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Freedom, Faith, and Fearless Witness: Saints Thomas More and John Fisher
There were many devout and faithful Catholics in England in the early sixteenth century. But when King Henry VIII declared himself to be the head of the Church in England, he forced every one of his citizens to make a decision about their faith. Option #1: Agree that the leader of your government is also […]
Saint Peregrine Laziosi and Cancer
Saint Peregrine Laziosi (1260-1345) did not write theological masterpieces like Saint Thomas Aquinas. He did not convert thousands of people in multiple countries like Saint Francis Xavier. He did not even become known as a miracle worker during his lifetime like Saint Martin de Porres. But most people today know someone—or many people—who have been […]
Overlooked Mystics of April
One of the most famous mystics in the history of the Church—Saint Catherine of Siena—is celebrated in the month of April. But there are three other canonized saints of April who have a great deal in common with the famous Saint Catherine (1347-1380). All three of these overlooked saints died relatively young. All three were […]
What a Great Catholic Leader Looks Like
How should a leader lead? That is, how should a president, elected representative, executive board member, office superior, or other leader behave, make decisions, and treat the people he or she governs, at least from a Christian perspective? Unfortunately, today’s culture does not often use a Christian perspective in its understanding of leadership. Instead, our […]
Saint of the Day
June 30: Blessed Basil Velychkovskyi
Blessed Basil Velychkovskyi (1903-1973) was born in the Ukraine into a Greek Catholic family. He became a priest, teacher, and missionary in his native country.
In 1945, he was arrested by the Soviets for being a Catholic priest and sentenced to ten years in a forced labor camp. He served his fellow prisoners during his imprisonment and somehow survived its inhuman conditions.
When he was allowed to return to the Ukraine in 1955, he became bishop and then archbishop of the underground Greek Catholic Church there. In 1969, he was arrested again, this time for listening to Vatican Radio and for his Catholic faith, both of which were crimes under Communist rule. He was tortured during his imprisonment, but when his health began to fail, he was released. (Based on Soviet attitudes toward Catholics, this was probably less out of compassion than a desire not to make him a martyr to the many Ukrainian Catholics.) He was sent out of the country and traveled to Rome and then Canada, where he died in 1973.
Blessed Basil, give me your perseverance.
Want to read about a saint every day? The “Saint of the Day” blog posts for the entire month of June on this web site are designed to help you do that. Every day of the month of June, there’s a blog post about a holy man or woman you’ve probably never heard of, but who is formally acknowledged as a saint or blessed of the Church. Just like the book, Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year, these blog posts show you how to start (or interrupt or finish) your day with a brief, inspirational life story of a saint. Each biography concludes with a short prayer to help you identify some aspect of that saint’s life that might help you in your own spiritual life.
(Note that none of the saints in these blog posts are included in the book, Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year, but they are present in the Church’s latest official list of saints, the Martyrologium Romanum, dated 2004.)
As Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, there is nothing new under the sun, and the problems we face today are often startlingly similar to the problems that holy men and women of the past faced in their own lives. Other blog posts discuss saints celebrated in the current month or who have something to teach us about our current difficulties, such as dealing with an epidemic or how to handle suffering.
The saints and blesseds of the Church teach us that holiness is possible for anyone, in any state of life, and in any historical time period. We only have to be open to God’s grace so that He can form us into images of Jesus Christ.
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