Daily Martyrology for May 25

In 735, at the abbey of Jarrow in Northumbria, St. Bede the Venerable, monk and doctor of the church. Raised in the monastery, he was educated by abbots Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith. He lived a quiet, prayerful life of study, in which he was a dedicated teacher not only of his fellow monks but of the Anglo-Saxon people. His biblical commentaries and his Ecclesiastical History of the English People are highly esteemed to this day. He spent his last days translating the Gospel of John into English. St. Boniface (June 5) called him “the candle of the church, lit by the Holy Spirit".

In 1607, in Italy, St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi. Born into a very wealthy Florentine family, she entered a Carmelite convent. There she experienced many mystical states and extraordinary sufferings which are recounted in detailed records kept by her contemporaries.

In 1865, in France, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat. Born in Burgundy, she was educated by her brother, who gave her the same education a seminarian would have received. After the French Revolution she collaborated with Fr. Varin, who worked for the restoration of the Jesuits. She opened the first convent and school of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at Amiens. She was a superior for sixty-three years and guided the growth of the order. One of her first students was Philippine Duchesne (November 18), who introduced the order in the United States.

Between 1915 and 1937, in Mexico. Blessed Christopher Magallanes and twenty-four others murdered for non-violent resistance to the anticlerical government of Mexico.

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.