November 13 Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini. breski1 November 13 Saint Frances Xavier CabriniMore
November 13 Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.
breski1 November 13 Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
breski1 November 13 Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
Mother Cabrini’s First Miracle
March 14, 1921
Yawning openly on this gray afternoon, a young nurse makes a last round of her newborn charges in New York City’s Columbus Hospital Extension on 163rd Street. In the final moments of an unusually busy shift, the weary nurse’s thoughts are already far from babies as she bends over the whimpering Smith infant at whose midday birth she assisted two hours …More
Mother Cabrini’s First Miracle
March 14, 1921
Yawning openly on this gray afternoon, a young nurse makes a last round of her newborn charges in New York City’s Columbus Hospital Extension on 163rd Street. In the final moments of an unusually busy shift, the weary nurse’s thoughts are already far from babies as she bends over the whimpering Smith infant at whose midday birth she assisted two hours earlier.
Instantly wide awake, Mae Redmond gasps, “Oh God! Oh God!” for infant Smith’s face is like charred wood, cheeks and lips blackened and burnt. Pus exudes from both tiny nostrils. Worst, where eyes should be are only two grotesque edemic swellings.
Horrified, Mae must struggle not to pass out as her mind grasps for how this can be. No one has handled the newborn after his normal delivery since she herself weighed and measured him and put in the eye drops prescribed by law.
The drops! Suddenly her panic lunges in a definite direction. She staggers across the nursery and picks up the bottle of 1-percent silver-nitrate solution used in the newborn’s eyes. What she reads on the label makes her shriek hysterically again and again, “Doctor! Oh God! Get a doctor!”
Into infant Peter Smith’s eyes the rushed nurse has deftly dropped, carefully pulling back each lid to get it all in, not 1-percent silver-nitrate solution, but 50-percent silver-nitrate solution. Even 5-percent to 25-percent solution is used only on unwanted human tissue — tumors, for instance — because it eats away flesh as effectively as electric cauterizing tools. Fifty-percent solution will gradually bore a hole in a solid piece of wood. And it has already been at work on the soft human tissue of infant Peter’s eyes for two hours.
Dr. John G. Grimley is the first physician to hear the nurse’s shrill cries. Looking at the badly burnt face and the bottle label, the suddenly ashen-faced doctor can only shake his head helplessly. A few minutes later he is reporting to an anguished Mother Teresa Bacigalupo, Superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart who own and run Columbus Hospital, that the nurse has accidentally destroyed a newborn’s sight.
This article on Mother Cabrini is one of dozens of fascinating stories featured in Nothing Short of a Miracle.
Desperately, the deadly bottle in hand, Mae meanwhile runs to find Dr. Paul W. Casson. But Casson cannot help the baby either. In fact the second doctor to see the infant will later recall that the sight of the tiny charred face and the 50-percent label knocks him speechless and breathless — at a loss for what to do. It is obvious to his experienced eye that the deadly solution has penetrated every layer of facial skin. And by now in those eye sockets there can be nothing left to treat. All Casson can do is put in a call that Dr. Michael J. Horan, who delivered Margaret Smith of a “perfect son” less than three hours ago, should return immediately to the hospital.
As he is telephoning, Mother Bacigalupo scurries anxiously into the nursery, interrupting him to plead he do something to save the baby’s sight. Casson can only explain no human remedy can restore destroyed tissue. “Nothing short of a miracle,” he ends, “can help this kid.”
Her whole body bowed with sorrow, the nun says resolutely in Italian-accented English, “Then we will pray.”
“God! Do!” the doctor urges, his face as stricken as her own. When Dr. Horan arrives, Casson meets him in the hall and tries to break it gently, saying only that “a slightly stronger solution of silver nitrate” has been used for the Smith infant’s eyes.
Dr. Horan exclaims at once, “Anything stronger than 1-percent solution and that’s a blind baby.” A minute later as he bends over the crib, the eyes which are now beginning to exude pus like the nose are so swollen he cannot open them. Three doctors have already seen the baby, and except for ordering cold compresses to reduce inflammation, they can do nothing for him. Horan sends for an eye specialist and waits, a nervous wreck, Casson notes. The eye specialist Dr. Kearney’s expertise merely confirms the other men’s medical knowledge of the properties of nitrate. As if the situation cannot be worse, Horan bears the additional burden of knowing Mrs. Smith’s first baby, a girl, lived only five days. How to tell her and her husband that if their second baby lives, he will be totally blind? He will also be terribly disfigured, since, when a burn goes through all the layers of skin, the body cannot repair itself with new skin, but only with scar tissue.
That afternoon and evening as the spiritual daughters of Frances Cabrini, foundress of the hospital and their religious order, go off duty, they gather one by one in the chapel. All the long night they remain there begging Mother Cabrini, dead only three years, to obtain from the bountiful heart of Jesus the healing of the Smiths’ whimpering infant. Mae is with them, praying her heart out too.
At nine o’clock the next morning, when Kearney and Horan arrive at the nursery, to their astonishment they find baby Peter’s eyelids much less swollen and pussy. Gently the eye specialist opens the eyelids, his stomach tightening as he prepares to see the ravages on the delicate eye tissue of the deadly acid.
Instead, looking back at him with the vague, slightly unfocused gaze of the one-day-old are two perfect eyes.
Kearney and Horan are staggered, as are Casson and Grimley when they arrive. Mae, who shudders to recall how she held back the ba-by’s eyelids to make sure the drops went in, can only sob with delirious gratitude.
Amid the smiles and backslappings someone points out something else inexplicable: the horribly charred skin is healing to smooth infant satin, instead of blistering and contracting.
But no smiles are so broad as the nuns’. They knew Mother Cabrini’s sanctity personally. Now that she has proven it they exult. Her prayers have obtained this “impossible” cure from the Lord.
Then another tragedy looms. Almost immediately after the miracle, the baby comes down with pneumonia. His jubilant doctors plunge back into fear once more, for infant Peter’s temperature, in this pre-antibiotic era, is so high at 107, it appears he will die. This time the summoned Mother Bacigalupo practically laughs at the anxious doctors as she says, “Mother Cabrini did not restore his vision for him to die of pneumonia.” But again the Sisters spend the night in prayer. By morning, another miracle: fever down, pneumonia gone.
In 1938 Mother Cabrini is beatified by the Catholic Church, Several miracles are cited as signs from God in favor of this step, one being the healing of Peter Smith. Seventeen years old, he attends the ceremonies in St. Peter’s, Rome, where onlookers notice his striking and expressive eyes that need no glasses and his smooth-skinned face. Only those who know to look carefully for them make out the two tiny scars where deadly nitrate solution once burned a furrow down his cheeks.
All the way to his death in 2002, Fr. Peter Smith will love to talk about Mother Cabrini, whose prayers to God when he was an infant, as he put it, “show the age of miracles has not passed.”
Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Nothing Short of a Miracle, which is available from Sophia Institute Press.
catholicexchange.com/cabrini-miracle
March 14, 1921
Yawning openly on this gray afternoon, a young nurse makes a last round of her newborn charges in New York City’s Columbus Hospital Extension on 163rd Street. In the final moments of an unusually busy shift, the weary nurse’s thoughts are already far from babies as she bends over the whimpering Smith infant at whose midday birth she assisted two hours earlier.
Instantly wide awake, Mae Redmond gasps, “Oh God! Oh God!” for infant Smith’s face is like charred wood, cheeks and lips blackened and burnt. Pus exudes from both tiny nostrils. Worst, where eyes should be are only two grotesque edemic swellings.
Horrified, Mae must struggle not to pass out as her mind grasps for how this can be. No one has handled the newborn after his normal delivery since she herself weighed and measured him and put in the eye drops prescribed by law.
The drops! Suddenly her panic lunges in a definite direction. She staggers across the nursery and picks up the bottle of 1-percent silver-nitrate solution used in the newborn’s eyes. What she reads on the label makes her shriek hysterically again and again, “Doctor! Oh God! Get a doctor!”
Into infant Peter Smith’s eyes the rushed nurse has deftly dropped, carefully pulling back each lid to get it all in, not 1-percent silver-nitrate solution, but 50-percent silver-nitrate solution. Even 5-percent to 25-percent solution is used only on unwanted human tissue — tumors, for instance — because it eats away flesh as effectively as electric cauterizing tools. Fifty-percent solution will gradually bore a hole in a solid piece of wood. And it has already been at work on the soft human tissue of infant Peter’s eyes for two hours.
Dr. John G. Grimley is the first physician to hear the nurse’s shrill cries. Looking at the badly burnt face and the bottle label, the suddenly ashen-faced doctor can only shake his head helplessly. A few minutes later he is reporting to an anguished Mother Teresa Bacigalupo, Superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart who own and run Columbus Hospital, that the nurse has accidentally destroyed a newborn’s sight.
This article on Mother Cabrini is one of dozens of fascinating stories featured in Nothing Short of a Miracle.
Desperately, the deadly bottle in hand, Mae meanwhile runs to find Dr. Paul W. Casson. But Casson cannot help the baby either. In fact the second doctor to see the infant will later recall that the sight of the tiny charred face and the 50-percent label knocks him speechless and breathless — at a loss for what to do. It is obvious to his experienced eye that the deadly solution has penetrated every layer of facial skin. And by now in those eye sockets there can be nothing left to treat. All Casson can do is put in a call that Dr. Michael J. Horan, who delivered Margaret Smith of a “perfect son” less than three hours ago, should return immediately to the hospital.
As he is telephoning, Mother Bacigalupo scurries anxiously into the nursery, interrupting him to plead he do something to save the baby’s sight. Casson can only explain no human remedy can restore destroyed tissue. “Nothing short of a miracle,” he ends, “can help this kid.”
Her whole body bowed with sorrow, the nun says resolutely in Italian-accented English, “Then we will pray.”
“God! Do!” the doctor urges, his face as stricken as her own. When Dr. Horan arrives, Casson meets him in the hall and tries to break it gently, saying only that “a slightly stronger solution of silver nitrate” has been used for the Smith infant’s eyes.
Dr. Horan exclaims at once, “Anything stronger than 1-percent solution and that’s a blind baby.” A minute later as he bends over the crib, the eyes which are now beginning to exude pus like the nose are so swollen he cannot open them. Three doctors have already seen the baby, and except for ordering cold compresses to reduce inflammation, they can do nothing for him. Horan sends for an eye specialist and waits, a nervous wreck, Casson notes. The eye specialist Dr. Kearney’s expertise merely confirms the other men’s medical knowledge of the properties of nitrate. As if the situation cannot be worse, Horan bears the additional burden of knowing Mrs. Smith’s first baby, a girl, lived only five days. How to tell her and her husband that if their second baby lives, he will be totally blind? He will also be terribly disfigured, since, when a burn goes through all the layers of skin, the body cannot repair itself with new skin, but only with scar tissue.
That afternoon and evening as the spiritual daughters of Frances Cabrini, foundress of the hospital and their religious order, go off duty, they gather one by one in the chapel. All the long night they remain there begging Mother Cabrini, dead only three years, to obtain from the bountiful heart of Jesus the healing of the Smiths’ whimpering infant. Mae is with them, praying her heart out too.
At nine o’clock the next morning, when Kearney and Horan arrive at the nursery, to their astonishment they find baby Peter’s eyelids much less swollen and pussy. Gently the eye specialist opens the eyelids, his stomach tightening as he prepares to see the ravages on the delicate eye tissue of the deadly acid.
Instead, looking back at him with the vague, slightly unfocused gaze of the one-day-old are two perfect eyes.
Kearney and Horan are staggered, as are Casson and Grimley when they arrive. Mae, who shudders to recall how she held back the ba-by’s eyelids to make sure the drops went in, can only sob with delirious gratitude.
Amid the smiles and backslappings someone points out something else inexplicable: the horribly charred skin is healing to smooth infant satin, instead of blistering and contracting.
But no smiles are so broad as the nuns’. They knew Mother Cabrini’s sanctity personally. Now that she has proven it they exult. Her prayers have obtained this “impossible” cure from the Lord.
Then another tragedy looms. Almost immediately after the miracle, the baby comes down with pneumonia. His jubilant doctors plunge back into fear once more, for infant Peter’s temperature, in this pre-antibiotic era, is so high at 107, it appears he will die. This time the summoned Mother Bacigalupo practically laughs at the anxious doctors as she says, “Mother Cabrini did not restore his vision for him to die of pneumonia.” But again the Sisters spend the night in prayer. By morning, another miracle: fever down, pneumonia gone.
In 1938 Mother Cabrini is beatified by the Catholic Church, Several miracles are cited as signs from God in favor of this step, one being the healing of Peter Smith. Seventeen years old, he attends the ceremonies in St. Peter’s, Rome, where onlookers notice his striking and expressive eyes that need no glasses and his smooth-skinned face. Only those who know to look carefully for them make out the two tiny scars where deadly nitrate solution once burned a furrow down his cheeks.
All the way to his death in 2002, Fr. Peter Smith will love to talk about Mother Cabrini, whose prayers to God when he was an infant, as he put it, “show the age of miracles has not passed.”
Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Nothing Short of a Miracle, which is available from Sophia Institute Press.
catholicexchange.com/cabrini-miracle
Old Calendar: St. Didacus, confessor; St. Stanislaus Kostka (Hist)
Today the dioceses in the United States celebrate the memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin, born in Lombardy, Italy, one of thirteen children. She came to America as a missionary, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. She is the first American citizen to be …More
Old Calendar: St. Didacus, confessor; St. Stanislaus Kostka (Hist)
Today the dioceses in the United States celebrate the memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin, born in Lombardy, Italy, one of thirteen children. She came to America as a missionary, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. She is the first American citizen to be canonized. December 22 is her feast day in the Extraordinary Rite.
According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Didacus, a humble Franciscan laybrother and the recipient of exceptional graces. He received such light from God that he spoke of heavenly things in a manner almost divine; certain miracles, but especially his obedience, charity and fervor of his prayer, caused him to be considered a saint wherever he went. He was born in Andalusia, was sent as a missionary to the Canary Isles, spent some time in Rome and returned to die in Spain.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
This saint, the first United States citizen to be canonized, was born in Italy of parents who were farmers. She was the thirteenth child, born when her mother was fifty-two years old. The missionary spirit was awakened in her as a little girl when her father read stories of the missions to his children. She received a good education, and at eighteen was awarded the normal school certificate.
For a while she helped the pastor teach catechism and visited the sick and the poor. She also taught school in a nearby town, and for six years supervised an orphanage assisted by a group of young women. The bishop of Lodi heard of this group and asked Frances to establish a missionary institute to work in his diocese. Frances did so, calling the community the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. An academy for girls was opened and new houses quickly sprang up.
One day Bishop Scalabrini, founder of the Missionaries of Emigration, described to Mother Cabrini the wretched economical and spiritual conditions of the many Italian immigrants in the United States, and she was deeply moved. An audience with Pope Leo XIII changed her plans to go to the missions of the East. "Not to the East, but to the West," the Pope said to her. "Go to the United States." Mother Cabrini no longer hesitated. She landed in New York in 1889, established an orphanage, and then set out on a lifework that comprised the alleviation of every human need. For the children she erected schools, kindergartens, clinics, orphanages, and foundling homes, and numbers of hospitals for the needy sick. At her death over five thousand children were receiving care in her charitable institutions, and at the same time her community had grown to five hundred members in seventy houses in North and South America, France, Spain, and England.
The saint, frail and diminutive of stature, showed such energy and enterprise that everyone marveled. She crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times to visit the various houses and institutions. In 1909 she adopted the United States as her country and became a citizen. After thirty-seven years of unflagging labor and heroic charity she died alone in a chair in Columbus Hospital at Chicago, Illinois, while making dolls for orphans in preparation for a Christmas party. Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago officiated at her funeral and in 1938 also presided at her beatification by Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XII in 1946. She lies buried under the altar of the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York City. — A Saint A Day, Berchmans Bittle, O.F.M.Cap.
Patron: hospital administrators; immigrants; orphans.
Symbols: ship; heart; book.
Things to Do:
If you live in or pass through Colorado, visit the western Mother Cabrini Shrine.
Read more about St. Francis Cabrini.
Prepare an Italian dinner in honor of St. Francis Cabrini. For dessert make a ship cake (symbolizing her missionary work), a heart cake (she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart) or a Book Cake (symbolizing her founding a religious order).
Say the Little Rosary of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.
Read the Encyclical, On Consecrated Virginity, by Pius XII and if you are single consider the possibility of a vocation to this life.
Read the Pope Benedict XVI's Address for World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2007.
If you know someone who has immigrated to this country, try to help them feel welcome, perhaps by inviting them over for the Italian dinner.
St. Didacus
Didacus (or Diego, Jacob) was born in the town of San Nicolas, Andalusia. From early youth he showed a love for solitude. At Arrizafa, near Cordova, he became a Franciscan brother and was outstanding in humility and obedience. He had little formal education, yet through divine enlightenment in no way lacked wisdom. As a missionary he visited the Canary Islands and was appointed first superior of the new foundation there. In 1450 Pope Nicholas V confided to his care the sick in the celebrated convent of Ara Caeli. With his tongue he often cleansed the wounds of the sick. He miraculously healed many with oil from the lamp which burned before a picture of the Blessed Virgin or with the sign of the Cross.
During a stay at the friary at Alcala in 1463, Didacus felt the approach of his last hour. Wrapped in discarded rags, with eyes fixed immovably upon a crucifix, he died while fervently praying the words of the hymn Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, O sweet wood, O sweet nails that held so sweet a burden! For a long time his body remained incorrupt. — The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch.
Patron: diocese of San Diego, California; Franciscan laity; Franciscan lay brothers.
Symbols: Bread and roses in a tunic; cross held by an angel.
Things to Do: Meditate on the fact that in order to walk the Christian path you must always be counter-cultural, for the world follows the broad, level and easy roads, and resolve to bear patiently the next time someone misunderstands you or even ridicules you because you do not conform to this world (pray for that person); Pray for the virtue of humility which we must have if we are to reach our "enemies".
St. Stanislaus Kostka
The son of a Polish senator, St. Stanislaus was first privately educated at the family castle. He later attended the Jesuit college in Vienna, where he set a holy example for all. While at the college, Stanislaus suffered from a serious illness. St. Barbara and two angels appeared to him and he seemed to be given Holy Communion in the vision (either by St. Barbara or by the angels). Also, Our Lady visited him and told him that he would recover and become a Jesuit. The Jesuit provincial in Vienna was too afraid of making Stanislaus's father angry to admit Stanislaus to the Order, so the saint walked to Augsburg and then Dillingen, a total of 350 miles, and there appealed to St. Peter Canisius, the Jesuit provincial of Upper Germany. St. Peter Canisius took him in, and after three weeks, sent Stanislaus to Rome to see St. Francis Borgia, who was general of the Jesuits. In Rome, Stanislaus became a Jesuit at the age of 17, much to the dissatisfaction of his father. His devotion to the Eucharist was apparent to all, since he went into ecstasy after receiving Communion. St. Stanislaus became ill again and died only nine months into his novitiate.
Patron: Poland; young students.
www.catholicculture.org/…/day.cfm
Today the dioceses in the United States celebrate the memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin, born in Lombardy, Italy, one of thirteen children. She came to America as a missionary, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. She is the first American citizen to be canonized. December 22 is her feast day in the Extraordinary Rite.
According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Didacus, a humble Franciscan laybrother and the recipient of exceptional graces. He received such light from God that he spoke of heavenly things in a manner almost divine; certain miracles, but especially his obedience, charity and fervor of his prayer, caused him to be considered a saint wherever he went. He was born in Andalusia, was sent as a missionary to the Canary Isles, spent some time in Rome and returned to die in Spain.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
This saint, the first United States citizen to be canonized, was born in Italy of parents who were farmers. She was the thirteenth child, born when her mother was fifty-two years old. The missionary spirit was awakened in her as a little girl when her father read stories of the missions to his children. She received a good education, and at eighteen was awarded the normal school certificate.
For a while she helped the pastor teach catechism and visited the sick and the poor. She also taught school in a nearby town, and for six years supervised an orphanage assisted by a group of young women. The bishop of Lodi heard of this group and asked Frances to establish a missionary institute to work in his diocese. Frances did so, calling the community the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. An academy for girls was opened and new houses quickly sprang up.
One day Bishop Scalabrini, founder of the Missionaries of Emigration, described to Mother Cabrini the wretched economical and spiritual conditions of the many Italian immigrants in the United States, and she was deeply moved. An audience with Pope Leo XIII changed her plans to go to the missions of the East. "Not to the East, but to the West," the Pope said to her. "Go to the United States." Mother Cabrini no longer hesitated. She landed in New York in 1889, established an orphanage, and then set out on a lifework that comprised the alleviation of every human need. For the children she erected schools, kindergartens, clinics, orphanages, and foundling homes, and numbers of hospitals for the needy sick. At her death over five thousand children were receiving care in her charitable institutions, and at the same time her community had grown to five hundred members in seventy houses in North and South America, France, Spain, and England.
The saint, frail and diminutive of stature, showed such energy and enterprise that everyone marveled. She crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times to visit the various houses and institutions. In 1909 she adopted the United States as her country and became a citizen. After thirty-seven years of unflagging labor and heroic charity she died alone in a chair in Columbus Hospital at Chicago, Illinois, while making dolls for orphans in preparation for a Christmas party. Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago officiated at her funeral and in 1938 also presided at her beatification by Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XII in 1946. She lies buried under the altar of the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York City. — A Saint A Day, Berchmans Bittle, O.F.M.Cap.
Patron: hospital administrators; immigrants; orphans.
Symbols: ship; heart; book.
Things to Do:
If you live in or pass through Colorado, visit the western Mother Cabrini Shrine.
Read more about St. Francis Cabrini.
Prepare an Italian dinner in honor of St. Francis Cabrini. For dessert make a ship cake (symbolizing her missionary work), a heart cake (she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart) or a Book Cake (symbolizing her founding a religious order).
Say the Little Rosary of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.
Read the Encyclical, On Consecrated Virginity, by Pius XII and if you are single consider the possibility of a vocation to this life.
Read the Pope Benedict XVI's Address for World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2007.
If you know someone who has immigrated to this country, try to help them feel welcome, perhaps by inviting them over for the Italian dinner.
St. Didacus
Didacus (or Diego, Jacob) was born in the town of San Nicolas, Andalusia. From early youth he showed a love for solitude. At Arrizafa, near Cordova, he became a Franciscan brother and was outstanding in humility and obedience. He had little formal education, yet through divine enlightenment in no way lacked wisdom. As a missionary he visited the Canary Islands and was appointed first superior of the new foundation there. In 1450 Pope Nicholas V confided to his care the sick in the celebrated convent of Ara Caeli. With his tongue he often cleansed the wounds of the sick. He miraculously healed many with oil from the lamp which burned before a picture of the Blessed Virgin or with the sign of the Cross.
During a stay at the friary at Alcala in 1463, Didacus felt the approach of his last hour. Wrapped in discarded rags, with eyes fixed immovably upon a crucifix, he died while fervently praying the words of the hymn Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, O sweet wood, O sweet nails that held so sweet a burden! For a long time his body remained incorrupt. — The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch.
Patron: diocese of San Diego, California; Franciscan laity; Franciscan lay brothers.
Symbols: Bread and roses in a tunic; cross held by an angel.
Things to Do: Meditate on the fact that in order to walk the Christian path you must always be counter-cultural, for the world follows the broad, level and easy roads, and resolve to bear patiently the next time someone misunderstands you or even ridicules you because you do not conform to this world (pray for that person); Pray for the virtue of humility which we must have if we are to reach our "enemies".
St. Stanislaus Kostka
The son of a Polish senator, St. Stanislaus was first privately educated at the family castle. He later attended the Jesuit college in Vienna, where he set a holy example for all. While at the college, Stanislaus suffered from a serious illness. St. Barbara and two angels appeared to him and he seemed to be given Holy Communion in the vision (either by St. Barbara or by the angels). Also, Our Lady visited him and told him that he would recover and become a Jesuit. The Jesuit provincial in Vienna was too afraid of making Stanislaus's father angry to admit Stanislaus to the Order, so the saint walked to Augsburg and then Dillingen, a total of 350 miles, and there appealed to St. Peter Canisius, the Jesuit provincial of Upper Germany. St. Peter Canisius took him in, and after three weeks, sent Stanislaus to Rome to see St. Francis Borgia, who was general of the Jesuits. In Rome, Stanislaus became a Jesuit at the age of 17, much to the dissatisfaction of his father. His devotion to the Eucharist was apparent to all, since he went into ecstasy after receiving Communion. St. Stanislaus became ill again and died only nine months into his novitiate.
Patron: Poland; young students.
www.catholicculture.org/…/day.cfm