The McNicholas Milestone

By Meghan Runte

The 2026 Lenten Season in the Catholic Church started on Feb. 18 with the annual celebration of Ash Wednesday. During Lent, there are many saints that teachers and students can look to for guidance, temperance, and strength.  

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Saint Katharine Drexel, Saint Dominic Savio, Saint Patrick, and Saint Joseph, Husband of Blessed Virgin Mary, are all saints to be admired and ask for guidance during the Lenten season.  

Saint Katharine Drexel was known as a wealthy, beautiful heiress who asked the Pope for more missionaries. He responded saying that she should become one herself. She left everything behind and founded The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order. She dedicated the rest of her life to helping the underprivileged and founding schools for African American and Native children. For guidance in generosity and justice during Lent, a prayer to Saint Katharine Drexel can be found here.    

Saint Dominic Savio founded a group called the Company of the Immaculate Conception at just 12 years old. He died at only fifteen years old due to health reasons, but he is known for saying, “I can’t do big things. But I want all I do, even the smallest thing, to be for the greater glory of God.” All the men in the Company of the Immaculate Conception went on to become priests. His last word before died where “What beautiful things I see!” For guidance in staying pure, humble, and patient, a prayer to Saint Dominic Savio can be found here. 

Saint Patrick is most known for the holiday named after him during March. When he was just a teenager, he was captured and sold into slavery. When he escaped, he went back to Ireland to become a missionary for the youth. He is known to have written, “Christ in the heart of every person who thinks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me.” For guidance in resilience, courage, and faith in hard times, a prayer to Saint Patrick can be found here.  

Saint Joseph, Husband of Blessed Virgin Mary, is known for being silent and humble. He is only described once in the bible, as “a righteous man” (Mathew 1:19). Joseph trusted God’s plan for his life when he said yes to helping Mary raise Jesus. Although he didn’t talk much, Joseph was a man of action. He never hesitated to protect Mary and Jesus when he was called to. For guidance in humility, trust in God, and stability, a prayer to Saint Joseph can be found here.  

Theology teacher Deacon Peter Caccavari shared many of the saints he looks up to for strength and guidance during Lent.  He said for strength and courage, he looks to St. Joan of Arc because of “her courage in battle and her courage when being tried for heresy by an English ecclesiastical court.”  

For temperance during this Lent, Caccavari said that he has been focusing on “reading the writings of Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur, a lay woman whose husband was an atheist; she tried to get him to return to the faith, but she did so in such a way as to not push him away.  After her death, he later returned to the Church and became a Dominican priest.” 

This Lent, Caccavari is directing his attention to the writings of Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur, and Sr. Thea Bowman, whose Holy Week reflection is a prayer he prays with his students during Lent.  

Some saints Caccavari has looked up to in the past include, “St. Peter because he’s my patron saint, and St. John Bosco because he is the patron saint of my father’s parish growing up in Chicago and because St. John Bosco is a patron saint of teachers.” 

He also shared that although he is “not a saint I pray to daily, I also started including recently at times St. Carlo Acutis, because he can help me relate to my students who are about the age he was when he died.”   

Caccavari said that he thinks it is important to note what The Communion of Saints tells us. “The Communion of Saints remind us of a number of important things: 1) the death of the body is not the end of our lives, 2) the lives of the saints can give us concrete examples of how to live a life close to God and close to other people, 3) the saints are granted the power to aid us in our lives, and 4) the saints remind us that we are never alone.”