There doesn’t seem to be a lot of agreement on a saint for today.

The vatican.va website lists Saints Quiricus and Julietta as the saints of the day, but provides no further information on them. They were a mother and child, martyrs under the Diocletian persecutions in Tarsus.

Saint Lutgardis (1182-1246) was sent to a Benedictine convent when she was a young girl. Her parents sent her there because they were too poor to support her. Having arrived without having a vocation of her own she was rebellious until she had a vision of Jesus. At that point she took the Benedictine vows and lived as a mystic. She had visions and ecstasies, was credited with miracles and ended her life blind but accepting. Hence she is a patron of blind people.

OR we could try Saint John Francis Regis… Church of Our Lady of Andance, Ardèche, France. Statue of St. John Francis Regis. Wayne77 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Saint John Francis Regis comes up on the Franciscan website. I thought at first he was as unknown to me as the other saints above. But the name “Regis” is quite familiar. There’s a small college near Boston, Regis College. There’s Regis University in Denver. There are people named Regis. I just never knew who they were named after.

Saint John Francis Regis was a Jesuit in France in the early 1600’s. The wars between Protestant and Catholic groups had devastated a lot of people’s faith. Saint Francis de Sales who died in 1622, is noted for converting a lot of Calvin’s followers back to Catholicism by his gentleness. John Francis Regis was in this same mold. He joined the Jesuits but was assigned by his bishop to travel around the diocese of Viviers, helping the poor and preaching to people who in some cases had been without a priest for twenty years.

Saint John was also notable because he wanted to be a missionary in Canada, and instead was a missionary in some wild parts of France. He helped the poor, listened to confessions, prepared people for a visit from the bishop (remember, no priests for 20 years) and worked with prisoners. He was thought of as a saint in his own time and canonized in 1737. And I love his statue.