SAINTS OF THE DAY: FEAST DAY ~ JANUARY 16TH

MEMORIAL OF SAINT MARCELLUS I, POPE AND MARTYR; SAINT HONORATUS, ARCHBISHOP OF ARLES AND BLESSED STEPHANIE QUINZANI, VIRGIN – FEAST DAY ~ JANUARY 16TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Marcellus I, Pope and Martyr; Saint Honoratus, Archbishop of Arles and Blessed Stephanie Quinzani, Virgin.

SAINT MARCELLUS I, POPE AND MARTYR: Pope Marcellus I (6 January 255 – 16 January 309) was elected bishop of Rome from May or June 308 to his death. He succeeded Marcellinus after a considerable interval. He became Pope at the end of the persecutions of Diocletian in aound 308-309. The persecutions had disrupted the Church so much that there had been a gap of over a year with no Pope. Once he was elected, he faced several challenges, including reconsituting the clergy, which had been decimated and whose remnant had practiced their vocation only covertly and with the expectation of martyrdom. He worked hard to recover and welcome back all who had denied the faith in order to keep from being murdered.

When a group of the apostacized, known as the Lapsi, refused to do penance, Marcellus refused to allow their return to the Church. The Lapsi had a bit of political pull, and some members caused such civil disruption that emperor Maxentius exiled the Pope in order to settle the matter. Legend says that Marcellus was forced to work as a stable slave as punishment, but this appears to be fiction, however we do know that he died of the terrible conditions he suffered in exile, he died on January 16,  309 as a result of privations and is considered a martyr because of that. He was initially buried in the cemetery of Saint Priscilla in Rome, but his relics were later transferred to beneath the altar of San Marcello al Corso Church in Rome where they remain today.

PRAYER: Almighty and eternal God, You willed to sent St. Marcellus over Your entire people and to go before them in word and example. By his intercession keep the pastors of Your Church together with their flocks and guide them in the way of eternal salvation. Amen🙏

SAINT HONORATUS, ARCHBISHOP OF ARLES: St Honoratus was of a consular Roman family that had settled in Gaul. In his youth he renounced the worship of idols and gained his elder brother, Venantius, to Christ. The two brothers, convinced of the hollowness of the things of this world, desired to renounce it with all its pleasures, but a fond pagan father put continual obstacles in their way. At length, taking with them for their director Saint Caprais, a holy hermit, they sailed from Marseilles to Greece, intending to live there unknown in a desert. Venantius soon died happily at Methone, and Honoratus, who was ill, was obliged to return to Gaul with his guide.

He first led the life of a hermit in the mountains near Frejus. Two small islands lie in the sea near that coast; on the smaller, now known as Saint Honoré, the Saint settled, and when others came to him there, he founded the famous monastery of Lerins, about the year 400. Some of his followers he appointed to live in community; others, who seemed more perfect, in separated cells as anchorites. His rule was borrowed in large part from that of Saint Pachomius.

Nothing can be more amiable than the description Saint Hilary has given of the excellent virtues of this company of saints, especially of the charity, concord, humility, compunction, and devotion which reigned among them under the conduct of their holy Abbot. Saint Honoratus was, by compulsion, consecrated Archbishop of Arles in 426, and died, exhausted with austerities and apostolical labors, in 429. His tomb is shown empty under the high altar of the church which bears his name at Arles; his body having been translated to Lerins in 1391, where the greatest part remains.

Saint Honoratus, Archbishop of Arles ~ Pray for us 🙏

BLESSED STEPHANIE QUINZANI, VIRGIN: Blessed Stephana de Quinzanis (variant spellings include Stephanie, Stefana; also, Quinzani; 1457 — 2 January 1530) was an Italian Dominican tertiary and stigmatic. Stephana was born to pious, but poor, parents of Brescia. She earned her living working as a servant. Her father, Lorenzo Quinzani, became a Dominican tertiary while Stephana was very young. On visits with him to the Dominican convent, she met the stigmatic Blessed Matthew Carrieri, who instructed her in her catechism. He told her that she was to be his spiritual heiress, a statement she did not understand for many years. She began receiving visions of Dominican saints from age seven, at which point she made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and was given a ring, as a token of her espousal to Christ. Carrieri died when Stephana was 14 years old; soon after he appeared to her in a vision, and she received the stigmata.

Stephana continued on in her formation, and at age 15 became a Dominican tertiary at Soncino. her Devotion to the poor and sick led her to found a community of Third Order Sisters in Soncino. She served as its first abbess. Her counsel was allegedly sought by many, including Saint Angela Merici, Blessed Augustine of Biella, and Blessed Osanna of Mantua. She participated in various stages of the Passion of Jesus Christ, which was attested to by 21 witnesses in 1497 in a still extant account.  Sources state that although Stephana was “ugly”, she had magnificent hair. Grudging herself this one beauty, she pulled it out by the roots.

Stephana had a particularly intense devotion to Saint Thomas Aquinas. In fact, to overcome temptation of thought against purity, she once threw herself upon a cartload of thorns in imitation of the Doctor Angelicus. Exhausted from this penance, she prayed to Saint Thomas, and, according to legend, was girded by angels with a cord, which they tied so tightly around her waist that she cried out in pain. Though she had no formal theological  training, she could discuss mystical theology at the most profound level. It is said that she could read the hearts and minds of the people around her, and had the gift of prophesy and healing. She lived in a nearly continuous fast. She accurately predicted the date of her own death. Stephana’s tomb became a pilgrimage site almost immediately. Her intercession was often felt in the convent that she had founded, where the sisters obtained both material and spiritual help through her intercession. Her cult was popularized by Dominicans Bartholomeo of Mantua and Battista of Salò, but their Latin vitae have been lost, and only a later Italian version that combines the two texts has survived. Her cultus was confirmed by Pope Benedict XIV on 14 December 1740.

Blessed Stephanie Quinzani, Virgin ~ Pray for us 🙏