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The Saints of Summer

Summer is the season when Catholics celebrate the feasts of some of the best known and best loved saints of the Church. June brings the commemoration of St. Anthony of Padua (13), St. John the Baptist (24), and St. Peter (29). In July, we celebrate Saints Mary Magdalen (22), James the Apostle (25), Anne (26), and Ignatius Loyola (31). In August, we remember Saints Lawrence, Maximilian Kolbe, and Rose of Lima (23). Each of these saints, in their own way, was an evangelist – a missionary.

St. Anne, the mother of Our Lady, and St. John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of the Incarnate Word. Peter may be considered one of the first evangelists, as Our Lord himself invited Peter, a fisherman of Bethsaida, to “come and be a fisher of men.” Calling him a rock, Christ told Peter that it was upon that rock he would build his Church. As a fisherman turned fisher of men, St. Peter is often depicted with a fish, and in a number of countries it is the custom to eat fish on his feast day. In some places, fishermen and fishmongers gave fish to the poor in his honor on his feast.

Mary Magdalen was among the first to see and believe in the Risen Christ; she then rushed to tell others. Anthony, James, Ignatius, and Maximilian were all, in fact, missionaries who traveled far from their homes to spread the Good News.

Lawrence was a deacon in the Church at Rome in the third century. The beautiful story told of him is that during one of the major persecutions of the Christians, the Roman prefect promised to set him free if he would surrender the wealth of the Church. Lawrence agreed, saying it would take him three days to gather it. During that time, he placed all the money at his disposal in the hands of trustworthy stewards. Then he assembled the poor, the sick and aged, the widows and orphans of the city, and presented them to the prefect saying, “These are the treasures of the Church.” The enraged prefect ordered him to be roasted alive on a gridiron. Lawrence bore the torture with great calmness and his courageous death made many converts.

Today, it is the poor, the sick and aged, the widows and orphans that our Basilian missionaries serve in Latin America, feeling, as did St. Lawrence, that they are the treasure of the Church.

St. Rose of Lima is the patroness of Latin America, and in 1671 was the first American to be canonized. Like most of our co-missionaries, Rose never left for the mission fields. Instead she remained at home, working hard to support her poor parents. She served the missions, as we all can do, by her great love of Christ and by a life spent in perpetual prayer while she continued her daily work.

Pope John Paul II has said that the Church exists to evangelize, to spread the good news of salvation in Christ. According to the Holy Father, the new evangelism, to which we all are called in this millennium, must be accompanied by a new fervor. Let us pray to the saints of summer that we, each in our own way, will be the instruments of carrying forth the Good News.

Not just in the summer, but throughout the year some of the most vivid sights in our mission areas in Latin America are provided from the rich tradition of religious customs and rituals. Many of these traditions go back to the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries in the 1500s. In the New World, there were over 350 languages and dialects, so communication by language alone was, at first, impossible. The missionaries communicated their faith by acting it out through plays, processions and rituals. The tradition continues today in popular pious practices.