Free Republic

Red Double OUR RISEN LORD would have around him a bright phalanx of martyrs. Its privileged members belong to the different centuries of the Church’s existence. Its ranks open today to give welcome to a brave combatant, who won his palm not in a contest with paganism, as those did whose feasts we have thus far kept, but in defending his mother, the Church, against her own rebellious children. They were heretics that slew this day’s martyr, and the century that was honored with his triumph was the seventeenth. Fidelis was worthy of his beautiful name. Neither difficulty nor...

April 24, 2006 Monday of the Second Week of Easter Psalm: Monday 18 Reading 1Acts 4:23-31 After their release Peter and John went back to their own peopleand reported what the chief priests and elders had told them.And when they heard it,they raised their voices to God with one accordand said, (Sovereign Lord, maker of heaven and earthand the sea and all that is in them,you said by the Holy Spiritthrough the mouth of our father David, your servant: Why did the Gentiles rageand the peoples entertain folly?The kings of the earth took their standand the princes gathered togetheragainst the...

SAINT FIDELIS of SIGMARINGENMartyr(1577-1622)Saint Fidelis was born of noble parents at Sigmaringen in what is now Prussia, in 1577. In his youth he frequently approached the Sacraments, visited the sick and the poor, and spent many hours before the altar. For a time he followed the legal profession and was remarkable for his advocacy of the poor and his respectful language towards his opponents.Finding it difficult to be both a rich lawyer and a good Christian, Fidelis entered the Capuchin Order and embraced a life of austerity and prayer. Hair shirts, iron-pointed girdles, and disciplines were penances too light for...