Nov. 1, Feast of All Saints -- Tell everyone your favorite saint(s).

[DemBones DemBones]

Mine are St. Francis, for his love of nature as well as mankind;

St. Teresa of Avila because she was a great mystic and a strong woman who founded a new religious order;

St. Catherine of Siena because she also was a great mystic and a strong woman who convinced the pope he needed to quit living in Avignon and go back to Rome.

Appropriately, St. Teresa and St. Catherine were the first women to be named Doctors of the Church. St. Catherine and St. Francis both received the stigmata, while St. Teresa had her side pierced with a burning lance by an angel, as the Roman centurion pierced Jesus's side after He had died on the cross.

Another great saint is St. Anthony of Padua. I call on him a lot to help me find things I've lost. ;-)

[DemBones DemBones]

1. St. Francis and St. Teresa both have

feasts in October and my feast day posts about them are still here on the front page, if you missed them before.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

2. the Virgen de Guadalupe, Saint Anthony and Saint Francis are my favorites

Saint Anthony being the saint I pray to for intercession most often but the gentle spirit of Virgen de Guadalupe being my absolute favorite. I think it's almost required in Mexican culture to have at least one picture or image of the Virgen in the home. :)

[DemBones DemBones]

5. Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Perpetual Help are

especially dear titles of Mary to me.

I left them out because the BVM has so many feast days and is the greatest of all saints, being the Mother of God, as you know.

I believe you are right that OLG is a must-have in Mexican homes. There are a lot of Mexicans in our parish and when we remodeled our old church we replaced some clear windows with stained glass ones, one of them showing OLG. There is also a lifesize image of her by the votive candle stand.

Around town, I have seen large images of her on the backs of vans, etc. The Hispanics in our parish have a procession through town on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The apparition is a fasinating story. This is one of my favorite sites:

http://www.sancta.org/

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Duplicate post due to computer hiccup, but I'll add that

Our Lady of Guadalupe is Patroness of the Americas and the unborn. The spot where she appeared to St. Juan Diego is in the exact center of the Americas, by latitude and longitude, according to what I've read.

P.S. You'd probably like my new thread about Umberto Eco's essay on Mac vs. DOS as a religious controversy of sorts and could help with my idea of extending his analogies.

[theredpen]

3. St. Thomas

Saint Thomas the Apostle is a great Saint for a variety of reasons. He's the patron Saint of architects because he built many churches, but I think he's also a good patron Saint for computer system architects like me. A good definition of "architecture" in a computer system is "the stuff that's painful to change your mind about later." The architect on a project makes decisions which can make or break a project — it's a role where doubt and faith meet in a technical arena much like they met in a spiritual arena in Thomas' life. I think he'd appreciate that.

Computer stuff usually goes to St. Isidore of Seville. He was a great scholar and gatherer of information. I pray to him on behalf of our database servers, which being Microsoft systems, actually require divine intervention to operate reliably.

I like St. Francis, and, of course St. Ignatius, but I like to find reasons to pray and venerate some of the saints who aren't in the "Top 100," too.

I recently saw George Carlin perform; it was in a small, out of the way venue, and I discovered that he was performing there in order to work on new material for his next big tour. I said a prayer to St. Genesius that George develop a great new show. St. Genesius was a Roman actor hired to perform a role poking fun at Christianity, and reportedly converted while performing. As an outspoken ex-Catholic who is still obviously steeped in the religion of his youth, I'm sure Mr. Carlin would have appreciated my prayer.

In June, 2002, I FedEx'ed some fireworks from Texas to the Catkills area of New York (don't try this now, they've really beefed up security). If anyone was going to get in big trouble for this post-9/11 no-no, it was me, the sender. I did a bunch of stuff to cover my tracks, including (obviously) using a fake sender name. Even if I wasn't caught personally, there was still a chance that the shipment would be detected and confiscated in transit, so I gave myself and edge.

I designated the sender as Erasmus di Formiae. Erasmus is also known as St. Elmo, the patron Saint of explosives workers. The shipment arrived without any problems and added some additional cheer to a July 4th celebration that was attended by many New Yorkers who'd recently lived through the infamous terrorists attacks. I like to think that St. Elmo appreciated this and helped make sure my illicit cargo arrived safely.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Good choices all. Is that the same St. Elmo who is

patron of sailors and associated with St. Elmo's fire?

P.S. Be sure to see my new thread on Umberto Eco, I look forward to your input.

[mrgorth]

4. St. Francis

.

[CBHagman]

8. Saint Anthony of Padua, though not for the usual reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I've always loved asking Anthony for his intercession on all the usual things, including missing articles. But what I really appreciate most about him is that the course of his life didn't assume a straight line. He so wanted to be one thing (i.e., a martyr), his family wanted something else, and the end result was something no one could have predicted. I can appreciate someone who finds his calling by trial and error, or unexpected circumstances!

His feast day, June 13th, also has special significance for me, for reasons I'd rather not go into here.

On edit: What Wikipedia has to say about Anthony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_of_Padua

[hedgehog]

10. I found out that in Brazil, he's called St, Anthony of Lisbon.

I guess for Portugese speakers, he's the home town boy!

[shenmue]

9. Simon of Cyrene. Because he helped Christ.

Although there was nowhere to go at that moment, he literally accepted his cross and bore it.

[knitter4democracy]

11. St. Katharine and Anna the Prophetess.

They're my two faves. St. Katharine took on all those male scholars in Alexandria and converted them to Christ, so that's why she had to die (but took her own time to do it). Anna the Prophetess was the one, with Simon, in the Temple when Jesus was dedicated who foresaw that He was the Christ. I've always imagined that she took Mary aside and had a few words while the men were talking about something else. :)

[Zuni]

12. some favorites of mine

St. Luke---my favorite of all the writers in the Bible. Very well educated and a compassionate doctor who journeyed all of the ancient world helping St. Paul spread The Word.

St. Padre Pio---A man who was truly touched by the Hand of God. There is no other explanation for the countless miracles associated with him.

St. Alphonsus---The founder of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer, the Redemptorists and Doctor of the Church. I live in a Redemptorist Parish and I am a big fan of these guys. Their selflessness and work on behalf of the poor in my area is without peer.

The Cappadocian Fathers---Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, three of the most important theologians of the early Church.

St. Andrew---the first called of the Apostles and brother of St. Peter. I wear a Saint Andrew medal around my neck and often ask him to pray for me.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

13. Sts., Dominic de Guzman

John the Baptist, Catherine Sienna, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Martin de Porres, Bartholome de las Casas.

[47of74]

14. I think of those who haven't been named Saints yet...

The question made me think of men and women who were very Saintly people, but who have not yet been named Saints. Such as Pope John XXIII, or Fr. Samuel Mazzuchelli.

[Zuni]

16. one Blessed was a pastor at my church

for a short time, in the 1860s. Francis Xavier Seelos. He was later transfered to New Orleans where he died helping the sick during a yellow fever epidemic.

[47of74]

17. Fr. Mazzuchelli was named Venerable

He served at the Cathedral parish in Dubuque during the 1830s and was named Venerable by John Paul II in 1993. We're all hoping that he'll be Beatified. I would really like to live long enough to see him canonized too.

[WildEyedLiberal]

15. St. Joan of Arc, my personal patron saint

Women who kick ass in a man's world always get my vote :D

I am also very fond of St. Thomas More, who refused to bend his principles even though it meant death at the hands of a tyrant, and St. Francis, of course, because he reminds me of what it is to be Christlike.

[peruban]

18. I so envy those who got to go to a Catholic school.

I wasn't brought up with Catholicism, I converted when I was 21, so I missed out on a lot. Can anyone suggest a good site for learning more about the saints?

[Zuni]

19. I didn't go to Catholic school

I dodged that bullet :)

but there are many great Saints....

At the website of St. Anthony Messenger, a Franciscan publication, they have a Saint of the day

http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saintofDay/

this is a great site all around, not just this one feature

[mrs_p]

20. my feast day is coming up in a couple of days

st. adelaide

but my favorite saints are sts. francis, claire, john of the cross (feast day this week too), and teresa of avila

[Princess Turandot]

21. Francis & Clare of Assisi..

I'll let my signature speak to that. :)

But one 'modern' saint whose story is fascinating to me is Mother Frances Cabrini. She was a 'liberated woman' before anyone coined the term. Born in 1850, she was rejected by several existing orders because of poor health. Thus, she founded her own, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She and her small group of sisters were then sent to NYC by Pope Leo XIII, some think, to get her 'out of his hair'.

Once in NYC in 1889, the bishop at the time tried to send her back to Italy. They declined to leave, then found and repaired quarters for themselves largely on their own. They then branched out to other parts of the Western hemisphere, founding in her lifetime almost 70 schools, orphanages and hospitals, intended to serve immigrants and the poor. In some cases, her sisters even did a large part of the manual labor involved. She personally traveled numerous times to South America as well as back to Europe although personally terrified of water.

In 1909, she became a naturalized American.

When she died in 1917, so certain was the Vatican of her inherent spiritual qualities, that they requested that her heart be removed and sent to Rome. The rest of her remains lay in state in the chapel at a high school which the MSSH founded in upper Manhattan. In 1946, Mother Cabrini was canonized as the first American Saint of our Church.

The women who were later drawn to her order had a lot in common with her. There is a hospital in NYC which she founded which at one point was the only Catholic hospital in Manhattan which was not effectively controlled by the Archdiocese of NY. John Cardinal O'Connor met with the Sisters and effectively told them to give their hospital to his Catholic health system. They reverentially and politely told him to stuff it.

I worked for these sisters a few years back. As a result, I always laugh when I read derogatory cracks about nuns on DU. There are very few people here who could compete with these gals on the grounds of righteousness or commitment. Or even reliability in a fox hole!