What saint is celebrated today: onomastics this Monday, October 31

Decades ago, one could even speak of centuries, parents used to assign their children’s first names according to the feast of the saints of that day, even among Catholics and Orthodox the custom of congratulating people on the day of Your saint. Not in vain in the famous “Mañanitas” there is a stanza that says: “Today, because it is your saint’s day, we sing them to you here…”.

The onomastic alludes to the day on which a saint is celebrated, although it is common for many people to use it as a synonym for birthdays, which is wrong, because when speaking of it, it only refers to the list of saints. names of saints.

Like every day of the year, today also commemorates the women and men who stood out for having special connections with the divinities, who did good deeds for others and who had high ethics and morals, reasons that led them to be canonized or beatified and be part of the saints.

This is the saint of Monday October 31.

Celebration of the day: San Alonso Rodríguez

He was sick one day and the nurse brought him food in bed with a mandate from the Father Superior: “he should eat the whole plate”. When the nurse returns, he finds him undoing the plate and eating it powdered. The saint imposed blind obedience on himself; he demanded of himself so much that one of his parents told him one fine day “that he obeyed the donkey.”

He was born in Segovia in 1533, the second of the eleven children of the marriage formed by Diego Rodríguez and María Gómez who lived from the cloth trade.

His childhood and youth were linked to the Society of Jesus. At the age of twelve Pedro Fabro and another Jesuit, whose teachings he treasured, were housed in his house. He studied at the Jesuit College of Alcalá de Henares.

On the death of his father, he is in charge of running the family business, but his incompetence is notable for the cloth business.

He married María Juárez with whom he has two children. But bad fortune seems to be following him: one of his sons and his wife die and the business goes from bad to worse; then his other son and his mother die. Alonso has been left alone.

Then a strong crisis occurs that he resolves with a general confession and with the desire to begin a new life, taking an impressive inner rhythm of dealing with God and maintaining it for six years. He ceded his property to his brothers and went to Valencia in 1569 with the purpose of joining the Company; but he did not have insurmountable obstacles: his age, lack of studies and poor health.

Then he works in commerce and as a tutor.

He is finally admitted to the Colegio Monte Sión in the year 1571; from the year 1572 he held the position of doorman until 1610, almost forty years ago

He is considered in the Company as a model for the lay brothers for his permanent exercise to achieve authentic familiarity with God, for his absolute obedience and for his love and desire for tribulation.

This humble and holy gatekeeper was during his life a radiant focus of spirituality from which both the superiors who treated him and the novices with whom he had contact benefited; A representative example is in Saint Peter Claver the apostle of the slaves.

With his letters he exercises a true teaching profession. His language is simple and popular at the time, but he achieves pages of singular beauty when dealing with themes of greater enthusiasm. The holiness that he describes in his writings is not learned from books, it is the fruit of his spiritual experience.

He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII together with Saint Peter Claver.

(Source: archimadrid.es)

Along with this character there other saints and martyrs which are also celebrated this Monday, October 31, such as the following:

Saint Magnified Martyr

Saint Antoninus of Milan

Saint Epimachus of Pelusius

Saint Foilan de Fosses

Saint Quentin of Vermand

Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg

Blessed Christopher of Romagna

Blessed Dominic Collins

Blessed Leon Nowakowski

Blessed Thomas of Florence Bellaci

Consult the biographies of each of these characters clicking here.

How many saints are there in the Catholic Church?

Merchant during the canonization of Pope John Paul II. (Reuters)

The saints are the set of people (women and men) who are venerated by the Church by being proclaimed saints or blessed on a certain date in the calendar.

There are four steps on the path to canonization: the first is to be appointed as a servant of God, the second is to be venerable; the third step is to be blessed and, finally, the fourth step is to be holy.

The beatification It can only be achieved by the faithful who have died with a reputation for being saints in various places and this process can be carried out in two ways: through a cause of heroic virtues and the second is martyrdom, that is, if the person He died for his faith.

Secondly, the process to become a saint implies adding the name of the sanctified person to the canon (list of recognized saints) and thereby allowing the believing community to worship him publicly and universally, while assigning him a liturgical feast, dedicating altars, chapels and His power to intercede with God is recognized.

Although the Church has not given an exact number, it is believed that there are currently up to nine thousand recognized saints. According to Roman Martyrologyupdated in 2005, the Catholic Church has at least seven thousand saintsalthough martyrs are not counted, so many think that the figure could even reach 20 thousand people.

In recent history, Pope John Paul II managed to canonize 388 saints, while Pope Francis has broken all records after to date he has canonized 898 saints, 800 of them at the same time.

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What saint is celebrated today: onomastics this Monday, October 31