SEPTEMBER 18, 2024 – ST. THOMAS OF VILLANOVA.

• St. Januarius (Gennaro) (304). Bishop, Martyr, Patron or Patroness. Patron of Naples. (Current, Traditional)
• St. Joseph of Cupertino (1663). Patron or Patroness, Priest, Religious. Patron of aviators, and those who fly, students. (Traditional)

ST. THOMAS, the glory of the Spanish Church in the sixteenth century, was born A.D. 1488. A thirst for the science of the Saints led him to enter the house of the Austin Friars at Salamanca. Charles V. listened to him as an oracle, and appointed him Archbishop of Valencia. On being led to his throne in church, he pushed the silken cushions aside, and with tears kissed the ground. His first visit was to the prison; the sum with which the chapter presented him for his palace was devoted to the public hospital. As a child he had given his meal to the poor, and two thirds of his episcopal revenues were now annually spent in alms. He daily fed five hundred needy persons, brought up himself the orphans of the city, and sheltered the neglected foundlings with a mother’s care. During his eleven years’ episcopate nut one poor maiden was married without an alms from the Saint. Spurred by his example, the rich and the selfish became liberal and generous; and when, on the Nativity of our Lady, A.D. 1555, St Thomas came to die, he was well-nigh the only poor man in his see.

REFLECTION: “Answer me, O sinner!” St. Thomas would say, “what can you purchase with your money better or more necessary than the redemption of your sins?”

WORD OF THE DAY

APOSTASY (ecclesiastical). One of the three kinds of desertion recognized by the laws of the Roman Catholic Church; from Christianity, when a baptized person entirely gives up his Christian faith; from orders, when a cleric abandons the ecclesiastical state; and from religion, when a man or woman leaves the religious life without dispensation from public vows.

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!)

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