Cajetan was born to the noble family of the Lords of Thienna near Vicenza in Lombardy in 1480. His mother immediately dedicated him to the Blessed Virgin Mary. His innocence appeared so wonderful from his very childhood that everyone called him “the Saint.” He took the degree of Doctor in canon and civil law at Padua, and then went to Rome where Pope Julius II made him a prelate. When he received the priesthood, such a fire of divine love was kindled in his soul that he left the court to devote himself entirely to God. He renounced the dignities offered to him in Rome and devoted himself to the service of the poor and sick of Vicenza. With Peter Caraffa (who became Pope Paul IV) he founded the Congregation of Regular Clerks of the Divine Providence (called the Theatines, from Theate (Chieti) in the Abruzzi, where Caraffa was Bishop). This Congregation was one of the most prominent among the fruits of the revival of Catholic piety in the sixteenth century and was characterised by absolute trust in Divine Providence.
During the sack of Rome, Cajetan was cruelly treated by the soldiers to make him deliver up his money which the bands of the poor had long ago carried into the heavenly treasures. He endured with the utmost patience stripes, torture and imprisonment. He persevered unfalteringly in the kind of life he had embraced, relying entirely on Divine Providence. God never failed him, as was sometimes proved by miracle. He was a great promoter of assiduity at the divine worship, of the beauty of the House of God, of exactness in holy ceremonies, and of the frequentation of the most Holy Eucharist. More than once he detected and foiled the wicked subterfuges of heresy. He would prolong his prayers for eight hours, without ceasing to shed tears. He was often rapt in ecstasy and was famous for the gift of prophecy. At Rome, one Christmas night, while he was praying at our Lord’s crib, the Mother of God was pleased to lay the infant Jesus in his arms.
Cajetan would spend whole nights in chastising his body with disciplines, and could never be induced to relax anything of the austerity of his life: for he would say, he wished to die in sackcloth and ashes. At length he fell into an illness caused by the intense sorrow he felt at seeing the people offend God by a sedition, and at Naples, after being refreshed by a heavenly vision, he passed to heaven in 1547 and was canonised by Pope Clement X in 1671. Saint Cajetan (known in Italy as San Gaetano) is the patron of the unemployed, those seeking work, gamblers and good fortune.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Cajetan appeared in all his zeal for the sanctuary at the time when the false reform was spreading rebellion throughout the world. The great cause of the danger had been the incapacity of the guardians of the Holy City, or their connivance by complicity of heart or of mind with pagan doctrines and manners introduced by an ill-advised revival. Wasted by the wild boar of the forest, could the vineyard of the Lord recover the fertility of its better days? Cajetan learned from Eternal Wisdom the new method of culture required by an exhausted soil. The urgent need of those unfortunate times was that the clergy should be raised up again by worthy life, zeal and knowledge. For this object men were required, who being clerks themselves in the full acceptance of the word, with all the obligations it involves, should be to the members of the holy hierarchy a permanent model of its primitive perfection, a supplement to their shortcomings, and a leaven, little by little raising the whole mass. But where, save in the life of the counsels with the stability of its three vows, could be found the impulse, the power, and the permanence necessary for such an enterprise? The inexhaustible fecundity of the religious life was no more wanting in the Church in those days of decadence than in the periods of her glory. After the monks, turning to God in their solitudes and drawing down light and love upon the earth seemingly so forgotten by them; after the mendicant Orders, keeping up in the midst of the world their claustral habits of life and the austerity of the desert: the regular clerks entered upon the battlefield by which their position in the fight, their exterior manner of life, their very dress, they were to mingle with the ranks of the secular clergy; just as a few veterans are sent into the midst of a wavering troop, to act upon the rest by word and example and dash. Like the initiators of the great ancient forms of religious life, Cajetan was the Patriarch of the Regular Clerks. Under this name Clement VII, by a brief dated 24th June 1524, approved the institute he had founded that very year in concert with the Bishop of Theati, from whom the new religious were also called Theatines. Soon the Barnabites, the Society of Jesus, the Somasques of Saint Jerome Aemilian, the Regular Clerks Minor of Saint Francis Carracciolo, the Regular Clerks ministering to the sick, the Regular Clerks of the Pious Schools, the Regular Clerks of the Mother of God, and others, hastened to follow in the track, and proved that the Church is ever beautiful, ever worthy of her Spouse, while the accusation of barrenness hurled against her by heresy, rebounded upon the thrower.
Cajetan began and carried forward his reform chiefly by means of detachment from riches, the love of which bad caused many evils in the Church. The Theatines offered to the world a spectacle unknown since the days of the Apostles, pushing their zeal for renouncement so far as not to allow themselves even to beg, but to rely on the spontaneous charity of the faithful. While Luther was denying the very existence of God’s Providence, their heroic trust in It was often rewarded by prodigies.
Who has ever obeyed so well as you, O great Saint, that word of the Gospel: “Be not solicitous therefore saying: What will we eat? or what will we drink? or with what will we be clothed?” (Matthew vi 31). You understand, too, that other divine word: “The workman is worthy of his meat” (Matthew x. 10) and you knew that it applied principally to those who labour in word and doctrine (1 Timothy v. 17). You did not ignore the fact that other sowers of the word had before you founded on that saying the right of their poverty, embraced for God’s sake, to claim at least the bread of alms. Sublime right of souls eager for opprobrium in order to follow Jesus and to satiate their love! But Wisdom, who gives to the desires of the Saints the bent suitable to their times, caused the thirst for humiliation to be overruled in you by the ambition to exalt in your poverty the holy Providence of God. This was needed in an age of renewed paganism, which, even before listening to heresy, seemed to have ceased to trust in God.
Alas! Even of those to whom the Lord had given Himself for their possession in the midst of the children of Israel, it could be truly said that they sought the goods of this world like the heathen. It was your earnest desire, O Cajetan, to justify our Heavenly Father and to prove that He is ever ready to fulfil the promise made by His adorable Son: “Seek therefore the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew vi. 33). Circumstances obliged you to begin in this way the reformation of the sanctuary to which you were resolved to devote your life. It was necessary, first, to bring back the members of the holy militia to the spirit of the sacred formula of the ordination of clerks, when, laying aside the spirit of the world together with its livery, they say in the joy of their hearts: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is you, O Lord, that will restore my inheritance to me” (Psalms xv. 5).
The Lord, O Cajetan, acknowledged your zeal and blessed your efforts. Preserve in us the fruit of your labour. The science of sacred rites owes much to your sons. May they prosper in renewed fidelity to the traditions of their father. May your patriarchal blessing ever rest upon the numerous families of Regular Clerks which walk in the footsteps of your own. May all the ministers of holy Church experience the power you still have, of maintaining them in the right path of their holy state, or, if necessary, of bringing them back to it. May the example of your sublime confidence in God teach all Christians that they have a Father in Heaven whose Providence will never fail His children.Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Arezzo in Tuscany, the birthday of St. Donatus, bishop and martyr, who among other miraculous deeds, made whole again by his prayers (as is related by the blessed Pope Gregory), a sacred chalice which had been broken by pagans. Being apprehended by the imperial officer Quadratian in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, and refusing to sacrifice to idols, he was struck with the sword and thus consummated his martyrdom. With him suffered also the blessed monk Hilarinus, whose feast is celebrated on the sixteenth of July, when his body was taken to Ostia.
At Rome, the holy martyrs Peter and Julian, with eighteen others.
At Milan, St. Faustus, a soldier, who obtained the palm of martyrdom after many combats in the time of Aurelius Commodus.
At Coino, the passion of the holy martyrs Carpophorus, Exanthus, Cassius, Severinus, Secundus and Licinius, who were beheaded for the confession of Christ.
At Nisibis in Mesopotamia, St. Dometius, a Persian monk, who was stoned to death with two of his disciples under Julian the Apostate.
At Rouen, the holy bishop St. Victricius. While yet a soldier under Julian the Apostate, he threw away his military belt for Christ, and after being subjected by the tribune to many torments, was condemned to capital punishment. But the executioner who had been sent to put him to death being struck blind, and the confessor’s chains being loosened, he made his escape. Afterwards being made bishop, by preaching the word of God he brought to the faith of Christ the barbarous people of Belgic Gaul, and finally died a confessor in peace.
At Chalons in France, St. Donation, bishop.
At Messina in Sicily, St. Albert, confessor, of the Order of Carmelites, renowned for miracles.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
