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Jesuit History, Tiruvadanai (2025)

06/09/2025

07 SEP TODAY IN SJ HISTORY
PRINCESS JOANNA OF AUSTRIA (1535-1573)
Demise of Princess Juana, Regent of Spain, the Emperor Charles V's daughter. She died with her Jesuit vows. "The only female Jesuit in the Church's history," writes Hugo Rahner.
Born in the royal court of Madrid, Joanna was the daughter of Charles V, the first king of united Spain and was also the sister of King Philip II of Spain. She served as regent to Philip during his trip to England to marry at the age of 17, her first cousin. The marriage was cut short when her husband died of tuberculosis. However, Joanna was pregnant by that time, and the future Portuguese king Sebastián I was born. Joanna returned to Spain at the request of her father, leaving her new-born son with her mother-in-law, the Portuguese Queen Catherine of Austria. Joanna never remarried and never returned to Portugal. She never saw her son Sebastian again. Meanwhile she used her power to compel the Society of Jesus to secretly make her a member. Ignatius Loyola had received official papal recognition for his order in 1540, but the Jesuit leadership had decided not to establish an associated group for pious woman. But Joanna was determined to join the Society and had sufficient influence to prevail. Jesuit leaders admitted her in 1554 under the alias of "Mateo Sanchez," and she remained a member of the Society for the rest of her life as a permanent Scholastic. When she pronounced three vows as a Jesuit, absolute secrecy was enjoined on everyone. Her faith intensified, and since she could not publicly be an official part of the Jesuits, in 1557, Joanna founded the Convent of Our Mother of Consolation for the nuns of the order of Poor Clares. Joanna died at the age of 37 of tumours and was buried in the convent she had founded.

06/09/2025

07 SEP SAINT OF THE DAY
S MELCHIOR GRODZIECKI, SJ (1584-1619) &
S STEPHEN PONGRACZ (1583-1619)
Melchior was born in his family’s castle in Grodiec in Selesia, Poland. He attended the Jesuit College in Vienna and entered the novitiate at the age 19. After studies in Prague, Melchior was ordained at the age 30 and worked there until moving to Kosice, today’s Slovakia.
Stephen was born in Transylvania, Hungary and entered the Society at Brno at 20. After he was ordained at the age 32, he was stationed at the Jesuit College at Humenne. Four years later he was sent to Kosice which was a stronghold of Hungarian Calvinists during the early part of the 17th century. The few Catholics who lived in the city or in nearby districts had been without a Priest for some time so the king's deputy in the city asked for two Jesuits to care for them. Pongrácz worked among his own people, while Grodziecki ministered to those who spoke a Slavic language and among Germans. The two Jesuits were working in small towns when they heard the news that a Calvinist army was marching on Kosice in an attempt to expand the territory of Gabriel Bethlen, prince of Transylvania. The Jesuits returned to Kosice where they were joined by a Diocesan Priest, Fr Mark Krizevcanin. The Transylvanian army took control of the city on Sept. 5, 1619, and immediately confined the three Priests to the Jesuit residence. Before dawn on Sept. 7, soldiers broke into their quarters and demanded that they apostatize and accept Calvinism. When the Priests refused to do so, the soldiers began beating the Diocesan Priest, stabbing him, crushing his fingers and rubbing flaming torches into his side. Finally, they beheaded him; Pongrácz was tortured next, with the soldiers twisting a rope around his head and almost crushing it. They hung him from the ceiling and cut him deeply; finally turning to Grodziecki who was beaten and beheaded. The soldiers threw the three bodies into a sewer ditch outside the house but Pongrácz did not die for another 20 hours. The Protestant leader forbade the burial of the martyrs and it was only 6 months later after their death, that a devout Catholic Countess receive permission to bury them. They were beatified in 1905 and canonized in 1995.

06/09/2025

07 SEP
VIGIL OF THE NATIVITY OUR MOTHER
It was providential that the Legion of Mary was born on the evening of the vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary! Looking at it from a liturgical perspective, the evening vespers, on 7th September, would be already introducing the feast of the Nativity of Our Mother and so the Legion of Mary could be said to have been born at the very start of the feast of the Nativity of Our Mother. Both the head and
'Mystical Body' of Our Mother were born at the same time! The Legion of Mary can be compared to the Church, in the sense that the Church is called the Mystical Body of Christ, and call the Legion of Mary the Mystical Body of Mary. It is the vehicle and instrument for practising a true Devotion to Mary and introducing Christ into the world through Mary. To Jesus through Mary! The day destined for St. Anne to give birth to Mary, who was consecrated and sanctified to be the Mother of God, had finally arrived;
a day most fortunate for the world.

05/09/2025

06 SEP
TODAY IN SJ HISTORY
B RALPH CORBY, SJ (1599-1644)
Ralph Corby was born in Dublin and he took his education in the overseas college of St. Omers. A reserved and straightforward boy, he was noted for his strong distaste for money. Before becoming a Jesuit in Watten in 1625, he was ordained a Priest in Valladollid. His ministry was situated mainly in the area of Durham, where he was noted for his industry. He was commonly called “the apostle of the countryside”, which he toured mainly on foot, visiting poor farmers and labourers, with whom he delighted to share a meal. In July 1644, shortly after the royalist defeat at Marston Moor he was captured while un-vesting after Mass, and sent to London. He was hanged at Tyburn Gallows. He is said to have met his fate with astonishing calm, only regretting that he was executed so far away from his beloved Durham. He was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1929.

05/09/2025

06 SEP SAINT OF THE DAY
B BERTRAND OF GARRIGUES (1195-1230)
Born near Garrigues in the Diocese of Nimes in France, Bertrand lived a holy life, praying and practicing virtue constantly even as a young person. Ordained a diocesan priest at a very early age, he joined the missionaries under the direction of the Cistercian Fathers to bring the Albigenses back to the ways of civilized life and to the Church. The Albigenses were notorious for having no respect for authority and for desecrating Churches. Dominic and Bertrand met as missionaries and became very close friends, praying and fasting together. They travelled together frequently, united in missionary spirit. Bertrand witnessed and testified to the holiness of St. Dominic, and to miracles attributed to him. Bertrand
was only about twenty-one when he accepted the habit of the Order of St. Dominic in 1216 at Toulouse. He was a founding member of the Order, and his advice and prayers helped to establish the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans. Bertrand practiced an austere life, and many miracles were attributed to his intercession, during his life and after he died. He died while giving a series of sermons at the convent of the Cistercian Sisters of Notre Dame of the Woods. Bertrand was only about thirty-five years old when he died, but he had lived a full, active, devout, missionary life alongside and in the newly-founded Order
of his good friend St. Dominic. He was proclaimed "Blessed" by Pope Leo XIII in 1881.

05/09/2025

06 SEP
OUR MOTHER OF THE FOUNTAINS (FRANCE)
Valenciennes is a city in northern France on the Scheldt River and there was a terrible famine that preceded the Plague in 1008. Valenciennes was so ravaged by the plague that nearly 8,000 people
died in only a few days. The people grieved profoundly at the spectacle of death which constantly surrounded them and having no other recourse, went in great crowds to their Churches to take refuge at the feet of Our Mother of Mercy. A holy hermit named Bertholin, who lived nearby at Our Mother
of the Fountain was touched by the misfortune of his brothers and redoubled his austerities and prayers. He prayed for the people of Valenciennes. The Blessed Virgin appeared to the hermit Bertholin
while he was fervently praying on the night of the 5th of September. The pious hermit was suddenly dazzled by the brilliance of a light purer than the sun, while at the same time the Mother of Mercy
appeared to him with an air of kindness. She commanded Bertholin to tell the inhabitants to fast on the following day and then pass the night in prayer to bring an end to the Plague. The response was overwhelming. For suddenly the night seemed to turn into day and they witnessed the Queen of Heaven descending to earth in majesty, sparkling like a light of Heaven, brighter than the sun. Accompanied by a host of angels, Our Lady seemed to gird the town all round with a cord. At one point they all bowed and
asked the Blessed Virgin’s blessing. Their heavenly Mother did indeed bless them and those who were sick recovered their health, and they inhabitants have been forever freed from the plague.

04/09/2025

TODAY IN SJ HISTORY
05 SEP B THOMAS TSUJI, SJ (1570-1627): MARTYRE IN JAPAN
Tsuji was born of a noble Japanese family near Omura, Japan and was educated by the Jesuits whom he joined at the age 19. When the edict of 1614 ordered, all Catholic Priests be banished, Fr Tsuji went to Macao and remained there for four years. He returned to Japan disguised as a merchant and secretly resumed his ministry. Unlike the European Jesuits who could only do ministry in the night, Tsuji went about constantly, sometimes dressed like a gentleman, sometimes like an artisan. His favourite guise was a humble wood seller who could knock at the doors of Christian homes without arousing suspicion. As the persecution against Christians increased, Tsuji came to doubt that he could live up to the ideals of his brothers, and he asked to be released from his religious vows in 1619. He soon asked to be readmitted but had to go through a period of probation which ended up lasting six years. Not long after he became a Jesuit again, soldiers burst into the house where he was staying just as he finished celebrating Mass. Tsuji admitted being a priest and was imprisoned in Omura. After 13 months, he was finally sent to Nagasaki to be sentenced. Along with the two men who were at that final Mass, he was burned at the stake outside the city on the hill made holy by many martyrs. Fr Tsuji, Louis and John Maki were beatified by Pope Pius IX together with other Japanese martyrs in 1867.

04/09/2025

05 SEP SAINT OF THE DAY
ST TERESA OF KOLKATA (1910-1997)
Born to Albanian parents in Skopje, Macedonia, Agnes was the youngest of the three children who survived. During her years in public school Agnes participated in a Catholic sodality and showed a strong interest in the foreign missions. At age 18 she entered the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was 1928 when she said goodbye to her mother and made her way to a new land and a new life. The following year she was sent to the Loreto Novitiate in Darjeeling, India. There she chose the name Teresa and prepared for a life of service. She was assigned to a high school for girls in Kolkata, where she taught history and geography to the daughters of the wealthy. But she could not escape the realities around her; the poverty, the suffering, the overwhelming numbers of destitute people. In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Sister Teresa heard a call within a call. The message was clear. After receiving permission to leave Loreto, establish a new religious community and undertake her new work, she took a nursing course for several months. She returned to Kolkata, where she lived in the slums and opened a school for poor children. Dressed in a white sari and sandals, she soon began getting to know the poor and sick. The work was exhausting, but she was not alone. Volunteers who came to join her in the work, some of them former students, became the core of the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. For the next four decades Mother Teresa worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor and crisscrossed the globe pleading
for support and inviting others to see the face of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On September 5, 1997, God called her home. Pope John Paul II declared her blessed in 2003 and called Mother Teresa “One of the most relevant personalities of our age and an icon of the Good Samaritan.” Her life was “A bold proclamation of the Gospel.” Today the Congregation also includes contemplative sisters and brothers and an order of priests. Mother Teresa's canonization took place in 2016 while Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint. By birth, she is Albanian; by citizenship, she is an Indian; by faith, she is a Catholic Nun; As to her calling, she belongs to the world; as to her heart, she belongs entirely to the Heart of Jesus.

04/09/2025

05 SEP
OUR MOTHER OF REGLA (SPAIN)
St. Augustine of Hippo in North Africa revered this Black Madonna statue; that Augustinian hermit brought it to southern Spain; that it was hidden from the Moors in a well under a fig tree, and found with the help of an apparition of the Virgin by a priest from Leon in the 1300s, near the Castle of Regla.
The wooden statue is 2 feet high. The Virgin is seated on a throne with a headless Child standing on her left knee. Since the 1600s the image has been sumptuously vested and displayed with a doll-like white Child between her hands, outside the robes. Some historians of art date the statue to around 1200. In subsequent centuries, devotion to Our Mother of Rrgla sailed from this town at the mouth of Spain's southern coast around the world to places as distant as Cuba and the Philippines. On September 5, 1954, the statue descended its steps on a massive throne. Surrounded by a throng of pilgrims from around the region, Cardinal Pedro Segura y Sáenz, Archbishop of Toledo, crowned the Mother of Regla, Queen of Chipiona. On the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, the statue processes in splendour around the shrine.

03/09/2025

04 SEP
OUR MOTHER OF HAUT (BELGIUM)
Hainault is a province in Wallonia in Belgium that borders on France and the name comes from the Haine River which flows through the province. The Hainault family was very prominent in the Middle Ages, and Baldwin VI led the 4th Crusade. Referring to Our Mother’s great compassion for sinners, St. Bernard calls her the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. “She is like a fair olive in the field (Sir 24:14). Only grace and mercy flow from the hands of Mary. In 1419, Our Lady of Haut, in Hainault, restored to life a young woman named Jane Maillard, who was drawing water from a very deep well, when the stonework at the top giving way, she fell to the bottom, and was taken out quite dead; but her mother having offered her by vow to Our Mother of Haut, she immediately showed signs of life.

03/09/2025

04 SEP SAINT OF THE DAY
B DINA BELANGER (1897-1929)
Dina was born in Quebec City and she was the only daughter of her parents. She attended elementary and secondary school with the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame at their convent. At the age of 14, she consecrated her virginity to God. When she finished school, she returned to live with her parents and learned piano. She helped her mother with the parish’s outreach to the poor and the sick. She became an active member of the Apostleship of Prayer and joined the Third Order of St. Dominic. When she was 24, she entered the Novitiate of the Religious of Jesus and Mary in Sillery. Her stay there was interrupted by bouts of illness. She received abundant grace, and prayed ever more fervently and performed acts of love as Jesus communicated himself to her by voices and visions. At the beginning of the Great War, afflicted with the moral evil that threatened the world, she offered herself to the Lord
in a spirit of reparation and love, to console him a little and to save souls. She pronounced perpetual vows on August 15, 1928. The following April, she had to go the infirmary. She died at age 32, the victim of pulmonary tuberculosis. Dina was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1993.

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