FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – LENT DAY 14 – ST. LEANDER, BISHOP.

• St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows (1862). Religious. Patron of clerics. (Traditional)
• St. Leander (600). Bishop. (Historical)

ST. LEANDER was born of an illustrious family at Carthagena, in Spain. He was the eldest of five brothers, several of whom are numbered among the Saints. He entered into a monastery very young, where he lived many years and attained to an eminent degree of virtue and sacred learning. These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville; but his change of condition made little or no alteration in his method of life, though it brought on him a great increase of care and solicitude. Spain at that time was in possession of the Visigoths. These Goths being infected with Arianism, established this heresy wherever they came; so that when St. Leander was made bishop, it had reigned in Spain a hundred years. This was his great affliction; however, by his prayers to God, and by his most zealous and unwearied endeavors, he became the happy instrument of the conversion of that nation to the Catholic faith. Having converted, among others, Hermenegild, the king’s eldest son and heir apparent, Leander was banished by King Leovigild. This pious prince was put to death by his unnatural father, the year following, for refusing to receive communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. But, touched with remorse not long after, the king recalled our Saint; and falling sick and finding himself past hopes of recovery, he sent for St. Leander, and recommended to him his son Recared. This son, by listening to St. Leander, soon became a Catholic, and finally converted the whole nation of the Visigoths. He was no less successful with respect to the Suevi, a people of Spain, whom his father Leovigild had perverted. 

St. Leander was no less zealous in the reformation of manners than in restoring the purity of faith; and he planted the seeds of that zeal and fervor which afterward produced so many Martyrs and Saints. This holy doctor of Spain died about the year 596, on the 27th of February, as Mabillon proves from his epitaph. The Church of Seville has been a metropolitan see ever since the third century. The cathedral is the most magnificent, both as to structure and ornament, of any in all Spain.

WORD OF THE DAY

CATHOLIC. Its original meaning of “general” or “universal” has taken on a variety of applications in the course of Christian history. First used by St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 35-107) (Letter to the Smyrneans, 8, 2), it is now mainly used in five recognized senses: 1. the Catholic Church as distinct from Christian ecclesiastical bodies that do not recognize the papal primacy; 2. the Catholic faith as the belief of the universal body of the faithful, namely that which is believed “everywhere, always, and by all” (Vincentian Canon); 3. orthodoxy as distinguished from what is heretical or schismatical; 4. the undivided Church before the Eastern Schism of 1054; thereafter the Eastern Church has called itself orthodox, in contrast with those Christian bodies which did not accept the definitions of Ephesus and Chalcedon on the divinity of Christ.

In general, today the term “Catholic” refers to those Christians who profess a continued tradition of faith and worship and who hold to the Apostolic succession of bishops and priests since the time of Christ. (Etym. Latin catholicus, universal; Greek katholikos, universal.)

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

LENT MEDITATION DAY 14

Enjoy daily meditations this lent from Fr. Richard Clarke, SJ. Short and powerful, written in 1880 for busy lay people to reap rewards through lent. (includes audio) Lent Day 14: Tuesday after the Second Sunday in Lent — The Sequel of the Sacred Agony.

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