Feast Days – December 13 & 14

Who is the patron saint of blindness and eye disorders?  It’s St. Lucy whose feast day we celebrate on December 13.  It is believed that in 283, St. Lucy was born into a very wealthy Sicilian family.  During this time, Christians were being persecuted.  She made a vow of virginity and refused to marry at a young age but this angered a potential suitor who then accused her of being a Christian.  After several attempts on her life by the guards, she was eventually killed by the sword in Sicily in 304.  Prior to her death, she was tortured by having her eyes gouged out.

On December 14, we celebrate the feast day of St. John of the Cross, patron saint of mystics and contemplatives.  St. John was born in 1542 in Avila, Spain and at the age of 25 became the first friar of the Carmelite order started by St. Teresa of Avila.  St. John of the Cross truly united himself with Jesus’ Cross in his persecution, opposition, and imprisonment for his faith and stringent reform values.  He came to know the Cross acutely as he sat in his dark, narrow cell dying.  However, in the darkness of his cell, he came spiritually alive as a mystic and poet expressing the ecstasy of his mystical union with God.  Three of his most famous works we can read today are Spiritual Canticle, Dark Night of the Soul, and Ascent of Mount Carmel.  For these masterpieces, he was named a Doctor of the Church in 1926.

 “My soul has been employed, and all my flow in his service; I no longer keep cattle, I do not have another job, that only in love is my exercise.” -Saint John of the Cross