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September 15 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

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event · CALVARY, JERUSALEM, the eve of a great sabbath

From the cross, Jesus gives his mother to the disciple beside her

The disciple was St. John the Evangelist, who stood beside the Blessed Virgin Mary as her Son died and took her into his care from that hour.

A crowded panel painting on a gold ground: the pale, lifeless body of Christ is lowered from the cross by two men in rich robes, while the Blessed Virgin Mary, in a blue gown, collapses in a mirrored pose at the foot of the cross, supported by St. John the Evangelist in red; other mourning women in headcoverings stand and kneel around them, with a skull and bones on the ground below.
The Descent from the Cross, by Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435. The Blessed Virgin Mary collapses beneath the body of her Son as it is lowered from the cross, with St. John the Evangelist and the other mourners around her.

The Blessed Virgin Mary stood at the foot of her Son's cross outside Jerusalem, close enough to hear him speak. From the cross Jesus gave her into the care of St. John the Evangelist — "Woman, behold thy son" — and the disciple took her into his own from that hour. The Church keeps that hour today, on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows.

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A black-and-white photograph of a bearded Capuchin friar in a dark habit and skullcap, seated outdoors and holding a lamb across his lap, looking directly at the camera.
place · SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO, Apulia, this year, 1922 AD

New York Presbyterian hears St. Pio's Mass, becomes a Catholic and stays

Mary McAlpin Pyle, a Presbyterian from New York with a fortune, came up the rough road to the Capuchin friary above San Giovanni Rotondo this year. She watched St. Pio of Pietrelcina say his five o'clock Mass and was received into the Catholic Church. She has not gone home: she has taken a villa below the friary wall, wears the habit of a Franciscan Tertiary and goes to confession to him every Wednesday. Her money is paying for a friary and a church at Pietrelcina, on the ground St. Pio pointed to as a seminarian when he said a monastery would one day rise there.

3 min read

An ink-and-wash drawing of a printer's workshop at night: a small devotional book lies open on a scrubbed bench beside a case of lead type and a composing stick, a medal on a blue ribbon among the loose type, a gas burner on the wall lighting the bench while a hand press and drying sheets stand in the dark behind. Nobody is in the room.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a mid-19th-century French ink-and-wash reportage drawing. No person appears in it.

Fr Jean-Marie Aladel, director of the Daughters of Charity, has brought out a rulebook this year for the girls' association that wears the Miraculous Medal as its badge, and new editions are following one after another. His other book, the short account of where the medal came from, has not been reprinted since 1842 AD. St. Catherine Labouré, the sister to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared at the motherhouse in the rue du Bac, told him then that he would never publish another, and none has come.

4 min read

A painted street scene of a low whitewashed house with a tiled roof and an open round-arched door, a cloak on a peg beside it and writing tablets, a pen, an inkpot and a closed wooden-boarded book on a bench under the window; through the doorway a flagged passage leads to a small courtyard with a water jar and a fig tree, and dry hills rise behind the roof. No person appears in it.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of buon fresco on lime plaster, from the paper's reference image based on The School of Tagaste (scene 1, north wall), from the Life of St Augustine (Benozzo Gozzoli, 1464-1465, apsidal chapel of Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano) View source artwork.

Patricius, one of the town councillors of Thagaste, was baptised at the end of his life this year and died. He had spent more than he could afford to send his sixteen-year-old son, Saint Augustine, to study rhetoric at Carthage. Years of that course are still to be paid for, and from this year the fees are met out of his widow's own means and by a rich friend of the family, Romanianus.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Our Lady of Sorrows (Memorial)

  • Our Lady of SorrowsMemorial

Saint of the day

Our Lady of Sorrows

The Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, stood at the foot of his cross outside Jerusalem, where he gave her into the care of St. John the Evangelist. Today's memorial keeps her sorrows, the first of them foretold by Simeon in the Temple.

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On this day in the Church

  • 1668 The Servites were granted a second feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, kept on September 15 as a double of the first class with an octave and a vigil.Source
  • 1966 Pope Paul VI published his letter Christi Matri on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, asking for prayers to Our Lady of the Rosary and for the gift of peace.Source
  • 2008 Pope Benedict XVI said Mass for the sick at Lourdes on this memorial, preaching that at the foot of the cross Simeon's prophecy of the sword was fulfilled, and recalling the smile St. Bernadette Soubirous saw on March 3, 1858 AD.Our reportOur Lady of SorrowsSource
  • 2010 Pope Benedict XVI gave a general audience on St. Clare of Assisi, calling her the first woman in the Church's history to compose a written Rule submitted for a pope's approval.Source

Quote of the day

“Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.”
— Simeon to the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the Presentation in the Temple, The Gospel According to St. Luke 2:34-35 (Douay-Rheims)