St.

Catherine of Siena - Faith - Sunflower - Bright Yellow

All Saints' Day- Nov 1- Liturgical color: white/gold- celebration, joy, purity

What seasons in the church use white and gold linens? Christmas and Easter

What season are we in now? Ordinary time with green linens: life and growth,
hope

Advent is soon. Purple=penance, sorrow for sins, preparation for Christmas,

repentance

The different liturgical colors help with recognizing the season in the church
year we are in by knowing what the colors represent.

Yellow is the most luminous of all the colors of the spectrum. It’s the color
that captures our attention more than any other color. It represents warmth
and happiness.

Sunflower: flowers make yellow dye. St. Catherine of Siena's father was a
wool dyer in the city of Siena. We can eat the seeds.

Sunflowers can also represent joy and happiness.

Sunflowers turn their faces toward the sun as they track it across the sky -- an
activity known as heliotropism, or solar tracking. Special motor cells at the
bases of the flower buds shrink or enlarge as they absorb water, which moves
their faces toward the sun. This is the same way that many other flowers track
the sun.

Standard sunflowers usually grow from 6 to 10 feet tall. Giant sunflower

varieties can grow to a height of 15 to 20 feet, and the world record sunflower
reached a height of 30 feet and 1 inch and was grown in 2014.

Virtue of Faith: Faith is knowing Jesus, loving Jesus, and following Jesus
even though we can't see him with our eyes.
One practical example of faith in Jesus is the woman who has been bleeding
for 12 years in Mark 5:21-34. She hears that Jesus is in town. She believes and
trusts that he has the power to heal her. However, she doesn’t just spend time
dwelling on this knowledge. She acts on it. She reaches out and touches his
cloak, and she is healed. Jesus then goes on to commend this woman’s faith.
In fact, he says to her in verse 34,‘your faith has healed you’.

St. Catherine of Siena

She was born in Siena, Italy in 1347. She was the 25th child in her family.

Jesus appeared to her for the first time when she was 6 years old. When she
was 12, she cut off all her hair (which was long and golden, like a sunflower),
to make sure she would never marry. She belonged to Jesus alone.

She became the first never married member of the third order of Dominicans.
A religious community for widows and married women. There she took care
of people who were sick, especially the ones who had the worst diseases.

Jesus and Mary told St. Catherine to tell the Pope, who was living in France at
the time, that God wanted him to move back to Rome where he belonged. He
didn't listen at first, but after Catherine's letters and insistence, Pope Gregory
XI finally left France to live in Rome.

Jesus gave Catherine a wedding ring, which only she could see, during one of
her visions.

In another vision, she was given the stigmata, the wounds of Christ. She asked
Jesus to hide them from everyone else, but she could feel and see the wounds.
He heard her prayer and they became invisible to everyone else. When she
died the wounds became visible and everyone could see them.

Her feast day is April 29.