October 3 across 2,026 years of Catholic history

Teresa's last journey · Part 5 · ALBA DE TORMES, this week, October 1582 AD

St. Teresa, too weak to turn in bed, kneels unaided for Communion

She told the priest who begged her to ask God for more time that she was no longer needed in this world, and she was anointed the same night.

A painting of an elderly Carmelite nun in a black veil and long cream-white mantle kneeling upright on a low straw bed in a bare whitewashed cell, hands joined, facing a priest in a white surplice who stands by the open door with a covered silver vessel, while five nuns kneel around the bed holding lighted candles. — St. Teresa of Ávila kneeling on her bed to receive Viaticum at the Carmelite convent of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes, 1582 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, 1576, Convento de las Teresas, Seville) View source artwork.

For two days it took two nuns to lift Saint Teresa of Ávila in her bed at the Carmelite convent of Alba de Tormes. This week she got up without help and knelt on the mattress to receive Viaticum, the Communion given to those in danger of death, and she was anointed the same night. Asked whether her body should be taken home to Ávila, St. Teresa said she had nothing of her own and asked for a little earth where she was.

5 min read

A thin, bare-legged man with thick dark hair, a short brown cloak, a staff and a gourd stands on a stony shore before three sailing ships anchored in calm water under a grey sky, while three cloaked travellers talk beside a corded chest and a sailor hauls a boat ashore. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of mid-sixteenth-century Spanish and Roman oil painting, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait of Ignatius of Loyola (Jacopino del Conte, 1556 AD, Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome) View source artwork.

event · JAFFA, Ottoman Palestine, October 3, 1523 AD

Storm wrecks the ship that refused St. Ignatius a free passage

Saint Ignatius of Loyola sailed from Jaffa on October 3, 1523 AD, ordered out of the Holy Land and with no money for the voyage home. At Cyprus the captain of the largest ship bound for Venice refused to carry him without payment, and a small ship in bad repair took him. A storm on the first evening wrecked the large ship on the coast of Cyprus and sank a second; the small one reached Italy, and St. Ignatius landed at Venice in the middle of January 1524 AD.

4 min read

More in this edition

A tempera panel on a gold ground showing a haloed woman kneeling before a church door, two cowled friars standing at left, and the roofs of Cortona behind.

place · CORTONA, Tuscany, early 1270s AD

St. Margaret's father shuts his door on her and her son

In the early 1270s AD Saint Margaret of Cortona, a farmer's daughter in her mid-twenties, went back to her father's house at Laviano with her young son after the nobleman she had lived with for nine years was murdered. Her father drove St. Margaret and the boy out. St. Margaret walked with her son about ten miles to Cortona, and the first two women she met there took mother and child in.

4 min read

An engraved portrait of a young clergyman with curling hair and wire-rimmed glasses, seated in a high-backed chair, wearing a dark coat and clerical collar, with a carved bookcase behind him.

Newman at Littlemore, October 1845 · Part 1 · LITTLEMORE, near Oxford, October 3, 1845 AD

St. John Henry Newman resigns the Oxford place he wanted for life

Saint John Henry Newman, a clergyman of the Church of England, resigned his place among the men who run Oriel College, Oxford. He won the place, a Fellowship, at twenty-one, and at forty-four he gave no reason for giving it up. The same day he wrote to his friend Edward Bouverie Pusey: "Anything may happen to me now any day."

3 min read

A painting of a young priest in a black cassock and small white collar sitting alone in a bare room, his right hand pressed to his chest, beside a table with a lit candle, an inkwell with a quill and a blank sheet of parchment; a black cloak and hat hang on the wall by a narrow bed. — About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of French oil painting of the middle of the seventeenth century, from the paper's reference portrait based on Portrait de saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) (Anonymous, after a model by Simon Francois de Tours, circa 1660, Musee Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris) View source artwork.

column · PARIS, about 1610 AD

St. Vincent de Paul takes on a priest's doubts for four years

In his first years in Paris, Saint Vincent de Paul asked God to free a priest from doubts about the faith and offered to carry them in his place. The priest was freed at once, and the doubts passed to St. Vincent for four years. They left him on the day he vowed to spend his life serving Jesus Christ in the poor.

3 min read

Today in the Church

Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Saint of the day

Saint Théodore Guérin

Saint Théodore Guérin was a consecrated virgin of Indiana, in the United States, whom the Roman Martyrology commemorates on this day.

On this day in the Church

1263 According to Catholic Tradition, on the day of the battle of Largs Sir John Wemyss saw St. Margaret of Scotland ride out from Dunfermline.Source
1897 Crowds filed past the grating of the Carmel chapel at Lisieux to see the body of St. Thérèse, and hundreds of medals and rosaries were brought to touch her.Source
1933 The body of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was canonically recognised at West Park, New York, before the Apostolic Delegate, and later laid in the chapel of her order's house in New York City.Source

Quote of the day

“Let naught disturb thee ; Naught fright thee ever ; All things are passing ; God changeth never. Patience e'er conquers ; With God for thine own Thou nothing dost lack — He sufficeth alone !”

— St. Teresa of Ávila, the verses found in her breviary, Minor Works of St. Teresa, Poems, no. 33, 'Saint Teresa's Bookmark' (Stanbrook translation, 1913)