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

Associating a saint with a particular cause is usually the work of the people in the pews. They hear the story of a saint and see something in his or her life that applies to their own life or situation. It’s usually very straightforward: Sts. Cosmas and Damian were doctors, so they are the patron of doctors; during her martyrdom, all of St. Apollonia’s teeth were knocked out, so she is invoked against toothache; St. Joseph labored as a carpenter, so he is the patron of all workers. But once in a great while the pope steps forward and formally declares a particular saint to be patron of a particular cause. That is what happened in 1979, when Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed St. Francis of Assisi the patron saint of the environment.

It’s not unusual to find statues of St. Francis standing amid a flowerbed or perched on the edge of a birdbath. Some of them are handsome works of art, and some are fairly sentimental, with cute bunnies and fawns at Francis’ feet and birds sitting in the palm of his hand.

Sentimental yard art can be a little hard to take, but there are worse things that have happened to poor St. Francis. Francis — one of the most popular saints among Catholics and non-Catholics — has sometimes been recast as a sun-and-moon worshipping pantheist. This characterization of St. Francis is deeply flawed. The man was profoundly, unshakably committed to the Catholic faith. When he contemplated the natural world he did not see a collection of “spirits,” but a gloriously complex, interrelated system that reflected the splendor, the goodness and the generosity of God. His famous “Canticle of the Sun” is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Creator for the all the wonders of creation. It is because St. Francis loved and cherished the universe God made and all the creatures in it that Blessed John Paul named the patron of the environmental movement.

Francis began composing the “Canticle of the Sun” in 1225. He wrote in the style of the troubadours, the romantic poets he had tried to imitate when he was a teenager running the streets of Assisi. In order for his hymn to reach the widest possible audience, he wrote it in Italian rather than Latin. From time to time he added new verses. It’s likely that some of these were lost because Francis appears to have added verses spontaneously to fit a particular moment.

He composed some lines on the virtue of forgiveness (this verse has come down to us) after he had arbitrated a dispute between the bishop of Assisi and the governor of the town. He made his final addition to the “Canticle” as he lay on his deathbed. “Praised be my Lord for our Sister mortal death, from whom no man alive will escape,” Francis sang.

St. Francis is the patron saint of animals and animal welfare societies. He is also one of the patron saints of Italy, and of the Archdioceses of Denver, San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M.  His feast day is Oct. 4

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

The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically altered the moral landscape of the Western world. But of course, sexual promiscuity was not invented in the 1960s; it has always been with us, although it may have been more rampant in some places and some periods of history than others.

St. Mary of Egypt was born into a family of Egyptian Christians. At age 12, she ran away from home and went to live in Alexandria, the most cosmopolitan, most sophisticated and in many ways one of the most corrupt cities in the Mediterranean world. She supported herself as a singer and dancer. At some point, we don’t know when, she lost her innocence.

Mary’s sexual appetite took over her personality. She cruised the streets of Alexandria, looking for partners. Her favorite diversion was to corrupt innocent young men. But many years later, as she told St. Zosimus — the monk who wrote down her autobiography — she never accepted money from the men she slept with, she never became a prostitute.

Once, while walking along the wharves at the harbor, she saw a group of men boarding a ship. She asked one of the sailors who the men were, and where were they going. He said they were all pilgrims, heading to Jerusalem to celebrate there the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On impulse, Mary decided to go, too. By the time the ship reached the Holy Land, Mary had seduced every pilgrim and every member of the crew.

In Jerusalem she continued her usual routine of looking for new partners. On the holy day, a throng of pilgrims made their way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Mary, out of curiosity, joined them. But when she reached the threshold of the church, some invisible force held her back. She could not enter. All at once the wickedness of her life overwhelmed her, and she began to cry.

Near the door was a carving of the Blessed Virgin. Turning to the sacred image, Mary prayed for the first time in years, “Help me,” she begged Our Lady, “for I have no other help.” With that, the power that had kept her from entering the church withdrew and Mary went in. She found a priest and made a full confession.

After the Mass and veneration of the Holy Cross, Mary left Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan River and headed out into the desert. There she became a hermit, living a life of prayer and penance for nearly 50 years.

Toward the end of her life she encountered the monk Zosimus, to whom she told her story. Then she begged him to return to her on Holy Thursday with the Blessed Sacrament — it had been decades since she had been able to receive holy Communion. Zosimus returned, as he had promised, but he found that Mary had died. He buried her, then went back to his monastery and began to make known the story of Mary of Egypt.

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

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.”

Husbands and wives whose marriages are coming apart or who have already gone through the pain of divorce have as their patron St. Helen (or Helena). After more than 20 years of marriage, Helen’s husband divorced her to make a politically advantageous match with a young woman who was a member of Rome’s imperial family.

St. Helen was born in the town of Drepanum in northern Turkey; her father and mother were innkeepers. It was while she was working at her parents’ inn that Helen met a Roman soldier named Constantius Chlorus, a man whose origins were as humble as Helen’s; Constantius’ father was a goatherd; his mother was the daughter of a slave who had been liberated by his master. Constantius was an ambitious man who saw in the military an opportunity to rise above his low birth status.

The couple married in 270. Two years later, they were in Serbia at Constantius’ new post in the town of Nish. There, on Feb. 27, 272, Helen gave birth to a son. They named the boy Constantine.

We have no documents to tell us what happened to the family between the year of Constantine’s birth and 288, the year Constantius was appointed governor of Dalmatia. At some point during that interval, Constantius had won the confidence of the co-emperors, Diocletian and Maximian. Imperial patronage meant that Constantius was poised for great things, and in 292, Maximian selected Constantius to administer the provinces of Gaul, Spain and Britain. As a sign of special favor, the emperor urged Constantius to divorce Helen and marry Flavia Maximiana Theodora, Maximian’s stepdaughter. To sweeten the offer, Maximian arranged for 20-year-old Constantine to finish his military training by fighting Rome’s enemies in Egypt.

These were heady days for Constantius and Constantine, but it must have been a wretched time for Helen. After 22 years of family life, she found herself discarded by her husband and deprived of the company of her son.

We do not know what happened to Helen after Constantius divorced her, with one exception: We know that at some point during those lonely years, Helen converted to Christianity. Then, after the death of Constantius in 306, Constantine and his mother were reunited, and Constantine’s army proclaimed him emperor. While he was on the march to Rome to defend his title against a rival, Constantine had a vision of a cross of light inscribed with the words, “In this sign, conquer.” Constantine ordered a new military standard — a cross surmounted by the Greek monogram Chi-Rho, the first two letters in the name Christ. Led by the cross, Constantine’s army went into battle at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome where he conquered his rival, as the vision had promised.

A year later, Constantine published the Edict of Milan, which put an end to the persecution of the Church and guaranteed toleration to Christians throughout the Roman Empire. To console his mother for all those unhappy years after her divorce, Constantine showered honors on Helen. He granted her the imperial title Augusta, renamed her birthplace Helenopolis and had coins struck bearing her image. In Rome, Constantine gave Helen as her residence the Sessorian Palace, part of which — including Helen’s private chapel — survives today as the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.

St. Helen is also the patron of converts to the Catholic faith and of archaeologists. Her feast day is August 18.

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.”