November 25, Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Co-Patroness of the Order of Preachers
25 November 2009
St. Catherine is a special patroness of the Order, especially for those studying philosophy. In the early days of the Order Our Lady would appear to St. Dominic with two companions: St. Cecilia and St. Catherine of Alexandria.
In the lovely video presentation above the narrator speculates as to why St. Catherine's feast, which had been dropped from the liturgical calendar in 1969 was reinserted in 2002. One bit of trivia: when our Sr. Mary Catharine of Jesus received the habit and her religious name our dear friend, Fr. Timothy Sparks, OP who was involved in promoting the causes of the saints for the Order, presented a formal petition to the Holy Father for the reinsertion of St. Catherine's feast in honor of our new novice. That was in 1992. Ten years later and a few years after Fr. Timothy Sparks went home to heaven the Servant of God, John Paul II agreed!
4 comments:
There's always something new to learn. I'm so glad I belong to a Church that honors both faith and reason. How very cool that this woman of the early Church was so well-educated and even allowed to debate publicly.
Sisters,
Thanks for sharing this video! St. Catherine of Alexandria is also a consecrated virgin-saint, so I consider her something of a patroness as well. :-)
I chose St Catherine as my patroness when I was received into the Church, long before I knew she was secondary Patroness of the Order of which I am now a temporarily-professed lay member.
Happy feast day, Sister Mary Catherine!
About this particular saint:
I was diagnosed as infertile (male infertility) in the early 1980s. At the time I was in the service.
Part of my job was to be assigned to the Multinational Force and Observers, a peacekeeping organization in the Sinai desert.
Now deserts don't have a lot of opportunity fro fun, and one of the things we did for diversion was to go to the Monastary of St. Cathrine at the foot of Mt. Sinai.
There I fell into conversation with one of the monks, who asked how many children I had. I told him about our situation, and he gave me a medal of St. Cathrine and some water from one of the monastery wells.
Less than a year later, my wife had twins. We ended up with three great daughters. And yes, we remembered St. Cathrine when we named the twins.
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