MEMORIAL OF SAINT CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR – FEAST DAY ~ NOVEMBER 25TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for God’s deliverance from impossible causes or situations. May Saint Catherine intercede for young women seeking for life partners, may God grant their heart desires with God fearing life partners. We pray for all teachers, students, Priests, Preacher and all those who proclaim the Gospel. We pray for the sick and dying, especially sick children, those who are mentally and physically ill, strokes, heart diseases, and those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the souls in Purgatory and the repose of the souls of the faithful departed and we pray for all widows and widowers. We pray for torture victims, the poor, the needy and the most vulnerable in our communities and around the world. We pray for all parents and children, for peace, love, justice and unity in our marriages, our families and our world. 🙏
SAINT CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR: St. Catherine of Alexandria (282 – 305), also known as St. Catherine of the Wheel, a revered martyr of the fourth century and she is one of the “Fourteen Holy Helpers.” St. Catherine was the subject of great interest and devotion among later medieval Christians. Devotees relished tales of her rejection of marriage, her rebuke to an emperor, and her decision to cleave to Christ even under threat of torture. Pope John Paul II restored the celebration of her memorial to the Roman Catholic calendar in 2002.
St. Catherine was born to a noble pagan family in Alexandria, Egypt, and her father was governor of the city. She was both a princess and a noted scholar, who became a Christian at 14, a virgin by choice (before the emergence of organized monasticism), and eventually a martyr for the faith. This holy virgin was most distinguished by the nobility of her birth as well as by her beauty, wealth, and learning. She was an intelligent child who devoted herself to study, and converted to the Christian faith after the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her in a vision. Following her conversion at the age of eighteen through a vision of Mary and her holy Child, St. Catherine preached the Gospel throughout Alexandria. The Egyptian city of Alexandria was a center of learning in the ancient world, and tradition represents St. Catherine as the highly educated daughter of a noble pagan family. It is said that a vision of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus spurred her conversion, and the story has inspired works of art which depict her decision to live as a virginal “spouse of Christ.” St. Catherine also denounced the Emperor Maxentius for persecuting Christians. Many of her fellow Christians were put to death under the reign of Roman Emperor Maxentius. Fifty of her converts were then burned to death.
The Emperor Maxentius ruled Egypt during St. Catherine’s brief lifetime, a period when multiple co-emperors jointly governed the Roman Empire. During this time, just before the Emperor Constantine’s embrace and legalization of Christianity, the Church was growing but also attracting persecution. St. Catherine, eager to defend the faith she had embraced, came before Maxentius to protest a brutal campaign against the Church. At first, the emperor decided to try and persuade her to renounce Christ. But in a debate that the emperor proceeded to arrange between St. Catherine and a number of pagan philosophers, St. Catherine prevailed – with her skillful apologetics converting them instead. Maxentius’ next stratagem involved an offer to make her his mistress. The emperor offered Catherine a royal marriage if she would renounce her faith, but she refused regarding herself as a bride of Christ, her refusal landed in prison.
St. Catherine was imprisoned, and while in captivity, and Maxentius was away, through her newfound fame, St. Catherine converted the Emperor Maxentius’s wife and two hundred of his soldiers. He had them all put to death. Enraged by St. Catherine’s boldness and resolve, the Emperor resolved to break her will through torture on a spiked wheel. St. Catherine was to be tortured and killed by being torn apart on a spiked wheel, but the wheel fell to pieces when it touched her. She was finally martyred by beheading. Emperor Maxentius later died in a historic battle against his Co-Emperor Constantine in October of 312, after which he was remembered disdainfully, if at all. St. Catherine, meanwhile, inspired generations of philosophers, consecrated women, and martyrs. She was one of the voices heard by St. Joan of Arc.
Ironically, or perhaps appropriately – given both her embrace of virginity, and her “mystic marriage” to Christ – young women in many Western European countries were once known to seek her intercession in finding their husbands. Regrettably, the torture wheel to which she herself may have been subjected was subsequently nicknamed the “Catherine wheel,” and used even among Christian kingdoms. Today, St. Catherine of Alexandria is more appropriately known as the namesake of a monastery at Mount Sinai that claims to be the oldest in the world. St. Catherine is the Patron Saint of young girls; students; philosophers; preachers; apologists; theologians; teachers; spinsters; unmarried girls; craftsmen who work with a wheel (potters; spinners; etc.); archivists; attorneys; barristers; dying people; educators; jurists; knife grinders; knife sharpeners; lawyers; librarians; libraries; maidens; mechanics; millers; nurses; old maids; scholars; schoolchildren; scribes; secretaries; stenographers; tanners; turners; wheelwrights. St. Catherine’s feast day is celebrated on November 25th.
PRAYER: Almighty ever-living God, who gave Saint Catherine of Alexandria to your people as a Virgin and an invincible Martyr, grant that through her intercession we may be strengthened in faith and constancy and spend ourselves without reserve for the unity of the Church. 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🙏