MEMORIAL OF SAINT FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI, VIRGIN; SAINT DIDACUS OF ALCALÁ, RELIGIOUS; SAINT STANISLAUS KOSTKA, RELIGIOUS AND SAINT AGOSTINA LIVIA PIETRANTONI, MARTYR – FEAST DAY ~ NOVEMBER 13TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin; Saint Didacus of Alcalá; Saint Stanislaus Kostka and Saint Agostina Livia Pietrantoni. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for abuse victims, immigrants, orphans, children, students and Healthcare workers. We pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are mental and physically ill, stroke, heart diseases and those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases.

SAINT FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI, VIRGIN: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850 – 1917) also known as Mother Cabrini was an Italian missionary. This saint was the first United States citizen to be canonized. Mother Cabrini, who had a deathly fear of water and drowning, crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times in service of the Church and the people she was serving. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in Lombardy, near Milan, Italy in 1850 of parents who were farmers, She was the thirteenth child, born when her mother was fifty-two years old. Her father would often gather his children in the kitchen to hear him read from a book on the lives of the saints. The missionary spirit was awakened in her as a little girl when her father read stories of the missions to his children. At eighteen, she desired to become a Sister but poor health stood in her way. Turned away from being a nun twice due to poor health, she prayed before the relics of her patron, Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary-saint, about founding a new religious order to evangelize the East just as he did. She helped her parents until their death, and then worked on a farm with her brothers and sisters. Orphaned in Italy before she was 18. She received a good education, and at eighteen was awarded the normal school certificate. For a while she helped the pastor teach catechism and visited the sick and the poor. She also taught school in a nearby town, and for six years supervised an orphanage assisted by a group of young women. The bishop of Lodi heard of this group and asked St. Frances to establish a missionary institute to work in his diocese. St. Frances did so, calling the community the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and took on the name “Xavier” in honor of St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary to the Orient. An academy for girls was opened and new houses quickly sprang up.

One day Bishop Scalabrini, founder of the Missionaries of Emigration, described to Mother Cabrini the wretched economical and spiritual conditions of the many Italian immigrants in the United States, and she was deeply moved. An audience with Pope Leo XIII changed her plans to go to the missions of the East. Pope Leo XIII approved of her order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, but instead of sending her to China as she had desired since childhood, he sent her to the West, specifically to America to serve the growing European immigrant population which faced poverty and disenfranchisement. “Not to the East, but to the West,” the Pope said to her. “Go to the United States.” Mother Cabrini no longer hesitated. She landed in New York, United States in 1889 with six Sisters to work among the Italian immigrants. She established an orphanage, and then set out on a lifework that comprised the alleviation of every human need. For the children she erected schools, kindergartens, clinics, orphanages, and foundling homes, and numbers of hospitals for the needy sick. St. Frances went on to found 67 institutions—schools, orphanages, and hospitals—throughout the Western Hemisphere. At her death over five thousand children were receiving care in her charitable institutions, and at the same time her community had grown to five hundred members in seventy houses in North and South America, France, Spain, and England. The saint, frail and diminutive of stature, showed such energy and enterprise that everyone marveled. She crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times to visit the various houses and institutions. In 1909 she adopted the United States as her country and became a citizen. After thirty-seven years of unflagging labor and heroic charity she died alone in a chair on December 22, 1917 at Columbus Hospital at Chicago, Illinois, while making dolls for orphans in preparation for a Christmas party. Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago officiated at her funeral and in 1938 also presided at her beatification by Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XII in 1946, just before a new wave of immigrants began to arrive in the U.S. St. Frances Xavier received American citizenship, and in 1946 became the first United States citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church. She lies buried under the altar of the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York City. St. Frances Xavier’s ministry left a significant mark on the Americas, creating lasting institutions to educate and care for those in need. She is Patron Saint of hospital administrators; immigrants; orphans. Her feast day is November 13th.  

QUOTES FROM SAINT FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI, VIRGIN:
☆“Go often my dear ones and place yourself at the feet of Jesus. He is our comfort, our way, and our life.”
☆”We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend upon material success . . . but on Jesus alone.”
☆”If you are in danger, if your hearts are confused, turn to Mary; she is our comfort, our help; turn towards her and you will be saved.”
☆”I will go anywhere and do anything in order to communicate the love of Jesus to those who do not know Him or have forgotten Him.”
☆”Prayer is powerful! It fills the earth with mercy, it makes the Divine clemency pass from generation to generation; right along the course of the centuries wonderful works have been achieved through prayer.”

A PRAYER FOR PEACE OF MIND (by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini)

Fortify me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and give Your peace to my soul that I may be free from all needless anxiety, solicitude and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to You so that Your will may be my will… Amen.🙏

PRAYER: God our Father, who called Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy to serve the immigrants of America, by her example, teach us to have concern for the stranger, the sick, and all those in need, and by her prayers help us to see Christ in all the men and women we meet or encounter. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever… Amen🙏

SAINT DIDACUS OF ALCALÁ, RELIGIOUS: St. Didacus (or Diego, Jacob) was born in the town of San Nicolas, Andalusia. From early youth he showed a love for solitude. At Arrizafa, near Cordova, he became a Franciscan brother and was outstanding in humility and obedience. He had little formal education, yet through divine enlightenment in no way lacked wisdom. As a missionary he visited the Canary Islands and was appointed first superior of the new foundation there. In 1450 Pope Nicholas V confided to his care the sick in the celebrated convent of Ara Caeli. With his tongue he often cleansed the wounds of the sick. He miraculously healed many with oil from the lamp which burned before a picture of the Blessed Virgin or with the sign of the Cross.

During a stay at the friary at Alcala in 1463, Didacus felt the approach of his last hour. Wrapped in discarded rags, with eyes fixed immovably upon a crucifix, he died while fervently praying the words of the hymn Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, O sweet wood, O sweet nails that held so sweet a burden! For a long time his body remained incorrupt. He’s the Patron Saint of the diocese of San Diego, California; Franciscan laity; Franciscan lay brothers.

Saint Didacus of Alcalá, Religious ~ Pray for us 🙏

SAINT STANISLAUS KOSTKA, RELIGIOUS: St. Stanislaus Kostka (1550-1568) a Jesuit Novice was born on October 28, 1550 at Rostkowo, Poland into a large Polish noble family, the son of a Polish senator, St. Stanislaus was first privately educated at the family castle. He later at the age of 14, attended a Jesuit prep college in Vienna, where he exemplified an iron will to live a life of holiness and set a holy example for all. While at the college, Stanislaus suffered from a serious illness. St. Barbara and two angels appeared to him and he seemed to be given Holy Communion in the vision (either by St. Barbara or by the angels). Also, Our Lady visited him and told him that he would recover and become a Jesuit. That prompted his desire to enter the Jesuits. The Jesuit provincial in Vienna was too afraid of making Stanislaus’s father angry to admit Stanislaus to the Order, so the saint walked to Augsburg and then Dillingen, a total of 350 miles, and there appealed to St. Peter Canisius, the Jesuit provincial of Upper Germany. St. Peter Canisius took him in, and after three weeks, sent Stanislaus to Rome to see St. Francis Borgia, who was general of the Jesuits.

In Rome, St. Stanislaus became a Jesuit at the age of 17, much to the dissatisfaction of his father. His devotion to the Eucharist was apparent to all, since he went into ecstasy after receiving Communion. St. Stanislaus became ill again only 9-10 months into his novitiate and he predicted his own death and died 2 days later on August 15, 1568 (aged 17)
Rome, Papal States, on the Feast of the Assumption of a fever. He was Beatified 8 October 8, 1605, at Saint Peter’s Basilica, Papal States by Pope Paul V and Canonized December 31, 1726, at Saint Peter’s Basilica, Papal States by Pope Benedict XIII. St. Stanislaus is the Patron Saint of Poland, Jesuit novices, students, broken bones, heart palpitations, Ateneo de Manila Junior High School Strake Jesuit College Preparatory, aspirants to the Oblates of St. Joseph, last sacraments.

Saint Stanislaus Kostka, Religious ~ Pray for us 🙏

SAINT AGOSTINA LIVIA PIETRANTONI, MARTYR: St. Olivia Pietrantoni was born and baptized March 27th, 1864 Pozzaglia Sabina, Italy to Francesco Pietrantoni and Caterina Costantini, farmers. She was the second of eleven children. Olivia, later known as “Livia”, was confirmed at age four and received first Holy Communion c. 1876. From an early age she worked in fields and tended animals. At age seven she began to work with other children who were moving sacks of stone and sand for construction of a road from Orvinio to Poggio Moiano. When she was twelve, she left for the winter months with other youngsters to work in the winter olive harvest in Tivoli. She refused offers of marriage and, believing she had a vocation to religious life, traveled to Rome with her uncle. Some had suggested that she sought religious life to escape hard work. To them she is said to have replied, “I wish to choose a Congregation in which there is work both day and night.” But in Rome, she was turned away. A few months later, the Mother General of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Jeanne-Antide Thouret communicated that Livia was expected at the Generalate. She arrived in Rome, aged 22, on March 23, 1886. After postulancy and the novitiate, she received the name “Saint Agostina” and at that time had a premonition that she would indeed become a saint by that name.

Sister Agostina was sent to Holy Spirit Hospital, which had served the sick for seven hundred years. The hospital was not, in fact, hospitable to religious. The Capuchins had been forced to leave, crucifixes and other religous articles were removed and banned, and the sisters were forbidden to speak of God. While working in the tuberculosis ward, Sister contracted the disease, but was miraculously healed. In the course of her work, Sister Agostina found a private corner of the hospital in which to pray for the patients, including Joseph Romanelli, an adult male patient who harrassed her with obscenities and threatening notes. When his blind mother visited him on occasion, Sister made a point of welcoming her. Romanelli was eventually expelled from the hospital for harrassing women who worked in the hospital laundry. He continued to harrass Sister Agostina, sending threats of “I will kill you with my own hands” and “Sister Agostina, you have only a month to live.” On November 13, 1894 Joseph Romanelli attacked Sister Agostina and killed her at the age of 30. As she was dying, she was heard only to utter words of forgiveness and invocations to Mary.  The process for Sister Agostina’s cause begun in 1936, the first decree was in 1945. She was beatified by Pope Paul VI on November 12, 1972 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on April 18, 1999. St. Agostina Livia Pietrantoni is the Patron Saint of abuse victims, martyrs, people in poverty, people ridiculed for their piety.

QUOTES FROM SAINT AGOSTINA LIVIA PIETRANTONI
☆“All, is too little for the Lord.”
☆”We will lie down for such a long time after death that it is worth while to keep standing while we are alive.   Let us work now, one day we will rest.”

Saint Agostina Livia Pietrantoni, Martyr ~ Pray for us 🙏