From Season to Season

Each of the Synoptic Gospels recounts the story of the woman, afflicted for many years by a “flow of blood,” who was cured by touching Jesus’ cloak (cf. Matthew 9:18-26 ; Mark 5:25-34 , and Luke 8:43-48 ). A fourth-century text, The Acts of Pilate , calls this woman Bernice (B ερενίκη ) and tells how she went to Rome, curing the emperor Tiberius through an image of Christ that she had painted out of gratitude for her healing; when she died, the cloth was entrusted to the care of Pope Saint Clement I. Around the same time, Saint Eusebius of Caesarea recounted another tale of gratitude:   The woman with a hemorrhage, who as we learn from the holy gospels was cured of her trouble by our Savior, was stated to have come from [Caesarea Philippi]. Her house was pointed out in the city, and a wonderful memorial of the benefit the Savior conferred upon her was still there. On a tall stone base at the gates of her house stood a bronze statue of a woman, resting on one knee a...

Meinrad, the “Martyr of Hospitality,” was born of a free peasant family near what is modern-day Würtemberg, Germany. As a youth, he became a monk in the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, Switzerland, where he was eventually ordained a priest and became a teacher in the monastery school. Seeking a life of solitude, he received permission from his abbot to become a hermit and settled in a nearby forest, around the year 829. He acquired a reputation for holiness and many came to him seeking his advice and prayers. Desiring greater solitude, he moved to a remote spot in the Black Forest.     An early illumination depicting the martyrdom of Saint Meinrad. After living in this new hermitage, the site of which would eventually come to be known as Einsideln (the “Hermitage”), he courteously received two visitors, who turned out to be thieves who believed Meinrad was hoarding treasure. Finding none, they clubbed the holy man to death; this occurred on January 21, 861. His bod...