The list of saints for the first day of January is long, filled with the names of martyrs and confessors of the faith. One of them is St. Odilo of Cluny. He was born to the French nobility, the son of Berald de Mercoeur and Gerberga who became a nun when widowed. Cured of an unnamed malady in childhood by the intervention of Our Lady, he became a monk at Cluny at age 29. He was named Abbot at...

Sylvester I (died 31 December 335) was the bishop of Rome from 314 until his death. He is regarded as the 33rd Pope of the Catholic Church. He filled the see of Rome at an important era in the history of the Western Church, yet very little is known of him. The accounts of his pontificate preserved in the seventh- or eighth-century Liber Pontificalis contain little more than a record of the...

A Roman by birth, Felix was chosen as Pope on 5 January 269, in succession to Pope Dionysius, who had died on 26 December 268. Felix was the author of an important dogmatic letter on the unity of Christ's Person. The notice about Felix in the Liber Pontificalis ascribes to him a decree that Masses should be celebrated on the tombs of martyrs ("Hic constituit supra memorias martyrum...

St. Thomas Becket (1118-1170), also known as St. Thomas of Canterbury, was the son of a prosperous London merchant. Being a well-educated youth, he was appointed as clerk to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was later made Archdeacon. In this role he met and became close friends with King Henry II of England. The King promoted Becket to the office of Lord Chancellor, and, when the Archbishop...

The Holy Innocents (1st c.) are the children mentioned in the account of Jesus' birth in Matthew's Gospel (2:16-18). When the Magi came to Jerusalem to find and adore the Baby Jesus, the newborn King of the Jews, King Herod requested that they inform him of the Child's location under the pretense of offering Him adoration, too. After paying the Child homage and offering Him their...