McGrath Institute Blog

“If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.”
—St. Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul (Rockford: Tan Books, 1997), p. 2

As the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Pio of Pietrelcina today (1887–1968), who is more affectionately known as Padre Pio, Christians everywhere can draw important spiritual lessons from this beloved mystic’s balance of compassion and “tough love.”

Our secular society may speak too much about renewal in mundane, temporary terms (“renewing” a driver’s license) or as an impersonal, policy-driven turnaround (“urban renewal”). But on August 21, the feast day of Pope St. Pius X, it’s helpful to ponder how the Catholic Church thinks about renewal, especially in light of the motto associated with this first Pope elected in the 20th century: “to renew all things in Christ.”

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Stephen, King of Hungary. History remembers him for his unification and establishment of Hungary around the year 1000, but the Church venerates him because of his dedication to God and the welfare of his people.

Today marks the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest executed at Auschwitz on August 14, 1941, offering his life in the place of a fellow prisoner who had been condemned to death.