Venerable Pierre Toussaint was a slave, a popular hairdresser and benefactor, husband and father. Pierre was born in 1766 on the island of Saint Domingue, a French colony in the Caribbean, now known as Haiti. At that time, the island was owned by very wealthy French sugar, coffee, and tobacco...
“Beloved: Clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for: God opposes the proud but bestows favor on the humble. So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” St. Peter the Apostle (1st century) “Humility is the mother, root,...
St. Pedro de Jesús Maldonado was a priest and a martyr of the anti-Catholic regime of Mexican President Plutarco Calles. Pedro was born in 1892 at Chihuahua City in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. His parents were Apolinar Maldonado and Micaela Lucero, and Pedro had seven siblings. SEMINARY INTERRUPTION...
“When men saw him [Paul} in captivity, flogged, shipwrecked, led about in chains, they could scarcely help thinking him a pitiable sight. Nevertheless, even while he suffered all this at the hands of men, he always looked toward the One Who is his head and he asked: What can separate...
“Do not believe only what the eyes of your body tell you. What is not seen is here more truly seen, for what is seen belongs to time, but what is not seen belongs to eternity.” St. Ambrose of Milan (4th century, Doctor of the Church) “From now on, regard...
St. Julie Billiart was a teacher, a foundress, and a resistor of the anti-Church French Revolution. Julie was born in 1751, the sixth of seven children born to a prosperous farming family at Cuvilly in northern France. Even as a young child, she had a keen interest in religion and...
“Now the passage, ‘All my bones are poured out and scattered like water; my heart is becoming like wax melting in the midst of my belly,’ foretold what would happen on that night when they came to the Mount of Olives to arrest Him. For in the memoirs of the...
Adopted at birth and raised in Louisiana, David Scotton is on a journey to Indiana to meet the birth parents he’s never known. His tattooed birth mother, Melissa, and reserved birth father, Brian, anxiously wait for him, concerned David will reject them for decisions they made before he was born....
“Sometimes we ask ourselves why the Lord makes us wait so long for an answer to our prayers. If His love for us is so great, how is it that He does not heal us straightaway when we turn to Him for help? This question has been asked in every...
St. Cunegunda was a generous benefactress who practiced stewardship of what she had authority over during her life as a princess, queen, wife, and nun. Cunegunda was born to Siegfried, a count, and his wife Hedwig of Luxembourg, ca. 973, one of eleven children. She was a descendant of Charlemagne....