September 7 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

event · PIANA ROMANA, Pietrelcina, September 7, 1910 AD

A month after ordination, Saint Pio receives the wounds of Christ

St. Pio, twenty-three, was praying alone under an elm on his father's land outside Pietrelcina when the wounds opened in his hands and in his feet.

A black-and-white photograph of a single broad elm standing alone in a harvested field, a small straw-and-branch shelter built against its foot, with vines, a heap of cleared stones and a cart track running out to bare hills behind. — The elm at Piana Romana, the Forgione family's land two miles outside Pietrelcina, where St. Pio of Pietrelcina received the wounds of Christ for the first time on September 7, 1910 AD.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a 1910 black-and-white large-format plate photograph, reconstructed from the paper's dossier description of Piana Romana; no person appears and no reference likeness was used. The paper's reference photograph of St. Pio is Padre Pio da Pietrelcina — reproduction of an untouched 1947 portrait print (Federico Abresch, original photograph 1947; reproduction by Wikimedia user Muschio Di Quercia, 2019, Wikimedia Commons) — see the original: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Padre_Pio_da_Pietrelcina.jpg

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, a Capuchin priest of twenty-three, received the wounds of Christ in his hands and his feet today, praying alone under an elm on his family's land outside this village. The wounds bled, and the pain was bad enough that he asked Jesus to take them away; they closed, and the pain stayed. He was ordained twenty-eight days ago, and he will say nothing of the morning to his spiritual director for a year and a day.

4 min read

A manuscript-style illumination of a young woman in white plate armour, bare-headed with dark cropped hair, standing at the edge of a water-filled ditch below a high city wall, dipping a long lance into the water with one hand and holding her white fleur-de-lys standard with the other while defenders shoot from the crenellations above. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of French manuscript illumination, from the paper's reference portrait based on Jeanne d'Arc a la porte Saint-Honore lors du siege de Paris (1429) — Les Vigiles de Charles VII, fol. 66v (Anonymous illuminator; manuscript of Martial d'Auvergne, c. 1484, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Departement des Manuscrits, Francais 5054, fol. 66v) View source artwork.

event · PARIS, France, September 8, 1429 AD

St. Joan of Arc, shot at Paris, refuses to leave the ditch

Saint Joan of Arc was shot through the thigh with a crossbow bolt at the wall of Paris this week, while she stood in the moat sounding the water with her lance to find a crossing for her men. She would not leave, and went on calling her soldiers forward long after dark, until men sent by one of the French captains lifted her out. Two days later King Charles VII, crowned at Reims seven weeks ago with her standing beside him, ordered the army to withdraw.

4 min read

More in this edition

A manuscript-style painting of an elderly nun in a black Benedictine habit and white veil standing alone with an abbess's crozier between two rows of empty choir stalls in a stone church, before a bare altar. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of twelfth-century Rhineland manuscript illumination, from the paper's reference portrait based on Hildegard receiving the light from Heaven — Scivias, Rupertsberg codex, folio 1 recto (unknown illuminator of the Rupertsberg workshop, working under St. Hildegard's direction, c. 1165–1179 AD; photographic plate published 1917, Wellcome Collection, London) View source artwork.

column · RUPERTSBERG, near Bingen, this year, 1178 AD

St. Hildegard refuses to open a grave, and Mainz silences her nuns

The churchmen governing the archdiocese of Mainz ordered St. Hildegard of Bingen to have a young man's body taken out of her convent's cemetery. She refused, and they laid the house under interdict: no Mass, no Communion and no sung Office for her nuns. In a long letter she told them what silencing a church costs.

4 min read

A warm-toned monochrome photograph of a rutted stone-and-earth track between drystone walls in hill country, with about a dozen sheep and lambs drifting up it and a small village with a church tower in the valley beyond, the Pyrenean ridges closing the top of the frame. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a wet-collodion photograph of the late 1850s printed on albumen paper, from the dossier's description of the place. No likeness of St. Bernadette Soubirous is depicted; the paper prints her own photographs, and none exists of Bartrès in 1857.

place · BARTRÈS, Hautes-Pyrénées, September 1857 AD

St. Bernadette, thirteen, sent up the valley to herd another family's sheep

The Aravants, a farming family at Bartrès, wanted a girl to take a small flock of sheep and lambs out to pasture, and they asked for Saint Bernadette Soubirous by name. She is thirteen, and her parents let her go because it meant one mouth less to feed in the damp old guard post the family lives in at Lourdes. She had been nursed at Bartrès as an infant, and the family there had kept up with her ever since.

4 min read

A mosaic of a slight young man in a belted undyed tunic and pallium, seated on a stool at a low table with a reed pen, inkwell and wax tablets, holding an unrolled papyrus letter, beside an opening that looks out on an empty road leading to an arched gate. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a Byzantine wall mosaic of glass and stone tesserae, from the paper's reference portrait based on John Chrysostom, marginal miniature in the Chludov Psalter (Anonymous Byzantine illuminator, middle of the 9th century, The Chludov Psalter; the holding institution is not named on the source page). View source artwork.

writings · ANTIOCH, Roman Syria, about 370 AD

St. John Chrysostom's oldest surviving letters ask a friend to come back

Theodore left the small group of friends who had gone to live a strict religious life together at Antioch, returning to the city for his inheritance and a marriage. Saint John Chrysostom, then in his early twenties, wrote him two letters — the earliest of his writings that survive — mourning what he called the ruin of a soul. Theodore gave up the money and the marriage and returned.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Monday of the Twenty-third week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saint Cloud

Saint Cloud (about 522–560 AD) was a grandson of King Clovis who gave up his claim to the Frankish throne after his brothers were killed, became a monk and then a priest, and settled at the village outside Paris that now bears his name.

On this day in the Church

1657 The diocesan process into the life, virtues and miracles of St. Peter Claver opened before the ordinary of Cartagena de Indias, three years after his death, and took testimony from fifty-nine witnesses.Source
1688 The first chapel of the Sacred Heart was blessed in the convent garden at Paray-le-Monial, and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque knelt motionless in the convent chapel through the two hours of the ceremony and long after it.Our report Source
2022 Pope Francis gave his general audience catechesis on discernment, taking the convalescence of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Loyola as its most instructive example.Source

Quote of the day

“In that hut, which had become a real little church for me, I did all my devotions and my prayers, night and day.”

— St. Pio of Pietrelcina, on the shelter under the elm at Piana Romana, Padre Pio's recollection confided to Padre Raffaele da S. Elia a Pianisi, quoted at padrepio.it, "Piana Romana: Padre Pio riceve le stimmate nel 1910"