Several of the saints whose liturgical feast is celebrated this August 2023 have very similar lives and even characteristics, as we will see below.
Saints of Penance: Alfonso Maria de Liguori and Juan Maria Vianney
In the first days of August, the festivities of San Alfonso María de Ligorio (August 1) and San Juan María Vianney (August 4), known as Santo Cura de Ars, are celebrated.
Both are recognized for being models of zeal and leading Catholics to the sacrament of Confession. Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists, Alfonso obtained a doctorate in law at the age of 16. In 1723, however, he lost a very important case and abandoned this career to become a priest. In 1745 he wrote his first devotional works and in 1748 he published the first edition of his Guide to Moral Theology. Alfonso is ranked as one of the greatest moral theologians in the history of the Church. In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared him the patron saint of confessors and moral theologians.
For his part, the Cure of Ars is also honored as one of the most important confessors and patron saint of parish priests. Son of farmers near Lyon (France), the terrible wars of Napoleon Bonaparte prevented him from entering the seminary. When he was finally able to study for the priesthood, his progress was hampered by his complete inability to learn Latin. Finally, ordered by his kindness, he was sent to the village of Ars, in Villars-les-Dombes, where his superiors assumed that he would do no harm.
People began to flock to the village for confession, for his advice and his preaching. Over time, he spent up to 18 hours a day in the confessional. Like Alfonso, who was eventually expelled from the very congregation he founded, Vianney earned the jealousy of some priests who complained to the bishop that he was crazy or mentally unstable. The famous bishop replied that he wanted all his priests to suffer the same madness. The Curé of Ars died while he was listening to a repentant sinner.
Concentration Camp Saints: Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe
On August 9 and 14, respectively, we honor two saints who were victims of the Nazi horror and who are both saints of the modern age: Saint Edith Stein and Saint Maximilian Kolbe.
Saint Edith, also known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a convert from Judaism, Carmelite nun, philosopher, and spiritual writer. Born into a Jewish family, she made the long and dark journey of abandoning Judaism for atheism and then finding her way to Catholicism through philosophy. She embraced Catholicism after studying the philosophy of phenomenology, Thomism, and reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila. She entered the Carmelites in 1934 and was smuggled out of Germany to the Netherlands in 1938 to escape the Nazis. In 1942, however, with Germany occupying Western Europe, she was arrested with her sister Rosa de ella (also a convert) as part of the Nazi decree against all non-Aryan Catholics. She died in a gas chamber that same August. Pope Saint John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and the following year named her co-patroness of Europe, with Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Catherine of Siena.
Saint Maximilian was a Franciscan priest, theologian, and martyr. Born in Poland, he entered Franciscan convents in 1907, studied in Rome, and was ordained a priest in 1918. Like Saint Edith, he possessed a remarkable intellect and was a gifted mathematician and scientist, as well as a journalist. He earned the hatred of the Nazis for his writings, and when Poland fell in September 1939, Kolbe was arrested several times and eventually sent to Auschwitz. As a prisoner he was tortured by SS guards for being a Catholic priest, but he never stopped helping his fellow prisoners. He died on August 14, 1941 after taking the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, a sergeant in the Polish army who was married and had been sentenced to death.
Saints who are relatives: Saint Monica and Saint Augustine
The end of August has two consecutive festivities, that of Santa Mónica (August 27) and her son San Agustín (August 28).
For several years and many tears, Saint Monica prayed that her brilliant but rebellious son would come to his senses and repent of his profligate life wasting his intellect. She never stopped praying and hoping, and in the end, his prayers were answered. Her son’s final conversion came under the influence of Saint Ambrose of Milan, and she was there to witness the baptism at Ambrose’s hands. She died at Ostia, near Rome, on August 27, 387.
Augustine, of course, is considered the greatest of the Western Church Fathers who exerted enormous influence in shaping Christian theology and Western civilization. None of that would have happened if his mother had abandoned him.
Translated and adapted by Diego López Marina. Originally posted on National Catholic Register.
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