“Surely,” says St. Bernard, “the Mother of God could not have a name more appropriate, nor one more impressive of her high dignity. Mary is, in fact, the beautiful and brilliant star which shines upon the vast and stormy sea of the world.” It was a stormy sea, all right, that was calmed by Mary and gave reason for her universal feast. In 1683, people were celebrating the feast of the Holy Name of Mary in Spain, where it originated and where people had been observing it since 1513 with the approval of the Holy See. But elsewhere in Europe, things were not rosy. The outlook was gloomy. The situation was dire. It was 112 years after the Battle of Lepanto was decisively won — a victory that led to the institution of the Feast of the Holy Rosary. This time, Turkish invaders from the Ottoman Emp...

Goldenmouth, remember his name, and no winning Skip to content Pillar subscribers can listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR Happy Friday friends, And a very happy feast of St. John Chrysostom (that’s Goldenmouth, to us non-Greek speakers). St. John is one of those saints whose feast day is a reminder to me about how vast our history is, and how much of it I barely know or understand.  Sure, I have read some of his most famous works, especially when they come up in the Office of Readings. And I can tell you that as Patriarch of Constantinople his famous eloquence as a preacher got him exiled twice from his city and see, dying in Armenia. And I could even tell you, mostly thanks to a famous painting, that he tangled particularly with the Empress Aelia Eudoxia, who wa...