Images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as revealed in the visions of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, might never have spread all over the world if the Jesuit priest Saint Claude de la Colombière had not acknowledged the value of the young nun’s mystical experiences. In the same way, Catholics everywhere can thank the Polish priest Blessed Michał Sopoćko for recognizing truth in the visions of the young nun Maria Faustyna Kowalska—and for what he did with her visions.

Helena Kowalska was born in the village of Głogowiec, Poland, in 1905, the third of ten children. From a young age, she was remarkably obedient, hard-working, and sensitive to the needs of others. Her parents were farmers, so she was needed at home and only attended school for a few semesters. She was also notably prayerful, and, at the age of sixteen, she asked for their permission to enter a convent. They refused, citing the lack of money for a dowry. Helena obediently left home to work as a servant in nearby towns, and she sent money back to financially assist her large family.

Helena seemed a happy young woman, and her good nature endeared her to her employers. But one evening as she was at a dance, our Lord appeared before her, covered with wounds. He asked her the heart-wrenching question, “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?” (Interestingly, she was not the first future mystic whom Jesus called to religious life in such a dramatic fashion.) Cut to the heart, Helena left immediately for Warsaw with nothing but the clothes on her back, looking everywhere for a convent that would accept her. After working for a time to earn the money required for admittance, she became a religious sister with the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and took the name in religious life of Maria Faustyna of the Blessed Sacrament.

Her parents were apparently soon reconciled with their devout daughter’s choice.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy had several communities, generally homes for “troubled” women and girls who had repented of their past way of life and needed the sisters’ help. As Sister Faustyna, the young sister served as gardener, cook, and porter for her community. She also strove to perform her lowly duties while remaining in God’s presence. The other sisters noticed Faustyna’s recollection, as well as her serenity and kindness.

But they also noticed her poor health. Faustyna was constantly sick and in pain, though she tried to remain cheerful and fulfill her chores. Doctors often ordered her to spend long periods in bed and in hospitals to recuperate. Not surprisingly, some of the sisters believed she was only pretending to be ill and resented or mocked her.

Faustyna was frequently misunderstood when she tried to explain her mystical experiences to her confessors and spiritual directors. Some priests apparently mistook her purity for scrupulosity and did not believe or respect her descriptions of what she said she experienced in prayer. But that changed when the priest Michał Sopoćko was assigned to serve as the confessor in her community in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Michał was born to Polish parents in what is now Belarus. He was ordained a priest and served as a chaplain during World War I. He also earned a degree in theology and became a professor in Vilnius. After having Faustyna examined by a psychiatrist—who declared her to be mentally healthy, not mentally ill—the priest agreed that this young sister was receiving remarkable graces from the Lord. The priest told her to record her spiritual experiences in a diary.

There are two interesting side notes about this famous diary. First, Faustyna burned her diary at one point, moved by a false spirit that convinced her that keeping a diary was an act of pride. Fortunately for us, Fr. Sopoćko was able to order Faustyna under obedience not to burn her diary again. Second, because Faustyna had received so little formal education, she could not spell. She faithfully recorded her experiences in her diary, but she wrote everything phonetically. This made her diary very difficult for others to read. By another fortunate turn of events, this problem was resolved decades later when the Polish translators read the diary out loud and corrected the misspelled words.

In a pivotal vision, our Lord revealed an image of Himself to Faustyna and told her to have a painting made with that image. But Faustyna could not paint. Fr. Sopoćko’s upstairs neighbor happened to be a painter named Eugeniusz Kazimirowski. Faustyna described her vision to the man, and the painter created the first famous image of the Divine Mercy.

In this image, rays of white and red light emanate from Jesus’ heart, as visible signs of His love and mercy. The words, “Jesus, I trust in You” have been painted at the bottom of this image in innumerable languages for people all over the world.

Faustyna’s diary is a mystical masterpiece, one of the most moving and intimate descriptions of Jesus’ interactions with a human being in prayer. Faustyna described these encounters as “Divine Mercy in my soul,” a phrase which she wrote on the front page of her diary.

Her mystical visions increased near the end of her life. When Fr. Sopoćko visited her in the hospital for the final time, he noted that she was very ill but apparently in a spiritual ecstasy. Faustyna died at the age of thirty-three.

With Fr. Sopoćko’s support, the message of Divine Mercy had already begun to spread in Vilnius. As the Polish people experienced the horror of World War II and the spiritual devastation of communist control, they began to privately pray the chaplet of Divine Mercy and pray before the Divine Mercy image and using holy cards. However, faulty translations of Faustyna’s diary caused some Church leaders to question and even condemn the devotion for many years. This did not change until a Polish pope ordered a reinvestigation of Faustyna’s life and writings in the late twentieth century,

But Fr. Sopoćko was fully convinced that the Divine Mercy devotion was sent by God and was exactly what our troubled world needed during the violence of the twentieth century. For the rest of his long life, he wrote about God’s mercy, preached about it, and kept this powerful message alive as best he could. Then, in God’s perfect time and with the help of Pope Saint John Paul II, devotion to God’s mercy exploded around the world.

Divine Mercy Sunday is now celebrated on the second Sunday after Easter, and several new religious orders and institutions have arisen which are dedicated to promoting devotion to Divine Mercy. Copies of the writings of both Saint Faustyna and Blessed Michał are now easy to find, and many places associated with the life of Saint Faustyna have become popular pilgrimage sites.

But what both of these holy saints would most encourage you to do is far easier than taking a trip to Poland. Simply go to your nearby church (or stay wherever you are), pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3 pm every day of the week, and meditate on God’s great love and mercy for all of us.

When the future Saint Francis was thirty-one years old, he returned to his native town of Assisi. It was Lent of the year 1212, and he had been invited to preach in the church. While many Church leaders frowned at Francis’ life of holy poverty, the pope had publicly given his approval to Francis just a few years before.

Francis surely hoped that many of his listeners in Assisi would be moved by his words and repent of their sins. He probably also hoped that God would move the hearts of a few men to join his fledgling order. He could not have known that his words would strike deep into the heart of a wealthy eighteen-year-old girl named Clare.

People all over Italy had heard about Il Poverello. They knew that this “poor little man” from Assisi had turned his back on a comfortable life as a merchant’s son and chose to wear a rough tunic and beg for his food. Freed from the dangers of wealth and power, Francis preached the Good News to all who would listen. Many people came to hear Francis’ Lenten sermons merely out of curiosity, but young Clare was fascinated. She was also deeply affected by Francis’ preaching and wondered if God was calling her to live a life of poverty too.

On the following Palm Sunday, she did not come forward to receive a palm from her bishop with the rest of the crowd at Mass. The bishop, thinking she was being shy, personally brought a palm to her. Clare saw that palm as a sign—a sign that she too should embrace the martyrdom of poverty.

Certain that her family would try to talk her out of her decision, Clare snuck away in the middle of the night to meet Francis and his friars. She explained to Francis that she wanted to follow the Rule of life of the Friars Minor. Convinced that God had called the young woman, Francis accepted her as the first female member of his new order. He cut off her hair, an action which symbolized her renunciation of the world and of marriage for the sake of her heavenly Bridegroom. Then Francis sent Clare to a convent of Benedictine nuns so she could learn from them about how to live as a nun.

When Clare’s family found out about her decision, they descended on the convent, certain that she had made a terrible mistake. They threatened, cajoled, and even tried to bribe her. But Clare was unmoved by their arguments. At one point, family members tried to physically drag her out of the convent and bring her home. When her veil fell off and they discovered that she had cut off all her hair, they realized she was serious. Finally they left her alone.

Soon afterwards, Clare’s sister Agnes was convinced God was calling her to the same radical self-sacrifice. This time, an irate uncle brought armed men with him to try to force Agnes to leave. But, according to tradition, Agnes became so heavy that grown men could not move her.

Eventually, Clare’s sister, mother, and many other wealthy women decided to become Franciscan nuns and placed themselves under Clare’s direction.

Clare lived as a Franciscan nun for thirty-seven years, and she was a wise abbess to her many spiritual daughters. In addition to helping her nuns seek holiness, she was also concerned about physical threats to their health and safety. For example, at one point Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II—who was an emperor but was certainly not a holy man—sent soldiers to terrorize the Italian countryside during his conflict with the pope. As the emperor’s Muslim soldiers encircled the city of Assisi, Clare’s convent also faced attack. Clare was seriously ill and in bed at the time, but she continued to pray for the protection of her sisters. She asked her chaplain to place the Eucharist in a monstrance and raise It out of the window, toward the attackers. Skeptics may scoff at the idea that Muslims would be affected by the sight of the Blessed Sacrament or that they would would run away from an expensive gold object rather than run to grab it. But Clare was more concerned about her sisters being assaulted and murdered than about robbery. She begged the Lord to protect them, and her prayers were heard. After all, no one debates that she and her nuns inexplicably survived this and other violent assaults on Assisi.

During her entire life as a nun, Clare fought with popes about the Rule of life practiced by her order, which was originally called the Order of Poor Ladies. Church leaders repeatedly told Clare that it was impossible for nuns to live the radical vow of poverty, penance, and mortification that she had described in the Rule of life she composed. But she believed that God would make the impossible possible for her nuns, if only they would trust in Him. After decades of negotiating with Church leaders, Clare’s Rule was approved by the Church only a year before her death. Her followers have been known as Poor Clares in her honor ever since.

Yes, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had grandparents. This should not surprise anyone. After all, every human baby has a mother and a father, and those parents have parents too. Since Jesus was born of a woman—like all of us—Jesus had grandparents.

However, the only inerrant source of information about our Lord is the Bible, and the Bible only gives us the names of Saint Joseph’s ancestors. The father of Joseph is listed as Jacob in Matt 1:16 and Heli in Luke 3:23. This inconsistency is not an inconsistency since ancient genealogies sometimes omit generations, and ancient family trees were not kept for the same reason that many people today perform genealogical research. Instead, these genealogies were included by the evangelists to remind us that Jesus was descended through God’s Chosen People and that there were great men and women of faith in his lineage: Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Ruth, David, and Solomon.

But Mary, being a woman, must have had parents too, and Christians have been devoted to her parents for many centuries. Among Eastern Christians, devotion to Mary’s parents can be dated to at least the fourth century, when some early church buildings were built and named in their honor. In the Western Church, devotion to the parents of Mary has been more sporadic, probably because Church leaders have needed to crack down on legends about Mary and her parents that have grown in unhelpful ways or have been assumed to be fact.

Typically, these legends have arisen from a few extrabiblical books, particularly the Protoevangelium of James. The Protoevangelium of James is a second century writing that describes the conception and birth of Mary and the conception and birth of Jesus. While this book includes many of the details about Jesus’ birth which are found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, it also includes other stories and some odd passages. However the author received his information, it’s clear that the author of the Protoevangelium of James was trying to answer questions that had been left unanswered by the Gospels.

For example, this book claims that Mary’s parents were named Joachim and Anne. Maybe they were. In the absence of proof otherwise, it is certainly reasonable to follow this ancient tradition and refer to them as Saints Joachim and Anne.

According to the Protoevangelium of James, Joachim was a wealthy man, but he and Anne were childless. Grieved by this, he left his home to fast and pray for forty days and nights in the desert. In his absence, Anne grieved also and even endured taunting by her maid about her childlessness. An angel appeared to each of them individually, told them that the Lord had heard their prayers, and promised them a child. Both were overjoyed and hurried toward one another with their good news. They met at the city’s gate. (The following images portray some of the many artistic works showing us that happy moment.)

Nine months later, Anne proclaimed her own Magnificat of thanksgiving, just as Mary did at the conception of Jesus (Luke 1:46-55). Anne did everything she could to make her home a sanctuary so that her long-awaited daughter would always remain pure. When Mary was three years old, Anne fulfilled a previous vow to dedicate this child to the service of God, and she left Mary at the Temple in Jerusalem in the care of the priests.

Whether or not this story bears any relation to Mary’s actual conception, birth, and childhood is unknown. But this portrayal does bear many similarities to other biblical stories. Joachim and Anne’s wealth and childlessness mirrors that of Abraham and Sarah. Just as Joachim and Anne learned about their future child from an angel, so did the parents of Samson, as well as Mary and Joseph. The unkind maid criticizing her mistress sounds much like the story of Sarah, the tormented future wife of Tobiah in the book of Tobit. Many details about Anne—including her similar name—are reminiscent of the story of childless Hannah and her son Samuel, as described in 1 Samuel.

In short, the author of the Protoevangelium of James wove together many miracle stories from the Old Testament to show that God had prepared the way for Mary to become holy, pure, and far greater than any one of her ancestors. Perhaps some of the details in this account are true. Perhaps not.

Either way, we can be certain of one thing. The Blessed Virgin Mary had only one goal in her earthly life and now has only one goal in Heaven: to lead people to her Son, Jesus Christ. These stories about Joachim and Anne could be useful to us as Christians insofar as we allow them to help us remain focused on that same goal. Like Joachim and Anne, we can pray, fast, and turn to God in our sorrow. When God hears our prayers and gives us our hearts’ desire, we can be thankful and continue to make sacrifices to Him, demonstrating that we know the source of all the blessings of our lives.

The story of Joachim and Anne also points to an important truth. To prepare Mary’s parents for the gift of a holy daughter—the woman who would crush the head of the ancient serpent (Gen 3:15) and undo the sin of Eve—it is highly likely that God would help them become the best possible parents for that holy child. Perhaps years of childlessness and suffering were necessary to help them understand the joy of being blessed by God. Also, although Mary’s body was conceived through ordinary marital relations, her soul was pure from the moment of conception. Having such a holy child would not be as easy as it sounds.

Were Jesus’ grandparents alive when He was born? Did they play with Him as a baby, give Him presents, teach Him about His family history, or watch Him grow into a man? Probably not, since they are never mentioned in the Gospels. But they existed, and particularly on July 26, their feast day, we can ask them to help us love Jesus Christ with all our hearts, as they did.

Countries with a particular devotion to Saints Joachim and Anne include: Brazil, Canada, France, and Italy.

In the year 1917, near the end of World War I, three Portuguese children claimed to have seen and heard the Blessed Mother. After the local bishop investigated the children’s statements, examined the messages they were given, and analyzed the descriptions provided by other witnesses, he declared the events worth of belief and permitted public devotions under the title of Our Lady of Fátima.

As is the case for all private revelations, Catholics are not obligated to practice this devotion or accept as true any or all its events. But there are many fascinating details about this story, details that raise interesting questions.

For example, the apparitions began when most of the world was still focused on World War I. The apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary seem to have been timed to warn Christians about the unnoticed threat of the communist takeover of Russia and encourage Catholics to start praying for an end to this brutal and deadly regime. But how could anyone predict such a thing would happen before it even began?

That’s why it’s hard to ignore what happened at Fátima.

As a reminder, the apparitions of the Blessed Mother to the three children at Fátima began on May 13, 1917, and ended on October 13, 1917. Although only the three children were present for the first apparition, the crowds increased in size each month. During the last event, somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 witnesses—including many skeptics—were present. Many people reported seeing a terrifying vision. As the three children were praying (and seeing a vision of the Holy Family), the crowds appeared to see the sun plummet toward the earth—toward them! Many believed it was the end of the world. But the sun rapidly returned to its proper place, and the vision ended. Then the rain clouds parted and, despite the fact that it had been raining heavily, the witnesses’ clothes and the surrounding ground were mysteriously dry.

As the children were interviewed, investigators discovered that their visions did not actually start in 1917. The children said that they had also been visited by an angel a year earlier. The angel had told them that he was the “Angel of Peace”, and he taught them how to pray, apparently preparing them for the future visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

During each of the apparitions, the children prayed the rosary with the Mother of God, who they said was incredibly beautiful and seemed to hover over a holm oak tree. Mary told them that God wanted to establish a devotion to her Immaculate Heart. She also showed them a terrifying vision of Hell and told them a secret which was not revealed until the year 2000.

The children were kidnapped by the local mayor to prevent them from going to the site of the apparitions on August 13. Although the mayor’s cowardly act was perpetrated against mere children—and didn’t stop Mary from appearing later—it did serve one useful purpose. It proved that the children were telling the truth. All three were threatened with death and put in prison cells, yet they refused to recant their story.

The effect of these visions on the devotion of the three young visionaries is unquestionable. Although Francesco and Jacinta Marto died a few years later from the Spanish flu, other people immediately noticed that the children had become more devoted to prayer and that they daily tried to make personal sacrifices for the sake of sinners. They are now canonized saints. Their cousin, Lúcia dos Santos, became a Carmelite nun, lived a long and blameless life, and died in 2005. None of them ever retracted their explanations of these events.

But Fátima changed the world, not just three people in Portugal.

The message given by Mary at Fátima was not a theological treatise. The Blessed Mother simply encouraged the children to pray the rosary. She also asked for the entire world to be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. The vision of Hell that the children had seen was frightening, but it conveyed to them the seriousness of sin and the pain of eternal separation from God. Catholics all over the world were moved by the words and example of the children and responded with a renewed dedication to praying the rosary and offering up their sacrifices.

In addition to the worldwide consecration, the Blessed Mother asked Catholics to receive Holy Communion on the first Saturday of the month for five months as a means of reparation. Why? As communism took control of Russia, churches were desecrated and closed, clergy and religious were killed, and the faithful were ordered to abandon their faith. Out of all the nations of the world, the Blessed Mother particularly mentioned Russia. She warned that if people failed to pray and offer reparations for these offenses against God, Russia’s “errors” (i.e., communism) would spread all over the world, leading to wars, martyrdoms, deaths, and the persecution of Christians. She also said that the pope would suffer greatly.

Decades later, Saint Pope John Paul II demonstrated that he believed in the veracity of these messages. The secret that was kept until the year 2000—sometimes called the Third Secret since the other two were revealed earlier—involved another vision. In this vision, an assassination attempt was made on a “man in white”, that is, the pope. After Pope John Paul was shot by a gunman in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, he recognized that the assassination attempt was predicted by the Fátima visions, and he believed that the Mother of God had saved his life. He had the bullet that nearly killed him placed in the crown of the Our Lady of Fátima’s statue in Portugal. And he consecrated the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25, 1984.

But the Fátima apparitions blessed the world in yet one more way. While we human beings could not know in 1917 that the bloodiest century in the history of the world was upon us—a hundred years of world wars, civil wars, concentration camps, atomic bombs, and innumerable Christian martyrdoms—God did know. In His great love for us, He warned us of the imminent danger, gave us hope, and reminded us to pray and make sacrifices. He did all of this through apparitions of the gentle, humble Mother of God, who always leads us back to Jesus Christ, and, like a true mother, gives us hope when things seem hopeless.

We call the Gospel of Mark the Gospel of Mark for a simple reason: the most ancient copies of that document are titled “According to Mark”. But what do we really know about the human author whom we call Saint Mark the Evangelist?

Like all the Gospel writers, Saint Mark is commonly portrayed in art (see images above) as either reading or writing the book that he wrote—though he wrote it with the help of the Holy Spirit, of course. While modern scholars may debate the authorship of some books of the New Testament, Mark is widely acknowledged as the human author of the book that bears his name.

While that Gospel teaches us many things about Jesus Christ, it does not tell us anything directly about its author or how he came to know so much about our Savior. Unlike Matthew and John, Mark does not appear in the list of the names of the Twelve apostles. Since the author of the Gospel of Luke is believed to be the same Luke who traveled with the Apostle Saint Paul, it is commonly suggested that Mark is the same John Mark who later traveled with Saints Paul and Barnabas (Acts 12:25), although that collaboration did not end well (see Acts 15:36-41). However, the mother of that same John Mark was named Mary, and she was apparently a supporter of the early Church. After all, when Saint Peter was miraculously released from prison by an angel, he came to her house to speak with the Christian community that was hiding there (Acts 12:12-17).

That Biblical connection between John Mark’s family and Peter is the reason that scholars have proposed an interesting theory about the source for the contents of the Gospel of Mark. According to this theory, Mark became a traveling companion and assistant to Peter. After Jesus’ Resurrection, Peter journeyed from place to place, telling of his personal experience of following Jesus Christ during our Lord’s three-year-long public ministry and bringing people to conversion. As his secretary, Mark wrote down Peter’s stories, which he had probably heard many, many times. Thus the Gospel of Saint Mark is, according to this theory, almost the Gospel of Saint Peter: that is, a compilation of the preaching of Saint Peter as arranged by Mark. This theory can be seen in a recent translation of the Gospel of Mark by Michael Pakaluk. Titled The Memoirs of Saint Peter, Pakaluk’s translation, with its urgent, blunt tone, makes it seem very plausible that the Gospel of Mark was indeed based on the words of a simple fisherman-turned-street preacher.

The Prophet Ezekiel, who lived in the sixth century BC, received many visions. In one of his most famous visions, he saw four fantastical creatures, living beings who had the form of men but who had wings and four faces. On each creature, one of its faces looked like a man, one looked like a lion, one looked like an ox, and one looked like an eagle. (See also the four living creatures described in Rev. 4:7-8.) For various reasons, each of the four Gospels have been associated with one of those four face shapes for many centuries.

The Gospel of Mark is associated with the symbol of a lion. You can see that lion in all of the images above, although the lion is hiding at Mark’s feet in the example on the right. Perhaps the symbol of a lion seemed appropriate because Mark’s telling of the life of Christ is so vivid and almost abrupt. Mark uses the word “immediately” more than thirty times in his short Gospel.

There are some writings that claim to describe the life and actions of Mark himself, although some are more reliable than others. According to an ancient tradition, Mark brought the Good News to Alexandria, Egypt, established a church there, and became the archbishop of the city. During a time of persecution, he was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. Tradition says that he died a martyr while being dragged through the city of Alexandria.

Several centuries later, also according to tradition, Mark’s relics were translated to the great city of Venice, where he has been called upon as a patron for the city—and against the city’s many floods—ever since.

In this lifetime, we will never know most of the personal details we would like to know about Saint Mark. Only God knows how and when Mark became a Christian, whether his Gospel is based on Peter’s testimony or not, and whether he ever personally met Jesus Christ. But many people have wondered whether Mark did include a cameo appearance of himself in one scene described in chapter 14 (verses 50-52).

After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Gospel records that all the disciples ran away—all except for one young man who followed as the Lord was taken away. That young man was wearing only a linen cloth, and when the guards tried to arrest him too, they only managed to grab the linen cloth. The young man escaped but was left naked. This detail has reminded Christians ever since of a different man—named Adam—who was naked in a garden and who listened to a snake rather than God.

Perhaps young Mark was ashamed that he did not try harder to save his Lord from death. Perhaps he thought his written record of the life of Christ would help others to believe. Whatever motivation Mark had for writing his Gospel, we can simply thank God, on Mark’s feast day of April 25, that he did.

Saint Mark, brave missionary and evangelist, pray for us!

The great Saint Patrick of Ireland is a larger-than-life figure who is known by millions, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Some of the stories that are commonly told about him can seem more like fiction than fact. Is it possible to separate fanciful Irish tales from the real fifth-century man?

Quite a few stories about Patrick’s life can be trusted, not only because of the number of early biographies that were written about him, but also because Patrick wrote one himself. Granted, The Confession of Saint Patrick does not give us all the details about his life that we would like. That’s simply because Patrick did not write it like a modern autobiography. However, it teaches us quite a lot about this amazing saint.

Patricius was born into a Catholic family, perhaps around the year 389, in the Roman territory of Britain. His father was a deacon. Pirates raided his community—a common occurrence in that time and place—and kidnapped him, along with others. The pirates sold their captives to pagans in Ireland, and sixteen-year-old Patrick found himself alone, far from home, and apparently doomed to spend the rest of his life as a slave.

Like many teenaged boys, Patrick had not given much thought to his Catholic faith in the past. But suffering brought him to his knees, as he found himself continually praying to God for answers, wisdom, and help. Patrick’s love for God grew as he prayed during the six long years of his enslavement. Finally, he heard a voice in his sleep one night, a voice which told him to be brave and get ready to return to his homeland.

Patrick ran away from his master, traveled 200 miles on foot to the coast, and, by God’s grace, found a boat that took him back to Britain. But now he discovered he was simply the slave of another group of people. These men forced him to travel with them and starve with them as they wandered in the wilderness. When his captors angrily complained about Patrick’s God, who did not seem to be helping them, Patrick told them to trust in God—and a herd of pigs suddenly appeared, providing them with a source of food that lasted for days.

Eventually, Patrick was able to return to his family. He was happy at first, but he continued to have visions of the people he had left behind in Ireland. An inner call to rescue those people from ignorance of God became too strong, and he traveled to France, which was famous at the time for the devotion and holiness of its monks. Patrick lived as a monk for at least one decade, perhaps two. But then he was sent to Rome to ask permission to pursue his next great call: to serve the Irish people as a missionary. Pope Saint Celestine I ordained him a bishop and sent him back to Ireland.

Patrick’s efforts to evangelize Ireland brought about massive conversions. During his decades in Ireland, he converted many pagans, built many churches, and established many monasteries. He also directly confronted the falsehoods of Druidic beliefs and personally evangelized Irish kings and chieftains.

Did Patrick’s former slavemaster intentionally burn down his own house when he heard Patrick was coming? Did Patrick really chase all the snakes out of Ireland? Did he really use a shamrock to explain the Trinity (a theological approach which is now frowned upon and technically termed modalism)?

Those tales might be just tales. But Patrick’s actual accomplishments are far more remarkable than those minor details.

Patrick returned to Ireland as a grown man, but still a former slave. Even though he returned with Christian companions, he could have been enslaved again. However, no one apparently thought of trying such a thing with Patrick.

Those six painful years of slavery had prepared him for his return just as much as had his years of monastic life. From his time among the Irish people, Patrick had come to understand their language, their religion, and their government. He could therefore speak to the ordinary people about Christ, confront the Druids like a Christian Moses, and explain Christian theology to Irish leaders. Patrick successfully evangelized an entire people—converting a culture without destroying their world—before his death in 461, a remarkable accomplishment in the history of the Catholic Church.

But he did not do this alone. Patrick traveled the countryside of Ireland, going from town to town with companions. Those companions included, among others: an assistant bishop, a chamberlain, a sacristan, a bellringer, a chariot driver, a bodyguard, a cowherd, blacksmiths, masons, and embroideresses. This Catholic household supported Patrick as he evangelized, but it also helped him establish new Christian communities. The bellringer called people to hear him preach, since he had no church bells to call them. His chariot driver, Odran, gave his life for Patrick during an attack. His bodyguard was, obviously, a bodyguard, for Patrick was not naive about the dangers of confronting false gods and their followers.

Patrick’s famous autobiography indicates another reason he was so successful as an evangelist: his knowledge of the Word of God. The Confession is full of phrases and passages from both the Old and New Testaments, passages that Patrick clearly knew by heart and relied upon both for his own prayer life and also to lead others to conversion. The Word of God, after all, is the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:15).

As described in my book, The Leaven of the Saints, Church history is full of stories about great saints who were so successful in evangelizing a particular people that they later became known as the Apostle to that people. People may argue about how the snakes really left Ireland. But no one can argue that Patrick is the Apostle of Ireland and one of the greatest apostles in the history of Christianity.

The world knows him as Fra Angelico, one of the greatest painters of the early Renaissance. The Catholic Church calls him Blessed John of Fiesole, a Dominican friar who was known not only for his artistic ability but also for his holiness.

We only know bits and pieces about most of his life story, particularly his childhood. Most sources agree that his father’s name was Pietro, that he was born in a small town in Italy, probably around the year 1387, and that he was given the name of Guido at his birth. According to tradition, when he and his brother Benedetto were young men, they were so inspired by the preaching of a famous Dominican priest that they decided to enter that order.

It appears that Guido and Benedetto had already received some training as artists, almost certainly at nearby Florence, which was widely known at the time as an artistic center. Benedetto later became known as a painter of miniatures. When the two young men entered the Dominican order and became friars, Guido took the name in religious life of Giovanni (John, in English).

Unfortunately, Italy was not a peaceful place in the early fifteenth century. More than one man claimed to be the pope, and disputes between the Church and civic leaders repeatedly caused unrest and violence. There was also an outbreak of the plague. For several years, Giovanni and the other members of his community were forced to move to various towns for their safety. But the Dominicans quickly recognized his talents and assigned him the task of decorating the various friaries and churches wherever he lived. The painting below is one of his early works, one of the few that have not been lost over time.

One of Giovanni’s assignments was to paint devotional images in the cells of the friars. How would you like to have the image below on the wall of your bedroom? Unsurprisingly, at least one of the convents decorated by Fra Angelico has been turned into an art museum.

Before long, Friar Giovanni had become a widely known and respected fresco artist, and other members of his community were members of his workshop, which created artworks as small as illuminated missals and as large as frescoes on church walls. While living in Florence, GIovanni painted one of his most famous works, the San Marco Altarpiece (below). Art historians often note its use of perspective and metaphor, but it is also contains Dominican themes and contemporary political symbols. The latter is not surprising since it was paid for by the wealthy and powerful Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder.

Giovanni worked for popes as well. Near the end of his life, he completed one of his greatest achievements: the decoration of a chapel in the Vatican with scenes from the life of Saint Laurence (see one scene below). Even though Giovanni used gold and expensive colors (to please his wealthy patron), the image helps us see the Christian love of the poor, which Saint Laurence exemplified.

All of his works can be admired by specialists for their artistic ability and their influence on future artists. But even those of us who are not art historians can admire the beauty and the atmosphere of peace and serenity that he conveys in his paintings. He was not nicknamed Fra Angelico (meaning, the angelic brother) simply because he sometimes painted images of the heavenly court or because he lived a virtuous life. His paintings seem to take you to a world where angels dwell.

However, as Blessed John of Fiesole, his extraordinary life followed the same path of every ordinary follower of Christ. He recognized God’s call to a particular vocation, learned from others how to live out that vocation, and slowly developed skills throughout his lifetime. It was probably just as difficult for him to obey his bosses (his Dominican superiors) and keep calm when reading the latest political news as it is for us today. But all his life prepared him for the same destination that awaits all of us: the day we face judgement before Jesus Christ. May we face that day with the same peace, serenity, and trust in God that we see in the works of Fra Angelico.