day is August 27.

Thomas Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

Ignatius of Loyola was born into a family of Basque nobility in the family castle of Azpeitia. He was the youngest of the 13 children of Beltran de Loyola and Marina Saenz de Licona. From his earliest years, Ignatius was enchanted by dreams of chivalry and adventure. His own father had performed deeds of valor in the final years of the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of Spain from the Moors. His oldest brother, Juan, had sailed with Columbus on the discoverer’s second expedition to the New World. With these models before him, it is no wonder that Ignatius longed to sacrifice himself for a great king, to serve faithfully a beautiful lady and to win immortal fame in the eyes of the world.

As a young man he tried to live out his notion of the gallant cavalier: He was ambitious, vain, prickly about his honor, a gambler, a fighter and a sexual adventurer. At age 26, he fought against a French army in his first — and last — battle. A cannonball struck Ignatius’ legs, shattering the one and wounding the other. Ignatius and his comrades surrendered to the French commander, who spared their lives, sent his own doctors to treat Ignatius, then provided an escort to carry him home to Azpeitia.

To help him pass the time during the long weeks of convalescence Ignatius read the only two books in the house — a life of Christ written by Ludolph the Carthusian and “The Golden Legend,” Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saints’ lives. As he read these books, Ignatius’ heart was touched by grace: He became ashamed of the vanity, pride and lust that had ruled his life thus far. Ignatius had undergone a conversion, but he had not abandoned his chivalric ideals of suffering and self-sacrifice — instead, he had shifted his focus from winning honor in this world to winning souls for God.

Ignatius’ conversion came during one of the greatest crises the Catholic Church has ever faced: the Reformation. The Protestant revolt had split Europe into two religious camps, shattered the unity of western Christendom and cost the Church hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of souls.

To restore and revitalize the Church, Ignatius envisioned a new community of priests and lay brothers who would be deeply educated in the Catholic faith, in theology and in sacred Scripture. They would be skillful teachers, wise spiritual directors and gifted preachers. He would send out these men across Europe to reclaim Christians who had left the Catholic Church and to bolster the faith of Catholics who were perhaps uncertain about or poorly educated in the essentials of their faith.

Ignatius’ method worked. Jesuits schools and colleges became the pride of the Catholic world — it was not unusual for Protestant families to enroll their sons in them. Jesuit preachers attracted large crowds and brought countless souls back to the Church. And Jesuit missionaries were fearless, traveling into Protestant lands where some, such as St. Edmund Campion, met a martyr’s death, or much farther afield, to the New World or to Asia.

Today, much of the Western world is once again in a spiritual crisis. Religious practice is shrinking in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, even in Latin America. To reverse the trend, Blessed John Paul II called for a New Evangelization, a new missionary spirit to reclaim souls for God. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI tried to advance John Paul’s vision, and Pope Francis is doing the same. A model for the New Evangelization is St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose Jesuits did so much to revitalize the Church and save souls.

St. Ignatius of Loyola is the patron saint of retreats, soldiers, the Society of Jesus and of the Basque country. His feast day is July 31.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

St. Margaret’s life is one of the most heart-wrenching stories in the calendar of the saints. She was born blind, with severe curvature of the spine; her right leg was an inch and a half shorter than her left, and her left arm was malformed. She never grew beyond 4 feet tall.

Her parents kept little Margaret hidden away in their house in Metola in the Italian province of Umbria. She was 6 years old when the family traveled to a shrine at Castello, hoping for a miracle. When no miracle took place, Margaret’s mother and father abandoned her.

Some women of Castello found the terrified child and took care of her until they could arrange for her to be adopted. A husband and wife, Venfarino and Grigia, invited Margaret to live with them; they treated her like their own daughter, with love and kindness. She appears to have spent the rest of her life with her adoptive parents.

There was a convent near Margaret’s home, and the nuns became fond of her. When she was about 13 years old, Margaret asked to be admitted as a postulant. Given her years of friendship with the sisters, Margaret expected that she would be happy in their convent. She was in for a disappointment. The nuns were lax in keeping the rule of their order and even in keeping the routine of daily prayer and meditation. Margaret, on the other hand, was intensely devout.

The lack of fervor in her sisters surprised and confused her, while Margaret’s zeal made the nuns self-conscious, angry and resentful. Ultimately, the superior of the convent asked Margaret to leave. She returned to her adoptive parents and at age 15 joined the Third Order of St. Dominic, which permitted her to wear the habit and take the vows of a nun but still live at home where she felt loved and secure.

Margaret’s disabilities did not make her bitter; rather, she became one of the most generous, sympathetic people in Castello. She nursed the sick, consoled the dying and visited prisoners. Margaret said that in the sufferings of her neighbors she saw the image of the suffering Christ. As for her own disabilities, she regarded them as a means to unite her pain with the pain Christ endured on the cross. Her courage, her patience and her deep religious devotion won her the affection of everyone in Castello.

Margaret died when she was 33 years old. At her Requiem Mass the crowd was so great it seemed that the entire town and all the peasants from the countryside had come to the funeral. Th e parish priest planned to bury Margaret in the churchyard, but after the Mass was over the mourners insisted that she must have a tomb inside the church, with all the other distinguished dead of the parish.

The priest and the congregation were still arguing the point when a girl whose legs were crippled dragged herself to Margaret’s coffin. She touched the casket, then stood up and began to walk. The miracle convinced the priest to give Margaret a tomb inside the church. Today her remains lie beneath the high altar of Castello’s Church of St. Dominic.

St. Margaret (1287-1320) is the patron saint of the poor and anyone dealing with a disability or physical challenge. She also is venerated as one of the patron saints of the pro-life movement. Pope Francis declared her a saint through equipollent canonization on April 24, 2021. Her feast day is April 13.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”