Support Us

    Blog

    Stories of saints, biblical events, angels, and sacred places.

    An 18th-century engraving of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem as a bearded, haloed bishop in ornate vestments, raising one hand and holding an open book in the other.
    Saint Cyril of Jerusalem
    A bishop deposed three times by Arian rivals still found time to write the Church's earliest surviving guide to preparing new Christians for baptism.
    A 15th-century Cretan icon depicting the death of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, surrounded by monks in a mountainous, cave-dotted landscape with an icon of the Virgin and Child carried at the center.
    Saint Ephrem the Syrian
    A deacon who never sought the priesthood wrote hundreds of hymns so rich and widely sung the Syriac tradition still calls him the Harp of the Holy Spirit.
    A Byzantine-style icon of Saint John Damascene, an elderly bearded monk in a red and blue robe and patterned headwrap, haloed, holding a scroll of text.
    Saint John Damascene
    Writing from a monastery outside imperial reach, this Damascus-born monk built the theological case for icons that later saved them from destruction.
    A watercolor by Mikhail Vrubel showing a six-winged seraph holding up a burning coal toward a bearded prophet's face.
    The Seraphim
    What the Seraphim are in Scripture and tradition, why Isaiah saw them crying "Holy, holy, holy," and why they rank highest of the nine angelic choirs.
    A chiaroscuro woodcut of four seated, bearded Doctors of the Church, each holding an open book, gathered in discussion around a central pillar.
    Doctors of the Church — The Full List, and Why Each One Earned the Title
    A directory of the 37 Doctors of the Church, the rare title for saints whose writing shaped Catholic doctrine, linking to each one covered on this blog.
    A hand-colored 19th-century lithograph of a nun in white and black habit kneeling in prayer with a rosary before a crucifix altar, angels appearing in clouds above her.
    Saint Bridget of Sweden
    A Swedish noblewoman raised eight children, buried her husband, then moved to Rome to found an order and spend her final decades badgering popes to come home.
    A Japanese Kirishitan-era painting of Saint Francis Xavier in a black cassock, gazing upward with his hands pressed to a flaming heart, beneath a vision of the crucified Christ surrounded by cherubs.
    Saint Francis Xavier
    A Basque nobleman gave up a promising career in Paris to spend a decade evangelizing India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan for the newborn Jesuit order.
    A detail from an oil painting showing a haloed young nun standing beside an elderly monk, distributing charity in a sunlit courtyard.
    Saint Hilda of Whitby
    An abbess who personally favored Celtic customs hosted the 664 synod that decided England would follow Rome instead — then enforced that ruling in her own house.
    A 17th-century oil painting showing the Virgin Mary appearing in clouds above three kneeling nuns adoring the Blessed Sacrament in a church interior.
    Saint Juliana of Liège
    At sixteen, a cloistered nun began seeing a moon marked with a dark stripe. She kept it private for twenty years before it became the feast of Corpus Christi.
    A 15th-century Novgorod icon of Saint Basil the Great, shown haloed and bearded in bishop's vestments holding a scroll — the grandson Macrina the Elder personally raised in the faith.
    Saint Macrina the Elder
    A grandmother survived Diocletian's persecution hiding seven years in the wilderness, then taught her grandsons the faith — two became giants of Christian theology.
    A weathered stone statue of a haloed young woman with her hand pressed to her chest, gazing upward, on the colonnade of Saint Peter's Square in Rome.
    Saint Macrina the Younger
    At twelve, her fiancé died before their wedding. She called herself already married — then spent her deathbed dictating philosophy to Gregory of Nyssa.
    An 18th-century oil painting of a kneeling nun in black and white habit, hands folded in prayer, haloed by golden rays, with the Sacred Heart resting on an altar before her.
    Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
    An obscure French nun reported that Christ showed her his own wounded heart in prayer. That private vision became the Sacred Heart devotion millions know today.
    A somber 1700 portrait of an elderly nun in a white wimple and black habit, wearing a crucifix, her hands clasped in prayer.
    Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys
    She crossed the Atlantic to a frontier fort and built a teaching order of unwalled, unveiled sisters — becoming the first female Canadian Catholic saint.
    A 19th-century portrait of a nun in a grey wimple and dark habit, wearing a crucifix, looking downward in quiet contemplation.
    Saint Marguerite d'Youville
    Widowed at 29 with crushing debt, she opened her door to Montreal's poorest. Neighbors mocked her with an insulting nickname — the Grey Nuns kept it forever.
    A Baroque ceiling fresco showing Christ above two haloed medieval nuns seated with open books, one of them Mechtild of Hackeborn recording a vision.
    Saint Mechtild of Hackeborn
    For years, two fellow nuns secretly wrote down everything she said about her visions. When she found out, she reported being distressed, not flattered.
    A black-and-white Art Nouveau illustration of a haloed woman standing over a crouching hare, while a mounted hunter and his hound watch from the trees.
    Saint Melangell
    A prince chasing a hare found it sheltering in a hermit's cloak — and gave her the whole valley. The tale is charming; it's also almost entirely unverifiable.
    A devotional icon of a haloed woman in green and orange robes holding a small gold cross.
    Saint Olympias of Constantinople
    She inherited one of the largest fortunes in the Eastern Roman Empire, gave nearly all of it away, and was exiled for refusing to abandon John Chrysostom.
    An 18th-century oil painting of a grieving Roman widow in blue robes standing on a harbor dock surrounded by companions, gazing upward as angels appear overhead and a sailing ship marked SPQR waits behind her.
    Saint Paula of Rome
    A Roman senator's daughter left the Aventine Hill for a cave town in Judea, funding the priest she had recruited there to translate the Bible into Latin.
    An 11th-century Byzantine illuminated manuscript miniature showing the martyrdom of Perpetua, Felicity, and their three companions, depicted with gold halos against a gold background.
    Saints Perpetua and Felicity
    A 22-year-old noblewoman kept a prison diary before her 203 AD execution, and it survives — among the earliest surviving writing by a Christian woman.
    A hand-colored 1845 lithograph of a young woman with a rose wreath and golden halo, holding a palm branch, flanked by four angels among clouds, with an anchor and flowers below.
    Saint Philomena
    In 1802, workers found a sealed Roman tomb with broken tiles spelling a name — her entire life story came decades later, from one nun's reported visions.