27 April Rafael Arnaiz Baron, Cistercian Oblate at San Isidoro de Dueñas, Spain [1911-1938] (Memorial)

Born in Burgos, Spain. As a young man he was active in the Apostleship of Prayer, Nocturnal Adoration and Our Lady’s Sodality. He studied architecture in Madrid but left a promising career to enter the monastery of San Isidro in 1934. Due to diabetes, he was obliged to leave the monastery three times, but each time he returned despite the heroic immolation that such re-entries exacted of him. He made a total and absolute offering of himself to God in hiddenness and silence. After his death, his virtues and writings became known, and the cause for his beatification was introduced. The diocesan process was successfully completed in 1967, and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1992. “If the world knew what it is to love God a little, it would also love its neighbour.” “The only truth is…Christ.”

29 April Robert of Molesme [c.1028-1111] (Memorial)

Of noble parentage, in his early youth he entered the Benedictine abbey of Montier-la-Celle near Troyes and sometime after 1053 became their Abbot. During the following years, he took part in several cenobitic and eremitical experiments and, in 1075, founded Molesme in the diocese of Langres. This community prospered and became one of the more successful reform abbeys of the late 11th century, dedicated to Robert’s ideals of the ascetic standards of the desert practised within a monastic framework. However, its very success and expansion made it difficult for the small group of founders to maintain their control, and it gradually became more and more like the neighbouring Cluniac abbeys. In 1097 Robert and some of his monks, among them Alberic and Stephen, obtained permission from Hugh, the Papal Legate, to make a new foundation, and early in 1098 they set out for Cîteaux. However, the monks of Molesme appealed to the Pope for Robert to return as their Abbot, which he did, obediently if reluctantly, and he governed that house until his death. “Although St Robert spent barely thirteen months at Cîteaux, it is safe to say that without him there would have been no Cistercian Order. He was truly the Father of Cîteaux.”

29 April Catherine of Siena, Teacher of the Faith, 1380 (Memorial)

Born at Siena in Italy in 1347, Catherine was the 23rd of 25 children. From an early age she was known to want to lead a life of prayer and penance, despite opposition from her parents and family. She refused marriage and instead opted for a life of solitude. She joined the Dominican Order as a Tertiary (lay volunteer) at the age of 16. She lived in solitude for three years, until she felt a call to leave her seclusion and care for the poor.

As Catherine became involved in caring for the sick, a diverse group of followers, both men and women, clerical and lay, gathered around her. This group soon became known for their desire for reform of the Church, their call for a life of total devotion to God, and their focus upon the crucified Christ. Unsurprisingly, this group attracted criticism as well as praise wherever they went.

Catherine was a great correspondent but had to dictate all her letters, as she never learned to write herself. She wrote a ‘Dialogue’ in which she explained her beliefs and expounded the sense of devotion to the crucified Christ that so ordered her life. This work was dictated to others when she was in a state of prayer and ecstasy.

Eventually, as her calls for reform went unheeded, Catherine became more and more involved in the political life of the Church. She acted as a peacemaker between Church and State when relationships deteriorated. The schism of 1378, when rival popes were elected after the death of Gregory XI, saw Catherine attempting to intervene and bring clarity to the situation. She supported Urban as the genuine Pope, although she was not unafraid to challenge him on his more extreme and unbending attitudes to the Avignon papacy.

She died of a stroke in 1380, before the papal split was resolved. Her devotion to Christ is evident throughout her ‘Dialogue’:

“The soul begins to lose fear, knowing that fear alone is not sufficient to give eternal life. And so, the soul proceeds, with love, to know itself and God’s goodness within and begins to take hope in God’s mercy in which the heart feels joy. Sorrow for grief, mingled with the joy of hope in mercy, causes the eye to weep, and these tears issue from the very fountain of the heart.” The ‘Dialogue’ of St Catherine of Siena