Uncontained

Joachim of Fiore was an Italian mystic, theologian, and philosopher of history. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he became a Cistercian monk, and by 1177 he was abbot at Corazzo, Sicily. He retired into the mountains to follow a contemplative life in 1191, and in 1196 he founded the order of San Giovanni in Fiore. His Book of Harmony of the New and Old Testaments outlined a theory of history and traced correspondences in the Old and New Testaments. In his Exposition of the Apocalypse he examined the symbols of the Antichrist, and in Psaltery of Ten Strings he expounded his doctrine of the Holy Trinity. A man of vivid imagination, he was both acclaimed as a prophet and denounced as a heretic.

. . . was born September 26, 1774, in Leominster, Massachusetts. He was trained as a nurseryman and in 1800 began collecting apple seeds from cider presses in Pennsylvania. He then traveled west to the Ohio River valley, planting apple seeds along the way. He tended 1,200 acres of his own orchards and was responsible for hundreds of square miles of others.

. . . was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, in Ulster County, New York, around 1787. After escaping to freedom, she quickly rose to prominence as an advocate of abolition and women’s rights. Her most famous speech, known under the title “Ain’t I a Woman?” was delivered extemporaneously at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883.

Saint Benedict-Joseph Labre is one of the most endearing saints of the Church; some call him a misfit among the saints for his sensitivities, honesty and gentleness. He was persistent in his pursuit of a religious vocation but never found a home among the Cistercian or the Carthusian monks; he was a perpetual pilgrim, a made of exactness in religious devotion; and a man known as the "saint of the Forty Hours" (the forty hours is a devotion of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament). The Scriptures were his constant companion and guide for life. Ultimately, his vocation was lived as a Third Order Franciscan. At 35, he died of malnutrition during Holy Week on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria dei Monti with the consolation of the sacraments. Saint Benedict-Joseph is the patron of the homeless, those making pilgrimages, for those who make adoration of the Eucharistic Lord in the Blessed Sacrament a regular spiritual gesture, and for those who suffer from mental illness, depression, anxiety.

. . . bishop of Myra: there is scarcely anything historically certain about him except that he was Bishop of Myra in the fourth century. He was born at Parara, a city of Lycia in Asia Minor; in his youth he made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine; shortly after his return he became Bishop of Myra; cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian, he was released after the accession of Constantine, and was present at the Council of Nicaea. In 1087 Italian merchants stole his body at Myra, bringing it to Bari in Italy. The numerous miracles St. Nicholas is said to have wrought, both before and after his death, are outgrowths of a long tradition. In Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, they have the custom of making him the secret purveyor of gifts to children on 6 December, the day on which the Church celebrates his feast; in the United States and some other countries St. Nicholas has become identified with Santa Claus who distributes gifts to children on Christmas eve.