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September 13 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · COMANA, Pontus, this month, 407 AD

A martyr tells St. John Chrysostom the march is over

Guards had walked the Bishop of Constantinople, about sixty and sick, three months on foot toward the empire's frontier, and stood to be promoted if he died on the road.

A mosaic of a thin, balding elderly man in a dark tunic and heavy brown cloak sitting exhausted on a stone bench inside a small vaulted stone chapel, while a priest sets a lamp beside a Gospel book on the altar and a spear, shield and pack lie on the dry hillside outside the open door.
St. John Chrysostom rests in the shrine of St. Basiliscus outside Comana in Pontus, 407 AD.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Byzantine glass and stone wall mosaic, from the paper's reference portrait based on St. John Chrysostom, micromosaic icon (Anonymous Greek workshop, 14th century, Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos) View source artwork.

Two soldiers taking Saint John Chrysostom to a harsher exile lodged him for the night in the shrine of the martyr St. Basiliscus, five or six miles outside Comana in Pontus. According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, St. Basiliscus appeared to him there and told him they would be together on the morrow. In the morning the soldiers refused to let him rest and marched him on, and under four miles later the sickness stopped them.

4 min read

A wall painting inside a red border showing two new white stone churches across a dusty court — a long hall church with a row of arched windows on the left and a round domed building on the right, its timber doors open on a small silver case resting on a cloth-covered table — with a line of townspeople in plain tunics and mantles ranged along the foot of the picture.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a late-Roman fresco of the Constantinian decades, from the paper's reference portrait based on Christ enthroned between the apostles Peter and Paul, with the Lamb on the hill of the four rivers and the martyrs Gorgonius, Peter, Marcellinus and Tiburtius (Unknown Roman painter, 4th century AD, Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome) View source artwork.

event · JERUSALEM, Roman Palestine, September 13, 335 AD

Jerusalem dedicates the church at Calvary and the church over Christ's tomb

The two churches the Emperor Constantine built at Jerusalem — one at Calvary, one over the tomb of Christ — were consecrated today, and the solemnity runs on through tomorrow. Bishops were summoned at short notice from a council at Tyre, and others travelled from Persia, Macedonia, Egypt and Libya, with the emperor's officers paying for the festival. The day was chosen to fall on the day the Cross of the Lord had been found, nine years after St. Helena's digging on this ground.

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More in this edition

An oil painting of an elderly Carmelite nun standing in a bare whitewashed chapter room with her hands open at her sides, seven nuns seated along the benches around her, a friar at the left, and a wooden bowl of folded paper ballots with a quill and inkwell on a stool in the middle of the floor.
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, 1576, Convento de las Teresas, Seville) View source artwork.

place · ÁVILA, Castile, September 1581 AD

Saint Teresa is elected to run her first convent, and refuses

The nuns of the monastery of St Joseph in Ávila have elected Saint Teresa of Ávila their prioress this month, and St. Teresa refused the office in front of the community, saying she was old and wanted rest. She holds it anyway, on the order of the friar who governs her reform. St Joseph's is the house St. Teresa founded in 1562 AD with four poor orphans and no endowment, and it is now short of both discipline and money.

3 min read

A young Passionist student in a black habit with the heart-shaped Passionist Sign on his breast sits at a small wooden table writing with a quill, a crucifix, an oil lamp and a small painting of Our Lady of Sorrows beside him, mountains visible through the open window.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-nineteenth-century Roman academic oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Gabriel in his Passionist habit, after the painting by Professor Grandi — frontispiece to 'The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows' (Francesco Grandi, 1831-1891; painted 1879, this reproduction published 1910, Wikimedia Commons, from the H. L. Kilner & Co. edition, Philadelphia, 1910) View source artwork.

profile · ISOLA DEL GRAN SASSO, Abruzzi, 1861 AD

Saint Gabriel is allowed to bind himself to Our Lady for life

Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, a Passionist student at the retreat under the Gran Sasso, has been allowed to bind himself by vow for life to spreading devotion to the Mother of God. He first asked as a novice five years ago, and was told each time that a perpetual promise is too grave a thing to undertake. The same year has brought him the tonsure and minor orders at Penne, and the first signs of consumption.

4 min read

Today in the Church

Saint John Chrysostom, bishop and doctor of the Church (Memorial)

  • Saint John Chrysostom, bishop and doctor of the ChurchMemorial

Saint of the day

Saint John Chrysostom

Saint John Chrysostom, born at Antioch about 349 AD, was Archbishop of Constantinople from 398 AD and is a Doctor of the Church. Twice banished by the imperial court, he died at Comana in Pontus in 407 AD, on the road to a second exile.

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On this day in the Church

  • 335 The churches the Emperor Constantine built at Calvary and over the tomb of Christ were dedicated at Jerusalem, the day chosen to fall on the day the Cross of the Lord had been found in the digging St. Helena ordered.Our reportSource
  • 603 Agilulf, king of the Lombards, opened breaches in the walls of Mantua with battering rams and took the city by storm, three weeks after the fall of Cremona; a truce followed within the month.Our reportSaint Gregory the GreatSource
  • 2008 At the torchlight procession at Lourdes, Pope Benedict XVI recalled that from the fourth apparition onwards St. Bernadette Soubirous lit a candle each morning at the grotto and held it while the Blessed Virgin Mary was visible to her.Source

Quote of the day

“Glory be to God for all things, Amen.”
— St. John Chrysostom, his last words at Comana in Pontus, 407 AD, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 9: St. Chrysostom (ed. Philip Schaff, 1889)