Some Catholics seem to have at least a year’s worth of Saints’ feast days memorized.
I’m not one of those Catholics. The up side of this is that I’ll run across new-to-me Saints now and then. Like Francis Xavier Seelos. Today is his feast day.
Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R., (January 11, 1819 – October 4, 1867) was a German Redemptorist missionary, who worked in the United States, particularly in parishes serving immigrant communities on the American frontier. Near the end of his life, he travelled[!] to New Orleans to minister to people affected by a yellow fever outbreak. He later contracted the disease and died from its complications….”
(Francis Xavier Seelos, Wikipedia) [emphasis mine]
I rambled on about Saints a few times, including this:
- “Saints, Depression, Assumptions, and Me” (March 23, 2024)
- Dealing With Depression — and Suicide
- Assorted Saints
- Teresa of Ávila: Mystic and Troublemaker
- Becoming a Saint [poor health and a messy death are optional, but not required]
- Poverty, Terminal Illness, and Ham Sandwiches
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More like not all Saints are European and/or white, I think. Which is also why I quite appreciate when attempts at Christian art actually properly mind the time and place Our Lord Jesus Christ lived in on earth rather than focus too much on relatability. If He can and would properly remind us about the Old Testament as He speaks to us in person, then why can’t we be bothered to properly remind ourselves about the history He was part of when He was here on earth, too?
Right! That, too!
I appreciate religious art from periods when artists modeled Jesus and others on the folks and fashions they saw every day. But I like the more recent efforts at showing what we would have seen if we had actually been there. (example https://brendans-island.com/catholic-citizen/epiphany-the-magi-and-me-the-big-aha/#tales James Tissot’s “The Exhortation to the Apostles” (“Recommandation aux apôtres”).)
The ‘Saints are Italian or Irish’ stereotype may be limited to my native culture — getting started when this was a more self-consciously Protestant country, with most Americans who were Catholic being either Irish or Italian. And, naturally enough, were most aware of those Saints who also were either Irish or Italian.
Then there’s the matter of artists having easy access to resources discussing historical clothing, architecture, and everything else that goes into researching accurate portrayals. 😉 I LIKE living with today’s “information overload” — and that’s another topic or two.