St. Thomas of Villanova
Feast Day: September 22
Born: 1488 :: Died: 1555
Thomas was born at Fuentellana, Castile in Spain. From his kind parents, he learned to be very charitable with the poor. He did well in school and became a teacher of philosophy when he finished his studies.
Then he joined the Augustinian order as a priest. After he became a priest, he was given many important responsibilities. Later, he was made archbishop of the city of Valencia.
His priests tried to convince him to change his old, mended habit (long robe that priests wear) for new and nicer robes. However, St. Thomas told them his old clothes had nothing to do with his duty. He would take good care of the spiritual needs of his people.
Every day he fed hundreds of poor people. When he received a large sum of money to buy furniture for his house, he gave it to a hospital, saying, "What does a poor monk like me want with furniture?" No wonder he was called the "father of the poor"!
St. Thomas was very gentle with sinners at a time when most people were not. He encouraged rich people to be generous and follow his example too.
Once when he tried to encourage one man to change his sinful ways, the man angrily insulted him and stormed out of the room.
"It was my fault," said the humble archbishop. "I told him a little too roughly." Never would he permit anyone to criticize someone who wasn't there. "He may have had a good reason for doing what he did," the saint would say. "I, for one, believe he did."
Before he died, St. Thomas of Villanova gave to the poor everything he had. He made sure that even his bed was sent to the jail for prisoners to use. St. Thomas died in 1555.
St. Thomas was born in Spain in 1488, and inherited a special love toward the poor from his parents; he often gave away his very clothes. After the death of his father and mother, he used his inheritance to sustain poor virgins. He became a lecturer in the higher schools at Alcala, entered the order of the Hermits of St. Augustine in 1516 at Villanova, and acted as court preacher to Charles V. Against his will he was made archbishop of Valencia (1544), then exercised the office as a zealous shepherd of souls and a great friend of the poor. The bed in which he died was borrowed back from the one to whom he had given it as alms shortly before. During the sixteenth century he was called the "apostle of the Spaniards." 
St. Maurice was an officer in the Theban Legion, a unit in the army of the Emperor Maximian Herculius. This Legion, from Upper Egypt, was entirely Christian, and when Maximian ordered his soldiers at Octodurum (now called Martigny, Switzerland) to sacrifice to the gods as a way of ensuring victory in battle, Maurice and two other officers led the Theban Legion in refusing, and thelegion with drew to Agaunum (now St.-Maurice, in the Swiss Canton of Valais). With Maurice encouraging the legionnaires to remain constant, even after the Emperor had the legion decimated (every tenth man killed), the legionnaires answered, "We have arms in our hands, but we do not resist because we would rather die innocent than live by any sin." Maximian ordered the rest of his army to kill the Christian legionnaires. The Theban legion numbered about 6,600 men, but the actual number killed remains unclear. Others were martyred for refusing to share in the spoils of the legionnaires. St. Eucherius, a fifth-century bishop of Lyons, noted that many miracles took place at the shrine of these martyrs. They are buried under the Basilica of St.-Maurice-en-Valais in Switzerland.