MEMORIAL OF SAINT EPHREM, DEACON AND DOCTOR; SAINTS PRIMUS AND FELICIAN, MARTYRS; SAINT COLUMBA OF IONA, PRIEST AND ABBOT AND BLESSED ANNA MARIA TAIGI, RELIGIOUS ~ FEAST DAY: JUNE 9TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church; Saints Primus and Felician, Martyrs; Saint Columba of Iona, Priest and Abbot and Blessed Anna Maria Taigi. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for all mothers, wives, those going through challenges in their marriages, Victims of verbal and spousal abuse, we pray for peace, love and unity in our families and our world. We also pray for the sick and dying, especially those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases, for the souls of the faithful departed, may God grant them eternal rest. We pray for the poor and the needy and we continue to pray for the Church, the Clergy, for persecuted Christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world. Amen🙏🏽
SAINT EPHREM, DEACON AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH: Saint Ephrem, called “the Harp of the Holy Spirit,” is the great classic Doctor of the Syrian church. As deacon at Edessa, hermit, and Doctor of the Church he made important contributions to the spirituality and theology of the Christian East during the fourth century. He vigorously combated the heresies of his time, and to do so more effectively wrote poems and hymns about the mysteries of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints. He had a great devotion to Our Lady. He was a commentator on Scripture and a preacher as well as a poet, and has left a considerable number of works, which were translated into other Eastern languages as well as into Greek and Latin. St. Ephrem was born about 306 at Nisibis, a city in Roman Mesopotamia (modern Syria). According to traditions, his father was at one time a pagan priest and his family later became, entirely Christian. St. Ephrem was banished from his home by his pagan father for his Christian sympathies. He found refuge with St. James, Bishop of Nisibis, under whose guidance he received a thorough education. Baptized at eighteen years of age, and began to consider the salvation of his soul more seriously. He embraced an ascetic lifestyle under the direction of Bishop James of Nisibis who gave him permission to live as a hermit. St. Ephrem supported himself with manual labor, making sails for ships, while living in a remarkably austere manner with few comforts and little food. He assumed a post as a teacher in the flourishing school of Nisibis. After the death of St. Ephrem’s spiritual director and friend, Bishop James of Nisibis in 338, soon after, St. Ephrem left his solitude and moved to Edessa in present-day Turkey where, after entering the monastic life, he was ordained deacon. He was known for sermons which combined articulate expressions of Catholic orthodoxy with urgent and fruitful calls to repentance. The deacon was also a voluminous author, producing commentaries on the entire Bible as well as the theological poetry for which he is best known. Ephrem used Syriac-language verse as a means to explain and popularize theological truths, a technique he appropriated from others who had used poetry to promote religious error. Late in his life, the deacon made a pilgrimage to the city of Caesarea, where God had directed him to seek the guidance of the archbishop later canonized as Saint Basil the Great. Basil helped Ephrem to resolve some of his own spiritual troubles, giving him advice which he would follow as he spent his final years in solitary prayer and writing.
Near the end of his life, Ephrem briefly left his hermitage to serve the poor and sick during a famine. His last illness came in 373, most likely from a disease he contracted through this service. When his own death approached, he told his friends: “Sing no funeral hymns at Ephrem’s burial … Wrap not my carcass in any costly shroud: erect no monument to my memory. Allow me only the portion and place of a pilgrim; for I am a pilgrim and a stranger as all my fathers were on earth.” St. Ephrem of Syria died in June of 373. Soon after his death, he was remembered in a public address by his contemporary Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who closed his remarks by asking Ephrem’s intercession. “You are now assisting at the divine altar, and before the Prince of life, with the angels, praising the most holy Trinity,” said Gregory. “Remember us all, and obtain for us the pardon of our sins.” Pope Benedict XV proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1920. St. Ephrem wrote many works in defense of the Catholic Church, on the various Mysteries of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in honor of the Virgin Mary. Poet, exegete, and orator extraordinary, St. Ephrem was called “The prophet of the Syrians” and “The Lyre of the Holy Spirit.” St. Ephrem bestowed on the hymnic genre that fullness which has been associated with it in the Eastern Church ever since and also left us a classic commentary on the four Gospels called the Diatessaron. Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christian celebrate his feast on January 28. He’s the Patron Saint of Spiritual directors; spiritual leaders.
PRAYER: Lord, graciously infuse the Holy Spirit into our hearts. By His inspiration, St. Ephrem the Daecon rejoiced in singing of Your mysteries and through His power he was enabled to serve You alone. Amen🙏🏽
SAINTS PRIMUS AND FELICIAN, MARTYRS: Saints Primus and Felician were brothers who suffered martyrdom about the year 297 during the Diocletian persecution. These two martyrs were brothers who lived in Rome, heirs of a family of great wealth, toward the latter part of the third century. St. Primus and his younger brother St. Felician, the sons of a Roman nobleman, were converts to Christianity who devoted themselves to corporal works of mercy. They frequented the prisons, visiting their fellow Christians imprisoned for their faith by the pagan Roman authorities. It was through the assiduous love of Pope Felix I that they had the happiness, in their mature years, of being converted to the Christian faith; afterwards they encouraged each other for many years in the practice of all good works. They seemed to possess nothing but for the poor, and often, during the persecutions, they spent both nights and days with the confessors in their dungeons, or at the places of their torments and execution. Some they exhorted to persevere; others who had fallen, they raised again. They made themselves the servants of all in Christ, that all might attain to salvation through Him.
Though their zeal was very remarkable, they had escaped the dangers of many bloody persecutions; they had grown old in the heroic exercises of their virtue, when it pleased God to crown their labors with a glorious martyrdom. Eventually the two brothers were themselves apprehended. St. Primus was about 90 years old, when the pagans raised so great an outcry against the brothers that they were apprehended and put in chains. After refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, the two were inhumanly scourged and tortured, and then sent to a town twelve miles from Rome to be chastised again, as avowed enemies to the gods, by a prefect who detested the Christians. There they were cruelly tortured to make them renounce their faith, both together and then separately, but the grace of God strengthened each of them. As this failed to shake their profession of the faith, they were tortured a second time. St. Felician was nailed by his hands and feet to a post and left without food or water for three days; St. Primus was beaten with clubs and burnt with torches. God spared them amidst these tortures, and wild beasts in an arena imitated their God’s mercy. St. Primus was then beheaded, after which his brother was told the falsehood that St. Primus had apostatized. Recognizing this as a lie, St. Felician remained steadfast, and suffered martyrdom that same day. Both of them were beheaded on June 9, 286. Their relics, transferred in the seventh century within the city, are at present in the church of St. Stephen on the Coelian Hill.
Saints Primus and Felician, Martyrs ~ Pray for us🙏🏽
SAINT COLUMBA OF IONA, PRIEST AND ABBOT: Saint Columba, or Columkille (521-597), the apostle of the Picts of Scotland, was born of a noble family on December 7, 521 at Garton, County Donegal, Tyrconnell, Ireland. His parents named him Crimtham (Pronounced Criffan) meaning “a fox.” He was brought up in the company of many saints at the school of St. Finian of Clonard. He studied Holy Scripture under the saintly bishop Finian, and when ordained a priest in 546 he opened a school where he formed several disciples. He founded several monasteries in Ireland. He is sometimes called Columkille, which is Old Irish for Founder of cells. Though austere, he was not morose; and, although he often longed to die, he was untiring in good works throughout his life. His zeal in preaching against public vices offended King Dermot, and the Saint decided to leave his domains, departing for Scotland with a dozen of his disciples. He arrived there in 565, according to Saint Bede. There he founded a hundred religious houses and converted the Picts of the north, who in gratitude gave him the island of Iona, a short distance from the mainland. On that island Saint Columba founded his celebrated large monastery of Hy (or Y Colm-Kille), a school for apostolic missionaries and martyrs, and for centuries the last resting place of a multitude of Saints and of the kings of Scotland. Later its monks adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict.
The gentleness and charity of Saint Columba, which were unfailing, won the hearts of all with whom he conversed. His virtues, to which God added the gifts of prophecy and miracles, attracted for him universal veneration. The kings did nothing without consulting him; King Edhan in 570 wished to receive the royal ornaments from his hand. Four years before his death, our Saint had a vision of Angels, who told him that the day of his death had been deferred four years, in answer to the prayers of his spiritual children. Thereupon the Saint wept bitterly, for he desired above all things to reach his true home. He was seventy-six years old, and surrounded in choir by his disciples, when finally the day of his peaceful death came. It was the 9th of June, 597, when he said to his disciple Diermit, This day is called the Sabbath, that is, the day of rest, and such will it truly be to me; for it will put an end to my labors. Then, kneeling before the altar, he received the Viaticum, and sweetly slept in the Lord. He died on June 9, 597 at the age of 75 at the foot of the altar at Iona while blessing his people, and was buried there at Iona, Scotland. His relics were later carried to Downpatrick in Ulster and laid in the same shrine with those of Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget. He’s Patron Saint against floods; bookbinders; floods; Ireland; poets; Derry; and co-patron of Ireland and of Scotland.
Saint Columba of Iona, Priest and Abbot ~ Pray for us 🙏🏽
BLESSED ANNA MARIA TAIGI, RELIGIOUS: Bl. Anna Maria Taigi (1769-1837) was a Wife and mother, an Italian Roman Catholic professed member from the Secular Trinitarian Tertiary. Bl. Anna Maria Taigi, born Anna Maria Giannetti on May 29, 1769 in Siena, Italy, to a poor working class family. Her family later moved to Rome, and Anna took on various low-skill jobs to help with the family finances. She married a pious man Domenico Taigi, a brash and impulsive individual with bad temper though devoted to his wife. She grew in virtue, and together they had seven children. As a young wife and mother she discerned God calling her to renounce the vanities and worldliness that she was accustomed to. She began to give little care to fancy dress, and accepted God’s grace more in her life. With her husband’s consent she transformed their home into a sanctuary through which she would serve God. Although she was not wealthy, Anna would give her spare money to the poor and needy.
Bl. Anna Maria Taigi experienced a series of ecstasies during her life and was reported to have heard the voices of God and Jesus Christ on several occasions. She soon entered the Third Order of Trinitarians and became a Secular Trinitarian after experiencing a sudden religious conversion. That happened in the winter of 1790 at Saint Peter’s Basilica when Bl. Taigi came into contact with a range of cardinals and luminaries, which included Vincent Strambi and the bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget. She grew in holiness and God transformed her into a mystic: she experienced ecstasies during prayer, and was given visions of the future and the state of other’s souls which were shown to her in a miraculous golden globe of light over the course of forty-seven years. Many sought her out for spiritual advice as she attended her household duties. She refused special favors from benefactors, and instead lived a life of austerity, relying on God to provide for her daily needs. Bl. Anna Maria’s life was marked with much suffering, which she joyfully embraced, and God used her as an instrument for many conversions. Bl. Anna Maria Taigi died on June 9, 1837. The beatification process opened in 1863 under Pope Pius IX after she was titled as a Servant of God and Pope Benedict XV later beatified her in mid-1920. She’s Patron Saint of Housewives, Mothers, Victims of verbal abuse, Victims of spousal abuse, Families, Trinitarian tertiaries. Her feast day is June 9th.
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, Religious ~ Pray for us🙏🏽