By Katie Prejean McGrady
When I was pregnant with my first child, my doctor joked early on that I could “pick the birthday,” if I wanted. I didn’t fully understand what he meant until he asked me if I had a preferred date to schedule the induction. He didn’t want me to go past thirty-nine weeks. So my husband and I pulled out the calendar for the end of August and began perusing it for saints’ feast days.
Why not schedule a birthday around the celebration of a holy hero of the Church?
We ended up choosing August 24, which in 2017 was the 400th anniversary of the death of St. Rose of Lima. We planned to name our daughter Rose and we were thrilled to bring her into the world on the same day her patron saint left this world.
You can’t say we aren’t Catholic.
A devotion to and love of the saints is a key element of Catholicism.
Why do we learn the stories and honor the lives of the dead? It almost seems weird that we name our children, parishes, and schools after men and women the Church has declared heroically virtuous, giving them the title “saint.” It’s unique to our faith tradition that nearly every day of the calendar year there’s a person whose story we tell and whose life we celebrate. The Church is deeply rooted in the idea that we are in communion with the saints—that the saints pray for us as we cry out to them and that we are invited to befriend them.
The lives and stories of the saints can help us live a holy life ourselves. The communion of saints and friendship with holy men and women is perhaps more relevant at this moment in our world than ever before. The saints can be a comfort, encouragement, and source of strength to us.
In Ave Explores: The Saints you will learn the stories of a number of holy men and women and also examine how to grow in friendship with the saints. You will find answers to questions such as: How can we ask the saints to intercede for us? What does it mean to name a family patron saint? Why should we learn the stories of a diverse group of saints? How do the saints challenge each of us to be holy and how can they help us on that journey?
The saints can become more than a name on a building or pictures on the wall or holy cards. They can be friends you grow to love.
Katie Prejean McGrady is host of the Ave Explores podcast and The Katie McGrady Show on Sirius XM’s The Catholic Channel. She is an international speaker, the author of Room 24: Adventures of a New Evangelist and Follow: Your Lifelong Adventure with Jesus, and the coauthor of Lent: One Day at a Time for Catholic Teens and Advent and Christmas: One Day at a Time for Catholic Teens.
