While the world rushes ahead to Christmas, these five Saints invite us to remain present to the moment of fall and Ordinary Time, while preparing us for Advent.

From All Saints Day on November 1 until November 8, pray in a cemetery and gain a plenary indulgence for the holy souls in Purgatory.

If you sing well, sing loudly in order to thank God for the gift He has given you. If you don’t sing well, sing even louder to remind Him of what He forgot. My choir director and friend, Frank, begins every choir season with this encouragement. And I have a sneaking suspicion St. Cecilia would agree with him. Who exactly was this romanticized woman before she became the patron saint of musicians? And how can we celebrate her life and intercession 1,800 years after her death? Singing in Her Heart to God St. Cecilia was born in second century Rome and consecrated herself to a virginal life as a young girl. When she was forced to marry (another future saint) Valerian, a pagan, it is said that she sang in her heart to God to protect her virginity. She was responsible for the conversion of her husband and his brother. Together, they dedicated their lives to burying all of the martyrs killed by the Emperor Tibertius. While the men buried the dead, Cecilia used her voice to preach the good news of Jesus. She is credited for bringing over 400 people to a life of Faith. Eventually, this evangelization led to her arrest and martyrdom. She was sentenced to be suffocated in the baths, but survived for three days as the fires raged on. Despite the heat, she miraculously never broke a sweat. After that, she was sentenced to decapitation. The executioner made three attempts, but her head was never severed. She lived for three more days, preaching God’s Word all the while. When she finally died, she was buried in the catacombs outside of Rome. In the 16th century, her body was exhumed and found to be incorrupt, even releasing a slight floral fragrance. St. Cecilia is often depicted with a red string or strand of pearls around her throat, flowers in her hair, and with an organ or organ pipes. (source) Celebrating St. Cecilia: Patron Saint of Musicians I’ve been praying, “St. Cecilia, pray for us!” before concerts, either with choirs or by myself, for decades. Her intercession has helped me through tough times and performances that were plagued with sickness, anxiety, and ill-preparation. In addition to prayer, some performers wear her medal on a chain or pinned inside their dresses; some keep one of her holy cards in their folder of music. And there are many daughters of musicians named in honor of this beautiful patroness. While singers and musicians honor St. Cecilia year-round, here are some broader ideas for celebrating her feast day! 1. Thank your parish’s music director. Write a note or stop by the piano/organ after Mass one day. Thank them for the hours and hours they put into practice, for the time spent behind the scenes researching music, and for honing a craft that generally goes unnoticed by most of the congregation. In many parishes, music directors aren’t highly-trained classical musicians or liturgists. They’re just regular people who love their God and feel they can serve Him best through melodies and harmonies. Even if their song choices aren’t ones you’d make, they would certainly appreciate any kind words you can offer. 2. Attend a St. Cecilia Sing in your area. This event was not something I was familiar with growing up. In fact, I had never even heard of such a thing until I was in my late twenties! This concert or singalong is put on by a choir or combination of choirs each year. Don’t have anything like this in your parish? Check around the diocese. Many parishes, mind included, will hold their fall concert in mid-November in honor of St. Cecilia. 3. Jam out to some fantastic Catholic musicians! There are truly amazing Catholic musicians publishing now. A couple of my favorites are the ubiquitous Matt Maher and Ike Ndolo. Others to look into are Emily Wilson, Jackie Francois, Josh Blakesley, and Fr. Rob Galea. 4. Incorporate music into your prayer time. Not interested in praise and worship music? Then I suggest listening to Marian Grace. In their sacred music project, duo Colleen Nixon and Jimmy Mitchell have taken old hymns and given them beautiful, peaceful new settings. Press play, close your eyes, and let them sing in your heart to God. And if you are a lover of Gregorian chant, which is absolutely sublime for meditation, look up the rosary in Gregorian chant on YouTube or any recording by Benedictine nuns. Those ladies know how to sing! 5. Join the choir! OK, OK, OK. I know and I hear you, sisters. “I can’t sing. I don’t know anything about music. I only play an instrument. My kids are too little and I can’t leave them with my husband for the entire Mass.” Here are my answers for you: Everybody can sing. Maybe not well, but if you’re putting your soul into it, it will sound beautiful to God. No problem. Join the choir and you’ll learn really fast. Great! Lots of choirs incorporate different kinds of instrumentalists. From guitars to violins, flutes to drums, trumpets to tambourines (…and now I’ve lost the traditionalists for sure! Sorry, girls!). A good choir director can find a use for anyone who wants to help. OK, that is actually a decent excuse. Here’s what I did each time I had a baby: I would take a couple months off from singing until the baby could make it through Mass without needing to be fed. Then, when I went back, I sang with the choir at the beginning of Mass, sat with my family during the homily and prayers of the faithful, then went back to the choir for the offertory through the end of Mass. I promise you that, if the desire is there, you can totally make it work. So, there you have it! I hope your St. Cecilia day is harmonious in every possible way. And, no matter what else you do, remember to always keep a song in your heart for the Creator. What a symphony He has written in all of our lives! [bctt tweet="Music from the Heart: Celebrating St. Cecilia //"] Do you have a gift for music? What are some ways you use it in praise of God?

The Feast of the Visitation revolves around this simple truth: Saints are made in groups.

This Advent, enter into the Saint Andrew Christmas Novena with the hope that the Holy Family will take care of your intentions, even if it doesn’t look the way you expect. 

A surprising thing happened on March 10, 2020. The state of Colorado declared October 2 Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini Day. Such a declaration was a first on many levels, but in our state, it is the first day dedicated to a woman, and a woman religious at that! Given her tenacity, this shouldn’t come as any surprise—she was a trailblazer. Saint Frances Cabrini, whose Feast Day is celebrated today, is a woman worth celebrating: patroness of immigrants and women’s missions, and the first American citizen to become a Saint.  A Pioneering Woman Colorado residents are likely familiar with the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado. However, her ministry began far from the Rocky Mountains, and it stretches even further beyond them to this day. The shrine is located on the property Mother Cabrini purchased in 1910—only a handful of years before her death—as a summer camp for orphan girls, and has been used as a retreat house since the orphanage closed in 1967. For those who have visited the shrine, they will likely remember the spring near the grotto. When Mother Cabrini purchased the land, she got it inexpensively because it had no source of water. As the sisters began to use the property for residents and campers it became necessary to find a source of water. As Providence would have it, just as the sisters were about to give up due to thirst, a spring was found in 1912 that continues to flow to this day. Patroness of Immigrants Although Saint Frances Cabrini was born in Italy, she had a substantial impact on the American Church and beyond. Very often she is acknowledged as the inspiration for Saint Teresa of Calcutta. In a letter to her archbishop, Mother Teresa mused that she might have the same impact on India that she saw Cabrini had had on the United States. Growing up, Cabrini hoped to one day be a missionary, yet her poor health was a deterrent in all of her attempts to join various religious orders. However, in 1880, she and seven sisters founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When she became a sister, she took the name “Xavier” after the famous Jesuit missionary, Saint Francis Xavier, though she was known to most as “Mother Cabrini.” Like Saint Francis Xavier, she hoped to be a missionary in China, but when she asked the pope’s blessing in 1887, he encouraged her “not to go east, but west.” Two years later, she and several sisters departed for New York City. Upon their arrival in New York they were met with prejudice, suspicion, and an overall hostility (not to mention, they had to face extreme poverty and dire living conditions). Despite these difficult circumstances the sisters gained a foothold among New York’s Italian immigrants and began to open schools, orphanages, and hospitals.  A Woman With Grit In the upcoming movie depicting her life story, Cabrini is remembered as a force—a woman who advocated for herself and for those she served. Whether embellished or not, stories have been passed down of Mother Cabrini entering a grocery store, shopping, and thanking clerks for their donation to her charity as she walked back out with her required supplies. In many ways, her contemporaries did not know what to make of her. All the while, she had to be tough as she experienced tremendous prejudice towards herself both as a woman amongst the male leaders of the city, as a woman serving in a new way within the Church, and as an Italian during the height of anti-Italian sentiment. As word spread of their successful missions, the community was invited to serve immigrant communities all around the United States and, later, the world. Cabrini’s most extensive work focused on New York and Chicago, but her impact is seen as far as California and Washington state, and even China! Mother Cabrini was ahead of her time. She loved Jesus and those whom she had been sent to serve and did so seemingly without compromise. She blazed a trail for women who wished to be missionaries with every reason to have been discouraged. Given this little sneak peak into the life of a relatively unsung hero, I hope I have whet your appetite for the upcoming movie Cabrini, scheduled to release in March 2024.  “Did a Magdalene, a Paul, a Constantine, an Augustine become mountains of ice after their conversion? Quite the contrary. We should never have had these prodigies of conversion and marvelous holiness if they had not changed the flames of human passion into volcanoes of immense love of God.” // St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

During a season that can so easily become more hurried and fragmented, Fully Alive creates a space for women to slow down, notice the places where they ache, and bring those places to Jesus.

Love is what draws us in at Christmas time. But it is not just something in Hallmark movies. For Love Himself is the answer to every ache and question of our hearts.