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St. Alphonsa Muttathupadathu (The Passion Flower) is the first Indian woman to be elevated to sainthood. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1986 and decided as a saint by the pope Benedict XVI onMarch 1, 2008. The official declaration will be done today October 12, 2008. On February 8, 1986, almost 40 years after her death, Pope John Paul II beatified her at Kottayam. On June 1, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI authorised her canonization. She will be the first female saint from India and the second saint from India.

Pics of St Alphonsa

Born as Annakkutty (little Anna) in Kudamaloor, a rural village in Kottayam district,Kerala, India, to Joseph and Mary Muttathupadathu. She was baptized on August 27, 1910. Anna’s mother died when she was very young, so her maternal aunt raised her. Anna was educated by her great-uncle Father Joseph Muttathupadathu. When Anna was 3 years old, she contracted eczema and suffered from it for over a year.

She died on July 28, 1946, aged 35. She is buried at Bharananganam, South India in the Diocese of Pala.

Pope Benedict XVI will declare Sister Alphonsa a saint of the Roman Catholic Church at the sprawling St Peter’s Square today.

“This is the first time that India has a saint who was born, lived and died in this country,” said Mani. “It is an emotional and proud moment.” About 10,000 Indians will attend the canonization of Sister Alphonsa.

Pics of St Alphonsa Museum

The Alphonsa Museum, which houses hundreds of exhibits associated with the life of blessed Alphonsa, is situated in the Chapel compound. The two storey structure in front of the chapel was originally the Papal podium at Kottayam during the beatification ceremony on 8th Feb.1986. A flight of steps leads to the stadium below and on either side of these steps one can see a beautifully laid out terraced garden, one of the very best of its kind in Kerala. See the video clip below for more details showing her physical remains.

St. Alphonsa Video :-

Churches named after St. Alphonsa even before Canonization:-

Three churches in the United States were named after St. Alphonsa even before her canonization by Pope Benedict XVI on October 12 in Vatican.

1) Parishioners at the Saint Alphonsa Church in San Fernando in Los Angles, claims that it is the first church in the whole world to be named after her. The church was started as a mission of the St Thomas Syro-Malabar Diocese of Chicago in 2001. Sr Alphonsa was still in the Blessed or beatified status and there was no indication when she would become a saint. Beatification is the last step before canonization.

“But we knew that now or later, she would be canonized. So we decided to name the mission after her,” Vicar Fr. Paul Kottackal said. The church allows to use the name of the beatified for new missions or churches. The mission bought a building used by the Jehova’s Witness members this year and a formal parish was inaugurated this July by Major Archbishop, Cardinal Varkey Vithyathil, head of the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Syro-Malabar Church is an independent church within the Catholic Church.

He and Bishop Jacob Angadiath of the Chicago diocese allowed them to use the name as Saint Alphonsa. The cardinal assured them that the canonization was an officially decided matter and only a formal ceremony by the pope was left. So the church was registered as Saint Alphonsa Church. The church conducted a two-day feast and special prayers on October 11 and 12 to coincide with the canonization ceremonies held in Vatican.

2) The Blessed Alphonsa Church in Atlanta, Georgia, will soon change its name to Saint Alphonsa Church. To celebrate the canonization, the church has scheduled a 21-day programme starting October 12, Abraham Augusty, chairman of the parish council, said.

The main celebrations are on November 1 and 2, when Bishop Agadiath will also come to participate. A committee under Vicar Fr Kurian Karickal and Augusty is also working to make the celebrations a success. They bought six-acre land to built the church. It was inaugurated in 2006, ahead of the Los Angeles church. But Alphonsa’s name was taken for the mission only in 2004. A mission is a congregation which will become a parish when it gets its own church.

3) The third church is in Dallas, Texas, still only a mission, as it has no church of its own. It is the second church for the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in Dallas. Fr. Saji Chakkittamuri, who just arrived from Kerala, has taken over as the vicar of the church.

Several people from the US have already gone to Vatican to witness the ceremony. Florida-based Joy Kuttiani, along with his family, is one among them. He is a native of Bharanganam in Kottayam district, where Alphonsa lived and the mortal remains were buried. It is the major pilgrimage centre of the Catholic community. Kuttiani is a devotee of Alphonsa. He was instrumental in releasing a postal stamp in the name of Alphonsa in the 90s. “It was K Karunakaran, former kerala chief minister, who made it possible. He forced the central ministers to bring out the stamp,’ he said. More than 900,000 stamps with her pictures were sold, which was a rare thing in the postal history in India, he said.

Prayers:-

Prayer of Saint Alphonsa:-

O Lord Jesus,

Hide me in the wound of your sacred heart.
Free me from my desire to be loved and esteemed.
Guard me from my evil attempts to win fame and honor.
Make me humble till I become a small spark in the flame of love in your Sacred Heart.
Grant me the grace to forget myself and all worldly things.
Jesus, sweet beyond words, convert all worldly consolations into bitterness for me.
O my Jesus, Sun of Justice, enlighten my intellect and mind with your sacred rays. Purify my heart, consume me with burning love for you, and make me one with you.
Amen

Novena of the Saint Alphonsa:

Prayer to Saint Alphonsa:-

Oh, Saint Alphonsa, you have been graciously chosen from our midst to be united with Jesus Christ, our savior, in the misery of his passion, death and resurrection. You have grown to the heights of holiness and have been crowned with heavenly glory.

Help us in our trials and tribulations. Oh! Daughter of sufferings, obtain for us the grace to lead a holy life, following your example, in total submission to the will of God. Be with us, transforming all our sorrows into a holy sacrifice in union with Christ Crucified, in reparation to our sins, for the sanctification and salvation of the whole world.
Amen

Prayer for the intercession of Saint Alphonsa:-

O, Holy Spirit, descend upon us. Pour out your gifts upon us and strengthen us in faith. Guide us with the hope for the kingdom of heaven. Enkindle our hearts with the fire of divine love. Just as you led Saint Alphonsa along the path of sanctity, lead us also on the path of righteousness. Grant us the grace to grow in sanctity and wisdom, by serving you faithfully in humility and gentleness.

Celebrant : With joy and hope in our hearts, let us pray: “Lord, hear our prayer”.

All : Lord, hear our prayer.

Celebrant : Lord, you raised Sr. Alphonsa to the host of the Blessed, fill us with the spirit of prayer and sacrifice.

All : Lord, hear our prayer.

Celebrant : Lord, grant us the grace to seek the hand of god in all our sufferings and sorrows, like St. Alphonsa who bore witness to you through her sufferings and self-sacrifice.

All : Lord, hear our prayer.

Celebrant : Lord Jesus, you offered yourself as a victim on the cross for us sinners. St. Alphonsa imitated you by offering herself as a victim on your alter. Grant us the strength and grace to offer ourselves to you every moment, as a burnt offering, like this holy sister.

All : Lord, hear our prayer.

Celebrant : Lord Jesus, at the moment of your death agony, your prayer to the father saying: “Not my will, but they will be done”. St. Alphonsa also imitated you praying in the same fashion. Help us to see you in our superiors and do your will in all circumstances.

All : Lord, hear our prayer.

Let us pray

Merciful and benevolent God, we offer ourselves completely to you. We give you thanks for all the blessings you shower upon us. Forgive us our sins and offences. Lord, you gave us St. Alphonsa as our model and mediator. We seek her intercession now. Protect us from all evils, spiritual and material. Fill us with your blessings. We make this prayer in your name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.

More on St. Alphonsa:-  ***PICS***VIDEOS***SONGS***

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Vincent de Paul…Who is he?…Lets take a look…

St. Vincent de Paul (1576 - 1660) was born in Gascony, France, and died in Paris. He studied theology at Toulouse and was ordained a priest in 1600. As a young priest he fell into the hands of Mohammedan pirates who carried him off to Africa. After his return to France he became successively parish priest, grand almoner of the galley slaves, and spiritual director of the Visitation nuns. He founded the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission or Lazarists to preach especially to country people. With the help of Louise de Marillac he established the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity to care for young girls, for the needy, sick, and foundlings. He died at St. Lazarus’s which was the center of his Congregation. Leo XIII proclaimed him special patron of charitable institutions.

St. Vincent de Paul was a great apostle of charity, and brought a great revival of the priesthood in the 17th century. He was born near Dax in the Landes (France) in 1581. As a young priest he was captured by Moorish pirates who carried him to Africa. He was sold into slavery, but freed in 1607 when he converted his owner.

Having returned to France, he became successively a parish priest and chaplain to the galley-slaves. He founded a religious Congregation under the title of Priests of the Mission or Lazarists (now known as Vincentians), and he bound them by a special way to undertake the apostolic work of charity; he sent them to preach missions, especially to the ignorant peasants of that time, and to establish seminaries.

In order to help poor girls, invalids, and the insane, sick and unemployed, he and St. Louise de Marillac founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, now better known as the Sisters of St. Vincent.

St. Vincent worked tirelessly to help those in need: the impoverished, the sick, the enslaved, the abandoned, the ignored. He died in 1660 at St. Lazarus’s house, Paris. His motto: “God sees you.”

“Let us love God; but at the price of our hands and sweat of our face.”

Patron:-

charitable societies; horses; hospitals; leprosy; lost articles; prisoners; volunteers; spiritual help; Saint Vincent de Paul Societies; Vincentian Service Corps; Madagascar; diocese of Richmond, Virginia.

Symbols:-

16th century cleric performing act of charity; priest surrounded by the Sisters of Charity; book with heart; model of an orphanage or hospital; model of a hospice; priest with child in his arms.

Prayer:-

God our Father, you gave Vincent de Paul the courage and holiness of an apostle for the well-being of the poor and the formation of the clergy. Help us to be zealous in continuing his work. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

St. Joan of Arc is the patroness of soldiers and of France. On January 6, 1412, Joan of Arc was born to pious parents of the French peasant class, at the obscure village of Domremy, near the province of Lorraine. At a very early age, she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.

At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last came the crowning order. In May, 1428, her voices “of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret” told Joan to go to the King of France and help him reconquer his kingdom. For at that time the English king was after the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy, the chief rival of the French king, was siding with him and gobbling up evermore French territory.

After overcoming opposition from churchmen and courtiers, the seventeen year old girl was given a small army with which she raised the seige of Orleans on May 8, 1429. She then enjoyed a series of spectacular military successes, during which the King was able to enter Rheims and be crowned with her at his side.

In May 1430, as she was attempting to relieve Compiegne, she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become archbishop.

Through her unfamiliarity with the technicalities of theology, Joan was trapped into making a few damaging statements. When she refused to retract the assertion that it was the saints of God who had commanded her to do what she had done, she was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431.

She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was ultimately canonized in 1920, making official what the people had known for centuries.

Feast day of St. Joan of Arc is May 30.

Joan was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Saint James, son of Zebedee or Yaakov Ben-Zebdi/Bar-Zebdi, was one of the disciples of Jesus. He was a son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of John the Apostle. He is called Saint James the Greater to distinguish him from James, son of Alphaeus, who is also known as James the Lesser. James is described as one of the first disciples to join Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels state that James and John were with their father by the seashore when Jesus called them to follow him. According to the Gospel of Mark, James and John were called Boanerges, or the “Sons of Thunder”. James was one of only three apostles whom Jesus selected to bear witness to his Transfiguration. Acts of the Apostles records that Agrippa I had James executed by sword, making him the first of the apostles to be martyred.

Veneration

His relics are said to be in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Spain). Saint James is the Patron Saint of Spain. The town where his remains are held, Santiago de Compostela, is considered the third most holy town within Christendom (after Jerusalem and Rome). The traditional pilgrimage to the grave of the saint, known as the “Way of St. James,” has become the most popular pilgrimage for Western European Catholics from the early Middle Ages onwards; making him one of the patron saints of pilgrimage.

The feast day of St James is celebrated on July 25 on the liturgical calendars of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and certain Protestant churches. He is commemorated on April 30 in the Orthodox Christian liturgical calendar (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, April 30 currently falls on May 13 of the modern Gregorian Calendar).

Saint James and Hispania

According to ancient local tradition, on 2 January of the year AD 40, the Virgin Mary appeared to James on the bank of the Ebro River at Caesaraugusta, while he was preaching the Gospel in Iberia. She appeared upon a pillar, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and that pillar is conserved and venerated within the present Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, in Zaragoza, Spain. Following that apparition, St James returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44.

The translation of his relics from Judea to Galicia in the northwest of Iberia was effected, in legend, by a series of miraculous happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Iria Flavia in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela. The 12th-century Historia Compostellana commissioned by bishop Diego Gelmírez provides a summary of the legend of St James as it was believed at Compostela. Two propositions are central to it: first, that St James preached the gospel in Iberia as well as in the Holy Land; second, that after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa I his disciples carried his body by sea to Iberia, where they landed at Padrón on the coast of Galicia, and took it inland for burial at Santiago de Compostela.

An even later tradition states that he miraculously appeared to fight for the Christian army during the battle of Clavijo during the Reconquista, and was henceforth called Matamoros (Moor-slayer). Santiago y cierra España (”St James and strike for Spain”) has been the traditional battle cry of Spanish armies.

” St James the Moorslayer, one of the most valiant saints and knights the world ever had … has been given by God to Spain for its patron and protection. “

-Cervantes, Don Quixote

Saint James in the Kingdom of Judaiah

Saint James had a special place in the Central African Kingdom of Kongo because of his association with the founding of Christianity in the country in the late fifteenth century. Portuguese sailors and diplomats brought the saint to Kongo when they first reached the country in 1483. When King Afonso I of Kongo whose Kongo name was Mvemba a Nzinga, the second Christian king, was facing a rival, his brother Mpanzu a Kitima, in battle, he reported that a vision of Saint James and the Heavenly Host appeared in the sky, frightened Mpanzu a Kitima’s soldiers, and gave Afonso the victory. As a result, he declared that Saint James’ feast day (July 25) be celebrated as a national holiday.

Over the years, Saint James day became the central holiday of Kongo. Taxes were collected on that day, and men eligible for military duty were required to appear armed. There were usually regional celebrations as well as one at the capital. In some cases, Kongolese slaves carried the celebration to the New World, and there are celebrations of Saint James Day in Haiti and Puerto Rico carried out by their descendents.

Simon Peter or Cephas, the first pope, Prince of the Apostles, and founder, with St. Paul, of the See of Rome.

Peter was a native of Bethsaida, near Lake Tiberias, the son of John, and worked, like his brother St. Andrew, as a fisherman on Lake Genesareth. Andrew introduced Peter to Jesus, and Christ called Peter to become adisciple.

In Luke is recounted the story that Peter caught so large an amount of fish that he fell down before the feet of Jesus and was told by the Lord, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men”.

Jesus also gave Simon a new name: Cephas, or the rock. Becoming a disciple of Jesus, Peter acknowledged him as “… the Messiah, the son of the living God”. Christ responded by saying: “… you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church…. He added: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”.

Peter was always listed as the first of the Apostles in all of the New Testament accounts and was a member of the inner circle of Jesus, with James and John. He is recorded more than any other disciple, and was at Jesus’ side at the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and the Agony of the Garden of Gethsemane. He helped organize the Last Supper and played a major role in the events of the Passion. When the Master was arrested, he cut off the right ear of a slave of the high priest Malchus and then denied Christ three times as the Lord predicted. Peter then “went out and began to weep bitterly”. After the Resurrection, Peter went to the tomb with the “other disciple” after being told of the event by the women.

The first appearance of the Risen Christ was before Peter, ahead of the other disciples, and when the Lord came before the disciples at Tiberias, he gave to Peter the famous command to “Feed my lambs…. Tend my sheep…. Feed my sheep”. In the time immediately after the Ascension, Peter stood as the unquestionable head of the Apostles, his position made evident in the Acts. He appointed the replacement of Judas Iscariot; he spoke first to the crowds that had assembled after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; he was the first Apostle to perform miracles in the name of the Lord; and he rendered judgment upon the deceitful Ananias and Sapphira. Peter was instrumental in bringing the Gospel to the Gentiles. He baptized the Roman pagan Cornelius, and at the Council of Jerusalem he gave his support to preaching to Gentiles, thereby permitting the new Church to become universal. Imprisoned by King Herod Agrippa, he was aided in an escape by an angel. He then resumed his apostolate in Jerusalem and his missionary efforts included travels to such cities of the pagan world as Antioch, Corinth, and eventually Rome. He made reference to the Eternal City in his first Epistle by noting that he writes from Babylon .

It is certain that Peter died in Rome and that his martyrdom came during the reign of Emperor Nero, probably in 64. Testimony of his martyrdom is extensive, including Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Clement I of Rome, St. Ignatius, and St. Irenaeus. According to rich tradition, Peter was crucified on the Vatican Hill upside down because he declared himself unworthy to die in the same manner as the Lord. He was then buried on Vatican Hill, and excavations under St. Peter’s Basilica have unearthed his probable tomb, and his relics are now enshrined under the high altar of St. Peter’s.

From the earliest days of the Church, Peter was recognized as the Prince of the Apostles and the first Supreme Pontiff; his see, Rome, has thus enjoyed the position of primacy over the entire Catholic Church. While Peter’s chief feast day is June 29, he is also honored on February 22 and November 18. In liturgical art, he is depicted as an elderly man holding a key and a book. His symbols include an inverted cross, a boat, and the cock.