May 1st– St. Joseph the Worker, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

May 2nd– St. Athanasius (Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church)

– St. Athanasius, Doctor of the Church, and Patriarch of Alexandria, one of the most renowned of the Fathers of the Church, was the heroic an successful defender of the Catholic doctrine against Arius. After many sufferings in the cause of God’s church, he died May 2, 273. While living in Rome during his exile he described to the Romans the wonderful life of Antony and Pachomius in Egypt, sowing the seed of monasticism in Rome. He taught with great power the independence of the Church from civil authority.

May 3rd– The Finding of the Holy Cross/ Sts. Alexander, Eventius, Theodulus, and Juvenal (Martyrs)

– The Cross on which Our Blessed Lord suffered for us was, following Jewish usage, buried on Mount Calvary after the Crucifixion. The precise spot was revealed in a vision to the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. This date commemorates the recovery of the True Cross in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius and its delivery by him about the year 629 into the hands of the Patriarch Zacharias of Jerusalem, from  which city it has been carried away some years previously by the Persians with the object of transporting it to their own country. God has been pleased to give so much power to the Cross that at its sign alone the demons fly; by it the priest blesses the faithful, the devout receive abundant graces. The early Christians had so much devotion to it that, according to the ancient Fathers, they never began any action without first making the sign of the cross upon themselves. In the Middle Ages no public deed, inscription, law etc., was begun to be written without first tracing upon it the sign of the cross. This sign was accepted as the signature of the uneducated: it often preceded that of ecclesiastics, and in many country districts even the dough and the bread were marked with a cross before they were baked.

-St. Alexander, Pope, was martyred, A.D. 119, in the tenth year of his pontificate. With him suffered Sts. Eventius and Theodulus. St. Juvenal (A.D. 397), also commemorated on this day, was a holy bishop in Central Italy. 

May 4th– St. Monica (Widow)

– St. Monica, born in Africa, married a pagan whom she converted. As described in the ninth book of his Confessions, the beautiful figure of the mother of St. Augustine will continue to live in the Church as one of the finest examples of a Christian mother. Night and day she prayed for her son; he tells us that she “shed for him more tears than other mothers shed over a coffin.” God heard her prayers after twenty years and gave to her son, under the influence of St. Ambrose, the grace of conversion. She died at Ostia in 387, after God had granted to her and to Augustine a marvelous ecstasy. The body of St. Monica remained at Ostia until the year 1162, when a certain Walter Prior, of the Canons Regular of Aroasia, in Belgium, removed the body secretly from its tomb and carried it off to his own monastery. The celebration of her feast on the 4th of May spread from this monastery through Belgium, Germany, and France and thus came into general liturgical use.

May 5th– St. Pius V (Pope, Confessor)

– Coming from a family in poor circumstances, a Dominican friar from his fifteenth year, this great Pope as a simple Religious, as bishop, and as cardinal, was famous for his intrepid defence of the Faith and discipline of the Church, and for the spotless purity of his life. The secret of his power lay in seeking the glory of God alone, and in his constant attention to prayer. By this latter means he overcame the insolence of the Turks and sanctified the people entrusted to his care. His name adorns the front page of the Roman Missal and Breviary, because it was by his authority that the revision of the liturgical books was brought to a conclusion. Since his time the Holy See and the entire hierarchy have followed definitely the road of that salutary revival of the ecclesiastical spirit which was marked out by the Council of Trent. He died in 1572.

May 6th– St. John before the Latin Gate

– Besides the solemn feast two days after Christmas, the Church commemorates the attempt to put St. John to death in a caldron of boiling oil outside the Latin Gate. The saint came from it unhurt, and even more vigorous than before. A church now marks the site which a late tradition assigns to this event. This feast celebrates the martyrdom of the evangelist who, according to the prophecy of the Savior,was also, like his brother, to drink of the chalice of the Passion, in order that he might have the right to one of highest thrones in the Messianic kingdom, which his mother had begged for him.

May 7th– St. Stanislaus (Bishop, Martyr)

– St. Stanislaus, a Polish martyr, was Bishop of Cracow. King Boleslaw II was outraging the whole kingdom by his acts of lust and cruelty. St. Stanislaus, finding all remonstrances useless, excommunicated him. By order of the king he was cut in pieces at the foot of the altar while celebrating High Mass on the feast of the Apparition of St. Michael in the oratory of the Holy Archangel on the outskirts of Cracow. As, however, that day has been dedicated from the early Middle Ages to St. Michael, when the feast of the martyred bishop was introduced into the Calendar of the Universal Church by Clement VIII, it was kept in anticipation on the eve of his death.

May 8th– Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel

– There are several feasts of

May 9th– St. Gregory Nazianzen (Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church)

May 10th– St. Antoninus (Bishop, Confessor) / Sts. Gordian and Epichamus (Martyrs)

May 11th– SS. Phillip and James (Apostles)

May 12th– Sts. Nereus, Achilleus, Domitilla, and Pancras (Martyrs)

May 13th– St. Robert Bellarmine (Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church) Feast of Our Lady of Fatima

May 14th– St. Boniface (Martyr)

May 15th– St. John Baptist de la Salle (Confessor)