St. Bruno was a school rector and professor, a priest and monk, and founder of an enduring religious order.

Blessed Dina Bélanger was a French-Canadian religious sister and mystic, known as “The Little Flower of Canada”.

“Lord, eternal King of glory, receive me hanging from the wood of this sweet cross. Thou Who art my God, Whom I have seen, do not permit them to loosen me from the cross. Do this for me, O Lord, for I know the virtue of Thy holy cross.” St. Andrew the Apostle (1st century)

“Give me Yourself, O my God. Surrender Yourself to me, for I love You. And if that is not enough, let me love You more ardently.” St. Augustine of Hippo (4th-5th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

St. Mary of Jesus Crucified was a Carmelite religious and mystic.

Prayer is the light of the spirit. Prayer and converse with God is a supreme good.…I do not mean the prayer of outward observance but prayer from the heart, not confined to fixed times or periods, but continuous throughout the day and night.

St. Junípero Serra was a Franciscan priest, professor, and an intrepid missionary known as “The Apostle of California”. He was born to farmers Antonio and Margarita Serra, who named him Miguel in 1713.

“’Let Us make man to Our own image and likeness.’ He did not say this of the Heavens or of the stars, but of man – not, indeed as regards man’s body, but as regards his soul, which is endowed with a free will and is incorruptible, and in which he resembles God.” St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century, Doctor of the Church)

St. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad was a convert, religious sister and a foundress.

Wisdom of the Saints about the Communion of Saints (part 3) Posted on May 2, 2024 Posted By: Sarah Bedia Categories: Front Page, Wisdom of the Saints “I know that many say, ‘What good can prayers do for a soul that has departed this world, either with sins or without sins?’ If a king were to banish certain people who had offended him, but then their families should weave a crown and offer it to him on behalf of those under punishment, would he not grant a remission of their penalties? In the same way, when we offer our supplications for those who have fallen asleep – even if they were sinners – we weave no crown, but offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins, propitiating our merciful God for them and for ourselves.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th century, Doctor of the Church)

St. Bernard of Montjoux was a priest, missionary, and a caretaker of pilgrims.

“The alarming increase of divorces in our land and the consequent break-up of family life is due principally to the loss of love for the ideal in womanhood. Marriage has become identified with pleasure, not with love. Once the pleasure ceases, love ceases. The woman is loved not for what she is in herself but for what she is to others. The tragedy of such a state is not only what it does for woman, but also what it does to man.” Ven. Fulton Sheen (19th-20th centuries)

Pope St. Pius V was a priest in religious life who became pope during one of the most tumultuous and critical periods in Church history.

“Therefore, rise, run to the Church; here is the Father, here is the Son, here is the Holy Spirit. He Who hears you pondering in the secret places of the mind runs to you. And when you are still far off, He sees you and runs to you. He sees in your heart, He runs, lest someone hinder, and also embraces you. His foreknowledge is in the running, His mercy in the embrace, and, as it were, the disposition of Fatherly love. He falls on your neck in order to raise one prostrate and burdened with sins and bring back one turned aside to the earthly toward heaven, in which he seeks his own Author. Christ falls on your neck to free your nape from the yoke of slavery and hang His sweet yoke upon your shoulders.” St. Ambrose (4th century, Doctor of the Church)

Blessed Marcel Callo was a pious French layman who was a martyr of Nazi Germany. Marcel was born in 1921 to a devout couple of modest means, Marcel Callo and his wife Felicita. Young Marcel was one of nine children and the family lived at Rennes in western France. He was educated at local schools and helped to take care of his younger siblings. He was a very devout child and became an altar server at age seven.

“Let the young men also be blameless in all things, being especially careful to preserve purity, and keeping themselves, as with a bridle, from every kind of evil. For it is well that they should be cut off from the lusts that are in the world.” St. Polycarp of Smyrna (1st-2nd centuries)

“[The Church] is called Catholic, then, because it extends over the whole world, from end to end of the earth, and because it teaches universally and infallibly each and every doctrine which must come to the knowledge of men concerning things visible and invisible…because it universally treats and heals every class of sins, those committed with the soul and those with the body, and it possesses within itself every conceivable form of virtue, in deeds and in words and in the spiritual gifts of every description.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th century, Doctor of the Church)

St. Anne Line was a convert, wife and widow, and a martyr of Elizabethan Protestant England. She was born Alice Heigham c.1563 at Dunmow, Essex, England. Her father, Willaim Heigham, was a Calvinist landowner and was the son of one of King Henry VIII’s Protestant “reformers”. In her late teens, she converted to the Catholic Church with her brother, William. The pair were joined in converting by a young man named Roger Line. When their father learned of their conversion, they were both disinherited, with Alice, now known as Anne, losing her dowry. Roger was also disowned by his father upon his conversion.

Zeal for the salvation of souls is of so great a merit before God, that to give up all our goods to the poor, or to spend our whole life in the exercises of all sorts of austerities cannot equal the merit of it.

St. David Galván Bermúdez was a teacher, a priest, and a martyr of the Mexican Cristero War. David was born in 1881 in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco in western Mexico.