St. Marguerite BourgeoysFeastday: January 12Canonized By: Pope John Paul II

Marguerite had survived many threats in the twenty-six years she had been in wilderness of Canada. She had lived through Iroquois attacks, a fire that destroyed her small village, plagues on the ships that she took back and forth to France, but nothing threatened her dreams and hopes more than what her own bishop said to her in 1679. He told her that she had to join her Congregation of Notre Dame with its teaching sisters to a cloistered religious order of Ursulines. This was not the first time she'd heard this command. Whether from a misplaced desire to protect her Sisters or from discomfort in dealing with an active religious order of women, bishops had long wanted to fit her into the usual mold of cloistered orders.But Marguerite had overcome many challenges to get to this day and was not deterred. In her own native France, she had belonged to a sodality of women who cared for the sick.The stories of hardships and dangers in Montreal that made other people shiver had awakened a call from God in her to serve the Native Americans and settlers who endured this adversity. She met with the governor of what was then called Ville Marie and convinced him she was the person he was looking for to help start a school for the children of Montreal.When she arrived in Ville Marie, as it was called then, she found that few children survived to school age. She helped the remarkable Jeanne Mance, who ran the hospital, to change this tragedy. When she finally had children to teach, she had to set to up school in a stable.So she was not ready to surrender to the bishop. There was too much at stake. She reminded him that the Ursulines because they were cloistered could not go out and teach, as her Sisters had done. The poor and uneducated would not and could not travel to a Quebec cloister over miles of frontier at the risk of their lives.But her Sisters were more than willing to live in huts in order to fulfill their call from God. She had set upschools all over the territory, not just for children. When the king, in well-meaning ignorance, had sent untrained orphans over to be colonists she had set up a school for the women to teach them how to survive and thrive in Canada.How could they do the work for God that they had done so well in a cloister?The bishop replied, "I cannot doubt, Mother Bourgeoys, that you will succeed in moving heaven and earth as you have moved me!" The Congregation remained an active teaching order, one of the very first of its kind for women. Their rule had to go through one more attempt at turning them into a cloister but Marguerite lived to see the triumph when their Rule was made official in 1698. She was canonized in 1982 by Pope John Paul II.In Her Footsteps:

Remember someone who taught you something very important. How did this person change your life? Write a letter or contact this person in some other way to let them know this.Prayer:Blessed Marguerite Bourgeoys, you survived attacks of all kinds on your faith and service. Help me keep my vocation strong despite the threats of the world and my own doubts. Amen

Ephesus Martyrs Feastday: January 12 Died: 762Forty-two monks put to death by Byzantine Emperor Constantine V for opposing the Iconoclasts. In records they are associated with Sts. Stephen and Basil.

January 12 is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 353 days remaining until the end of the year (354 in leap years).

475 - Basiliscus becomes Byzantine Emperor, with a coronation ceremony in the Hebdomon palace in Constantinople.

Basiliscus (Latin: Flavius Basiliscus Augustus; Greek: Βασιλίσκος) (d. 476/477) was Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor from 475 to 476. A member of the House of Leo, he came to power when Emperor Zeno had been forced out of Constantinople by a revolt.

Basiliscus was the brother of Empress Aelia Verina, the wife of Emperor Leo I (457–474). His relationship with the Emperor allowed him to pursue a military career that, after minor initial successes, ended in 468, when he led the disastrous Roman invasion of Vandal Africa, in one of the largest military operations of Late Antiquity.

Basiliscus succeeded in seizing power in 475, exploiting the unpopularity of Emperor Zeno, the "barbarian" successor to Leo, and a plot organised by Verina that had caused Zeno to flee Constantinople. However, during his short rule, Basiliscus alienated the fundamental support of the Church and the people of Constantinople, promoting the Miaphysite christological position in opposition to the Chalcedonian faith. Also, his policy of securing his power through the appointment of loyal men to key roles antagonised many important figures in the imperial court, including his sister Verina. So, when Zeno tried to regain his empire, he found virtually no opposition, triumphantly entering Constantinople, and capturing and killing Basiliscus and his family.

The struggle between Basiliscus and Zeno impeded the Eastern Empire's ability to intervene in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which happened in early September 476. When the chieftain of the Heruli, Odoacer, deposed Western

Emperor Romulus Augustus, sending the imperial regalia to Constantinople, Zeno had just regained his throne, and he could only appoint Odoacer dux of Italy, thereby ending the Western Roman Empire.

On January 12, 1777 Padre Thomas Peña, under the direction of Padre Junípero Serra, officially founded Mission Santa Clara de Asís, the eighth of California's twenty-one missions. Located along El Camino Real, the Royal Road, these missions stretched up the California coast from San Diego to Sonoma, a distance of about seven hundred miles. When the chain was completed each mission lay about one day's journey by horse apart from the next.Each of the twenty-one missions, founded between 1769 and 1823, was similarly constructed in a quadrangular shape and consisted of a patio, chapel, convento (living quarters for the priests), kitchen, and dormitório. The mission also had craft rooms, storehouses, irrigated fields, orchards, and grazing land. In the fields the missionaries frequently worked side-by-side with their converts who were expected to live apart from unconverted members of their tribe and abide by strict rules or face reprimand, in some cases the lash. Over the years, Native Americans displayed a wide range of reactions to the mission way of life: some embraced it wholeheartedly, some rejected it violently, others endured it for the various material and cultural benefits it bestowed.Father Serra, a native of Mallorca, Spain, inaugurated the first of the missions, San Diego de Alcala, in 1769, having accompanied Gaspar de Portolá from Mexico during the latter's occupation of Alta California. Before his death in 1784, Serra oversaw the development of the first nine missions in the chain, including Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo (1770), San Antonio de Padua (1771), San Gabriel Arcángel (1771), San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (1772), San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores) (1776), San Juan Capistrano (1776), and San Buenaventura (1782).

John 3:22-30

Reflection:

Tomorrow we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, the last day of the Christmas season. This can literally be one of the most important and precious days of our lives. Throughout this Christmas season, the Lord has given us countless opportunities to let Him transform our hearts. Our hearts may now be open to the Lord in a new and more humble way.

Humility is the key to receiving the Holy Spirit in a new way tomorrow. We must say with John the Baptizer: "He (Jesus) must increase, while I must decrease" (Jn 3:30). When John was asked who he was, he could have truthfully answered: "I am the greatest man ever born" (see Mt 11:11). Yet, John was humble enough to claim to be only "a voice in the desert" (Jn 1:23).

Before Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceived Jesus, she humbly called herself "the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk 1:38, JB). She could have claimed to be the mother of God and the most blessed woman of all times (see Lk 1:48).

Jesus humbled Himself before the Spirit descended on Him. Jesus "appeared before John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to refuse Him with the protest, 'I should be baptized by You, yet You come to me!' Jesus answered: 'Give in for now. We must do this if we would fulfill all of God's demands' " (Mt 3:13-15). Let us likewise approach tomorrow's feast with humility. Let us receive the Holy Spirit.

Self knowledge is a great gift. Self acceptance is an even greater blessing. To really know one’s gifts, abilities, talents and natural traits, as well as the limitations in other areas can reduce stress and tension and even inner turmoil. A man who is 5’3" is unlikely to be a starting center in the NBA. A woman who has little patience with the high energy of small children will probably not find herself drawn to a career as a preschool teacher.

John the Baptist seems to have really known who he was, his role in life, and the gifts that were given to him by God. John had been looked upon as a prophet to whom people came from great distances. Crowds would listen to him preach and many would accept his call to conversion and be baptized. But when Jesus appeared on the scene and people flocked to him, John did not express any jealousy or need to compete to "get his numbers back up". He accepted that he had done what he had been called to do, used his gifts to the fullest and now it was time to step aside for another. In today’s world the same scenario could have turned out much differently.

Today, competition, conscious or unconscious, seems to be in the air we breathe. Money, possessions, friends, accomplishments of our own or our children, and lifestyle can easily determine our sense of self and our acceptance or rejection of who we are. It takes great wisdom and inner strength and maturity to accept that we are each given gifts and abilities by God to use as fully as possible. But true joy comes when we realize, like John the Baptist, that our talents are not given for personal status or enhancement but for the growth and spread of the reign of God. And it often takes a lifetime to realize that all has been given to us from above.