September 4 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Teresa's reform under siege · Part 3 · ROME, September 4, 1578 AD

Carmelite superior who authorised St. Teresa's reform dies at Rome

Juan Bautista Rubeo, who governed the Carmelite Order from Rome, signed the papers that made St. Teresa's convents lawful and closed a province to her; the quarrel was never settled.

An empty whitewashed convent room with a plain wooden table holding two open parchment documents with red wax seals, an inkwell, a stone, a quill and a small book, lit from an unglazed window on the left, with a small dark crucifix on the far wall. — The patents of 1567 AD under which St. Teresa of Ávila made her foundations, at the monastery of St. Joseph, Ávila, 1578 AD.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Spanish Golden Age oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Retrato de Santa Teresa de Jesús (Fray Juan de la Miseria, Discalced Carmelite lay brother, 1576, Convento de las Teresas, Seville). No person is depicted. View source artwork.

Fray Juan Bautista Rubeo, the head of the Carmelite Order, died at Rome today after a fall from his mule. In 1567 AD Rubeo signed the written authority for St. Teresa of Ávila's convents of nuns and her first two houses of friars. He later forbade her the province of Andalusia, and his general chapter ordered her to found no more houses and to stay in one place; both orders stand.

7 min read

A colonial oil painting of a small single-storey adobe chapel with a bell opening on the plain at the foot of a bare rocky hill covered in prickly pear and mesquite, a stone causeway and bridge crossing shallow lake water in the foreground, low huts and a few distant figures beside it, and the towers of a Spanish colonial city and two snow-capped volcanoes far off on the horizon. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of New Spanish colonial baroque oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Cuarta aparición de la Virgen de Guadalupe (Juan Dualte, 18th century, Museo de la Colegiata de San Luis, Villagarcía de Campos) View source artwork.

The quarrel over Tepeyac · Part 1 · MEXICO CITY, September 8, 1556 AD

Archbishop backs the chapel outside the city; a friar calls it idolatry

The Archbishop of Mexico, Fray Alonso de Montúfar, preached on Sunday in support of the devotion at the chapel three miles outside this city, where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin twenty-five years ago. Today the Franciscan provincial, Fray Francisco de Bustamante, answered him from another pulpit and accused the archbishop of fostering idolatry. The archbishop is to take the evidence of witnesses on oath.

3 min read

More in this edition

A fresco portrait of St. Monica, a haloed woman in a dark blue veil and habit, head bowed, set within a painted niche with a red scalloped shell canopy.

interview · HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, 397 AD

St. Augustine talks about his mother, ten years after her death

Saint Augustine of Hippo talked with this paper at Hippo Regius about his mother, Saint Monica, who died at Ostia ten years ago. He is writing an account of his own life addressed to God, the Confessions, and her life is inside it; almost no one else has written a word about her. St. Augustine describes the wine St. Monica drank in secret as a girl, the violent husband she managed, the years she prayed for her son, and the day at Milan when St. Augustine came in from the garden and told her.

4 min read

An empty convent garden seen from under a stone cloister arcade, with gravel paths leading to a small stone chapel whose open door shows a dark painting of the Sacred Heart above a linen-covered altar. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of French religious oil painting of the later seventeenth century, from the paper's reference portrait based on Marguerite-Marie Alacoque — Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, religious of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary (Unknown, 19th century, Monastery of the Visitation, Paray-le-Monial (France)) View source artwork.

feature · PARAY-LE-MONIAL, Burgundy, September 7, 1688 AD

The first Sacred Heart chapel is blessed; St. Margaret Mary kneels apart

The Visitation monastery at Paray-le-Monial blessed a small chapel at the foot of its garden today, the first building anywhere raised for the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Twenty-five priests came in procession, the ceremonies ran two hours, and the sisters could not keep the townspeople out of the garden. Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, the nun to whom the devotion was given, knelt motionless in another room throughout and long after, and no one dared speak to her.

4 min read

A young woman in a white habit and black mantle kneels before an altar with a crucifix, reaching up to receive a habit from three haloed Dominican saints appearing above her.

place · SIENA, 1362 AD

St. Catherine of Siena, fifteen, joins an order that takes only widows

Saint Catherine of Siena, fifteen, has taken the black and white habit of an order of Sienese women, most of them widows. The women take no monastic vows and live under a rule in their own houses. Her family had a husband picked out for her, and the order had never before given the habit to a girl. The sources disagree on the year, placing the clothing between 1362 and 1364 AD.

4 min read

A plain whitewashed room with bare beams and a small dark crucifix on the wall, where an open printed book in limp vellum, a tied stack of handwritten sheets, a quill, an inkwell and two bound volumes lie on a heavy wooden table before an empty chair. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of Spanish Golden Age oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Santa Teresa Escritora (Saint Teresa Writing) (Anonymous, Spanish; of the Juan de la Miseria portrait type, undated; after 1582, Monasterio de la Anunciación, Alba de Tormes). No person is depicted. View source artwork.

writings · SALAMANCA, 1588 AD

St. Teresa's writings are printed, the book the Inquisition held among them

The writings of St. Teresa of Ávila went on sale in Spain this year, six years after her death, in one volume printed at Salamanca. Among them is the account of her own life and prayer, which she wrote because her confessors ordered her to. Her confessor handed it to the Inquisition in 1575 AD, and after twelve years of examination it was cleared and is now in print.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Friday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

On this day in the Church

1523 St. Ignatius of Loyola entered Jerusalem at midday, brought in by the Franciscans in procession from the road up from Jaffa, and was deeply moved at the sight of the city.Our report Source
1910 At sixteen, Rajmund Kolbe received the Franciscan habit at Lwów and took the name Maximilian, which he chose because it belonged to soldiers and rulers.Our report Saint Maximilian Kolbe Source
1916 St. Padre Pio returned to the friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo, and apart from absences forced on him by the army and his superiors he never left it again in fifty-two years.Our report Source

Quote of the day

“I greatly grieved over the news written to me about our Father General. I feel deep sorrow, and the first day cried and cried without being able to do otherwise.”

— St. Teresa of Ávila, to Father Jerónimo Gracián, Ávila, 15 October 1578, Teresa to Father Jerónimo Gracián, Ávila, 15 October 1578, in Carmelite Quotes, 'Teresa on Rossi's death'