Onomastics to commemorate today: the saints of Saturday, March 4

Good deeds, deadly sacrifices, and even inexplicable occurrences arising from apparent divinity, are the reasons why different individuals have been beatified and canonized by the Vatican carry with him the name of saint.

Every daymarked on the calendar, commemorates the life and death of those beings, men and women, who have dedicated their lives to the same Catholic Church which has earned them the appointment.

It is the day of the saint Saturday March 4.

Saint Casimir, son of the King of Poland Casimir IV Jagiellon, who, being a prince, distinguished himself for his zeal in the faith, for chastity and penance, for his kindness towards the poor and for his devout veneration of the Eucharist and of the Blessed Virgin Mary and still young, eaten away by tuberculosis, he rested piously in the city of Grodno, near Vilnius, in Lithuania.

In his language, Polish, Casimiro means: “the one who imposes peace”. (Kas = impose, Mir = peace).

Casimir was born in 1458 in Krakow. He was the third of thirteen children of Casimir, King of Poland. Many saints come from very large families, and excellent vocations come to the Catholic Church from this class of families.

His mother Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, was a devout Catholic and strove with all her soul that her children would also be enthusiastic practitioners of the religion. In a letter to a friend, she makes a formidable list of qualities that a good mother must have and these are surely those that she practiced with her own children.

And in addition to the education his parents gave him, Casimiro was very lucky that the king gave him two teachers who were excellent educators. Father Juan and Professor Calimaco. Father Juan was Polish and left the reputation of being very wise and very holy, but his greatest honor comes from having been the one who led Saint Casimir to very high holiness. Professor Callimaco was a great sage who had been secretary to Pope Pius II and later spent 30 years at the court of the King of Poland helping him in the instruction of young people. Calimaco said, “Casimiro is a holy teenager” and Father Juan also wrote, “Casimiro is an exceptional young man in terms of virtue”.

Of course, it is not enough to receive a good education from his parents and to have good teachers, but the young person must make every effort to be good. Well, of Casimiro’s twelve other brothers, who had the same masters, none attained sainthood and some even set bad examples. Instead, our saint reached heights of virtue that admired those who knew and treated him.

San Casimiro’s biographers say his greatest desire and strongest desire has always been to please God. For this he tried to dominate his body, before sensual passions defiled his soul. Being the king’s son, however, he dressed very simply, without any luxuries. He mortified himself by eating, drinking, watching and sleeping. Several times he slept on the bare floor and tried not to drink alcohol. And this in a royal palace where the people were quite inclined to an easy life and many comforts and feasts.

For Casimiro, the center of his devotion was the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. At that time, spiritual masters frequently insisted that in order to be fervent and grow in the love of God, meditation on the Passion of Jesus Christ is very useful. Our saint spent a lot of time meditating on the agony of Jesus in the garden and on the beatings he suffered, as well as on the crowning with thorns and the beatings that were given to Our Lord. From time to time we think of Jesus’ ascent to Calvary and the five wounds of the crucified and meditate on the love that led Jesus to sacrifice himself for us. He loved the very bloody Christs and in front of a crucifix he spent time and time meditating, imploring and giving thanks.

Another great devotion of Casimiro was that of Jesus in the sacrament. As during the day he was extremely busy helping his father to govern the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, he took advantage of the rest and silence of the nights to go to the temples and spend hours and hours adoring Jesus in the Holy Host. .

His favorites were the poor. People were amazed that being the son of a king, neither in his words nor in his treatment, he was proud or contemptuous of anyone, not even the most miserable and unsympathetic. A biographer (sent by Pope Leo X to collect data on him) asserts that Casimiro’s charity was almost unbelievable, a true gift of the Holy Spirit. That the great love he had for God led him to love his neighbor immensely and that nothing was so pleasing and appetizing to him as the delivery of all his goods in favor of the poorest and not only his material goods, but his time, his energies, his influence with his father and his intelligence. That he always preferred the most afflicted, the poorest, strangers who had no one to help them, and the sick. That he defended the poor and that is why the people called him “the defender of the poor”.

His father wanted to marry him to the Emperor Federico’s daughter, but Casimiro said he had promised the Blessed Virgin to maintain perpetual chastity. And he renounced such an honorable marriage.

The secretaries and others who lived with Casimiro for several years all agreed that this holy young man probably did not commit a single serious sin in his entire life. And that’s all the more admirable because he lived in a government palace environment where there’s usually a lot of loosening of morals. People were amazed to see a man of twenty behaving as balanced and serious as if he were already sixty.

The king respectfully but courageously warned his father of the faults he found in government, especially when injustices were committed against the poor. And the pope responded quickly to their requests and tried to remedy them.

Casimiro attained the same as San Luis Gonzaga, San Gabriel de la Dolorosa, San Estanislao de Koska, San Juan Berchmans and Santa Teresita de Jesús, to great sanctity, in very few years.

He fell ill with tuberculosis and on March 4, 1484, at the young age of 26, he died a holy death, leaving everyone with the most edifying memories of goodness and purity. They buried him in Vilma, the capital of Lithuania.

After 120 years of burial, they opened his grave and found his body intact, as if it had just been buried. Even his clothes were undamaged and the place where he was buried was very damp.

On his chest they found a poem to the Sma. Virgin, which he had frequently recited and which he ordered to be placed on his corpse when he was going to be buried. This poem, which he had widely propagated, begins thus:

Every day, my soul, give Mary her praise. In his feasts you will honor him and prolong his worship, etc., etc.

Even after his death, he wanted the Virgin Mary to be honored in his tomb, to whom he had immense devotion throughout his life.

Saint Casimir worked tirelessly to spread the Catholic religion in Poland and Lithuania and these two nations have admirably preserved their Catholic faith and even at this time when people see that their religion is in danger, they invoke the young saint who was so enthusiastic about our religion. . And he demonstrates with real wonders how much he intercedes with God in favor of those who invoke him in faith.

(Source: EWTN)

With this character is other saints and martyrs which are also celebrated this Saturday, March 4 as follows:

Saint Appian

San Basin

Saint Photius and his companions

Saint Peter, Abbot

Blessed Juan Antonio Farina

Blessed Placida (Eulalia) Viel

Blessed Humbert

Saints are the group of people (women and men) who they are venerated by the Church when they are proclaimed saints or blessed on a certain calendar date.

On the path to canonization there are four stages: the first is to be named a servant of God, the second is to be venerable; the third step is to be blessed and finally the fourth step is to be a saint.

There beatification It can only be attained by the faithful who have died with the reputation of being saints in various places and this process can be achieved in two ways: by a cause of heroic virtues and the second is martyrdom, that is- ie if the person He died for his faith.

On another side, the process of becoming a saint This involves adding the name of the sanctified person in the canon (list of recognized saints) and with this the believing community is authorized to render public and universal worship to him, while a liturgical feast is assigned to him, altars, chapels and his power to intercede with God is recognized.

Although the Church has not given an exact figure, it is estimated that there are currently up to nine thousand recognized saints. According Roman Martyrologyupdated in 2005, the Catholic Church has at least seven thousand saintsalthough the martyrs are not counted, so many believe the figure could even be as high as 20,000.

In recent history, Pope John Paul II succeeded in canonizing 388 saints, while Pope Francis broke all records after that, to date, he canonized 898 saints, 800 of them at the same time.