Saint Junipero Serra’s Feast Day is July 1. His wonderful motto: “Siempre adelante, nunca atras” which translates: Always forward, never back. As a native Californian, a former parishioner of Mission San Juan Capistrano—were one is privileged to attend daily Mass in the small chapel where Saint Fr. Serra himself said Mass—and having studieda bit to become a docent at the Mission, it is a great joy to witness Junipero Serra publicly declared a saint! The Catholic Business Journal will be doing several stories on Saint Serra later, including a first-hand account of the Canonization Mass by a concelebrating priest from California (after he returns to his California monastery). For now, here is a closer look at Saint Junipero Serra and his life:
“For I trust that God will give me the strength to reach San Diego, as He has given me the strength to come so far. In case He does not, I will conform myself to His most holy will. Even though I should die on the way, I shall not turn back. They can bury me wherever they wish and I shall gladly be left among the pagans, if it be the will of God.”
So wrote Saint Junípero Serra in 1769, as he was on the journey which was to begin his most famous life’s work. Father Serra was at last entering new missionary territory. Now he would not only be maintaining missions, he would be founding them. It would seem to men that the previous fifty-four years of the life of this humble, zealous friar had been merely a preparation for the work he was about to begin.
Known to the world, at least to those in the world who know him,1 as the “Father of California,” Blessed Junípero Serra was born in Majorca,2 the largest of the Balearic Islands, which are found off the eastern coast of Spain in the western Mediterranean. Under Moorish rule from the seventh till the thirteenth centuries, they were liberated from the Moslem yoke by James I and became part of the Kingdom of Aragon in 1349. Later, they merged with the kingdom of Castile under the “Catholic Kings,” Ferdinand and Isabella, and have been under Spanish rule ever since. With a climate more temperate than Hawaii, its own Catalan dialect, and a long tradition of … Read more>>