SAINTS

January is the month of the Holy Name of Jesus. The feast of the Holy Name originated in the 1500s and was formerly celebrated on the second Sunday of Epiphany.The feasts in January which pertain to Christ’s infancy and childhood, January has also become a month dedicated to the Holy Childhood of Jesus.

Though the start of the Lenten season changes within the calendar year, a fair-sized portion of February gives us a space of time between the Christmas celebrations. It is a transition from the feast of Christmas to the fasting of Lent. Therefore traditionally February has become a time to recall the Holy Family.

The month of March is dedicated to St. Joseph. We don’t know much about him except what is mentioned in the Gospels. Joseph was the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the foster-father of Jesus. Holy Scripture proclaims him as a “just man,” and the Church has turned to Joseph for his patronage and protection.

The month of April is dedicated both to devotion to the Eucharist and devotion to the Holy Spirit. This tradition has developed because Easter Sunday often falls in April. During the Easter celebration we remember the Eucharistic sacrifice Christ gave us and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, which would come after Jesus’s resurrection.

The end of the eighteenth century a zealous Jesuit priest, Father Lalomia, started among the students of the Roman college of his Society the practice of dedicating May to Our Lady. In the early years of the 19th century, it quickly spread. by the time of Pope Pius IX’s declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854,

June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A devotion long practiced privately, it was officially approved in the 1800s. Devotion the Sacred Heart encourages participation in Holy Hour Eucharistic Adoration and to receive Holy Communion on the first Friday of every month.

July is designated especially as the Month of the Precious Blood of Jesus, a special time to honour the Blood of Jesus.Devotion to the Precious Blood is connected to devotion to the Passion and Death of Our Lord, since through the sheding of His Blood, mankind was redeemed. Consequently, one can say the Church has always honored the Blood of Jesus Christ.

Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we consecrate ourselves, in an act of total entrustment to the Lord. By You we will be led to Christ. By Him and with Him we will be led to the Father.

The month of September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. She suffered such anguish when she watched her Son’s passion and death (Luke 2:35). When Our Lord, while dying, gives John the Disciple (symbolically the Church) to His mother, so that we may have her aid. In the words of St. Therese of Lisieux, “She has given us so many proofs that she cares for us like a mother.”

October is the month of the Rosary, because of the anniversary of victory at the Battle at Lepanto and the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary occurring in October. The Battle of Lepanto and the institution of the feast day took place in the 17th century; in the late 1800s, Pope Leo XIII officially dedicated the entire month to devotion to the Holy Rosary.

November is the traditional month to especially pray for the souls in purgatory. These poor souls need our prayers since they can’t pray for themselves in purgatory; let us pass on the word to pray, pray, and pray for them.

The month of December is traditionally dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. The Blessed Virgin Mary, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, in the first moment of her conception, by a singular privilege of Almighty God, and by virtue of the foreseen merits of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and hers, was preserved from all stain of original sin.