June Saints

Blessed Marguerite Bays
(1815-1879)

Blessed Marguerite Bays was the second daughter of simple pious farmers in La Perraz, Switzerland, and was given a very limited education. She took a vow of virginity, but never became a religious. Instead, she worked as a dressmaker, living in humility and silence.

In her parish, she was exemplary. She taught catechism, visited the sick and dying and was a true friend of the poor. Besides establishing the Societies of the Propagation of the Faith and the Holy Childhood in her parish, she contributed to founding the Catholic press.

Marguerite put her greatest trust in prayer, had a deep love for Our Lady, and an immense love for Jesus in the Eucharist, drawing inner strength from long hours spent in adoration. She deplored human indifference to God and insistently demanded, ‘What can we do to love God more?’

At the age of 35 she developed intestinal cancer, and prayed that Jesus exchange her suffering for the kind of pain that would enable her to share more directly in his Passion. Miraculously cured at the moment in 1854 when Pope Pius IX pronounced the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, she was given instead a mysterious affliction which caused her to re-live, every Friday, the phases of Jesus’ Passion.

In 1860, she joined the Franciscan Third Order, and strove thereafter to become more and more identified with Jesus’ sufferings. She fled attention and always sought to hide the stigmata, received 15 years before her death.

Happy to be called to follow the Crucified and to imitate Saint Francis, she was often heard to utter words of adoration and submission to God’s holy will.

Blessed Marguerite, teach us to love God more in our lives.

(Source: Internet – various)

Saint Marina the Monk
(8th century)

Marina was the daughter of wealthy Christian parents. Marina's mother died when she was very young and she was raised as a devout Christian by her father Eugenius. When her father wished to retire to a monastery after he had found her a husband, Marina objected and resolved to renounce women's clothing and live as a monk. Eugenius, seeing how determined she was, gave all his possessions to the poor and travelled with her to the Kadisha Valley, to live in monastic community life, sharing a cell with her.

After ten years of prayer, fasting and worship together, her father died, leaving her alone. Marina increased her level of asceticism and continued to conceal the fact that she was a woman, the other monks attributing her soft voice to long periods of prayer and strict ascetic life.

One day, when on monastery business, she was forced to spend the night at an inn, where a soldier defiled the innkeeper’s daughter’s virginity and persuaded her to say that Father Marinus was responsible. When the girl gave birth to a child, Marina did not deny the accusation and was banished from the monastery. She took the child and cared for it for ten years, only then being allowed to return, though under severe penances imposed by the abbott.

It was only at her death at age 40 that the abbot discovered the grave injustice which had been done to her and the soldier and the innkeeper’s daughter confessed and asked forgiveness.

Saint Marina, teach us to bear false accusations against us with humility.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_the_Monk)

Saint Romuald
(c. 956-1027)

St. Romuald was born in Ravenna. In spite of an deep desire for virtue and sanctity, his early life was wasted in the service of the world and its pleasures. Then one day, obliged to watch his father, Sergius, kill an adversary in a duel, Romuald was so moved that he determined to expiate this crime for forty days. He retired to a Benedictine monastery, where he later became Abbot.

After opening several monasteries, he founded the austere Order of Camaldoli in Tuscany. In the beginning of his spiritual life he was strongly assailed by numerous temptations, which he conquered by vigilance and prayer. More than one attempt was made on his life, and he was also the victim of calumny, which he bore in patience and silence.

In his old age, he increased his austerities instead of diminishing them.

Saint Romuald, give us the strength to deny ourselves.

(Source: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=406)