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St. Didicus
00:17:36
Saint Didacus of Alcalá (c. 1400–1463), also known as Diego de San Nicolás, was a Spanish Franciscan lay brother celebrated for his humility, charity, and deep spirituality. Born in San Nicolás del Puerto, Andalusia, he initially lived as a hermit before joining the Franciscan Order. Didacus served as a missionary in the Canary Islands, where he was appointed guardian of the Franciscan community on Fuerteventura, an exceptional role for a lay brother. In 1450, he traveled to Rome for the canonization of Saint Bernardine of Siena and remained there to care for friars afflicted by an epidemic, reportedly performing miraculous healings. After returning to Spain, he spent his remaining years in contemplation and service, passing away in Alcalá de Henares on November 12, 1463. Canonized in 1588, he is the patron saint of the city of San Diego, California, which was named in his honor.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at the Jesuit Refugee Service. They work in 58 countries accompanying and serving forcibly displaced people, providing life changing emergency assistance, education, mental health support and more to millions each year. Get to know their work, visit jrsusa.org agustin.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith. Hello everyone and welcome to the Catholic Saints podcast. My name is Taylor Kemp. I am the vice president of content here at the Augustine Institute. And with me today is Dr. Scott Heffelfinger, a faculty member and our director of content development. Scott, welcome to Catholic Saints.
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Thank you for having me.
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It's great to have you on. Today we are talking about Saint Didicus, who up until last week when you told me about doing an episode on Saint Didicus, I don't think I had ever heard of him, nor do I know anything about him. So I am excited to learn about Saint Didicus. When is his feast day?
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So his feast day is November 7th. And you know, with the feast day approaching and realizing I also didn't know hardly anything about Saint Didicus, started to look into it and found some fun things, as usual. I mean, some wonderful things, but then also some fun tidbits that we can talk about.
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Fun and wonderful. The saints are fun and wonderful. I think they'd appreciate that nomenclature. So, okay, so who is Saint Didicus? Where to begin?
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Yeah. Okay, so he's born around the year 1400 in kind of southwest Spain, getting close to Portugal, it's San Nicolas, Spain. And he's born into a pious family. Okay, so he's got like this good formation and you know, they must have been really pious because he as a child, he starts to live the aramedical life. He becomes a child hermit. Now, okay, I don't claim to have sort of like encyclopedic knowledge of all the saints lives, but this is the first time that I've come across, I.
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Have no heard that child hermit.
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There are many like very holy children, saints.
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Yes. But to actually I have never heard that.
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I mean, so that's pretty common.
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This can't be common.
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I mean, no, I don't think so.
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This is particular. This is, that's quite unique.
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And imagine being, I mean, we're both parents. Like, imagine being a parent and your.
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Child'S kind of like, I'm going out, I'm going to the desert. Can you define for us, when you say aramedical life, what do you mean by that.
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Yeah. So I mean, usually it designates a life removed from society. So kind of out into the desert, although it could be a mountain or, you know, whatever it is. So away from others with, like, in relative austerity. So penance and prayer. It's devoted to kind of solitude, penance and prayer. I mean, that's what I wanted as a child. Didn't you?
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No, I didn't want that. I want that more now than when I was a kid. And I don't know if I would want that for my. I want holiness for my kids, but I don't want them going off to the desert.
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So isn't it interesting how parents must. We want holiness, but according to the form that we. I know, would sort of give it.
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We were. I mean, this. We're. We're getting. Sorry, listeners, we're getting slightly tangential. My wife and I were just having this conversation of like, I want holiness on my terms.
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It's holiness for ourselves, yes. For our kids.
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It's such a normal human temptation, but it's one in which, like, just detachment to even our own vision of how we attain to holiness is necessary to allow God to sanctify us. So, yeah, child hermits, maybe listeners out there, maybe your kids are called to that.
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So he's a child hermit. He actually starts being directed by another, like spiritually directed by another hermit priest. And after some years of this, I don't think it's super long, but he feels a call to the religious life. Okay. Not super surprising. And he enters a kind of reformed branch of the Franciscans, the order of Friars Minor. Nowadays, we'll see ofm after Father so and so's name or whatever. He enters as a lay brother. Okay. And he works at the trades to kind of support his community. So I think there's an interesting lesson here about the importance of manual labor, the trades. We can maybe come back to that. So he's in this community. He ends up getting sent about a thousand miles overseas to the Canary Islands, so off the northwestern coast of Africa to do missionary work. So he becomes a missionary. He's spreading the gospel to the native people there. And because of his sort of diligence and charity and basically his effectiveness, it leads him to be placed as kind of the superior of the Franciscans on one of the islands, the island of Fuerteventura. This is kind of unusual because normally a lay brother would not be able to be named to this position, but he has such. Yeah, he's got such a reputation for holiness already. And Kind of again, effectiveness that he's put in this position. He becomes a pretty staunch defender of the indigenous people in a variety of ways. And not all of the kind of political and perhaps religious leaders are happy with this. And so he actually is then brought back to Spain after a couple of years. So that kind of ends his missionary work and the next phase, he's sent to Rome for the beatification or canonization of a well known Franciscan. An epidemic breaks out while he's there. And as so many of the saints, you know, he kind of cares for them in their sickness. He has healing gifts, there are miraculous healings attributed to him. And so he has this kind of healing phase for a few years in Rome. That was a trip that got very much extended by this epidemic of illness there. And he kind of goes back then to Spain and just lives out the rest of his life in a friary in Alcala, doing penance in solitude and very lofty contemplative prayer. And at the age of 63, he dies in 1463, he's canonized a little over a century later. He's the first Franciscan lay brother. Yeah, relatively quick first lay brother to be canonized. And he's the patron saint of Franciscan brothers and Franciscan laity. So like third order Franciscans. So that's kind of the span of his life. And yeah, I mean, really some neat things. I mean, one of the things that was striking to me so I grew up in Southern California, not in San Diego, a little north on the coast. But I realized in researching this saint and trying to befriend him a little more as his feast day approaches, that San Diego, California is named after him actually. So. Yeah, so usually Diego in English would be James or Jacob, but it's. So they, at a certain point, which sailor was it came in and. And they celebrated the first mass on land on the feast day of Saint Didicus. And so he names it after him, the Bay of San Diego. And that's in 1602. And so then when the missionaries come over, Father Junipero Serra, the first mission that they establish in California is named, you know, in tandem with the bay there, Mission San Diego de Alcala, which is Saint Didicus. So kind of a neat connection to my home state ultimately that I didn't know at all. I just assumed that it was, you know, a different Diego, a different.
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Yeah, it's true. And you just don't hear of Saint Didicus.
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No, he's not that well known all that much.
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Yeah, so I mean, it's an Interesting life. I'm always fascinated by the saints that we have. Well, I'll just restate this. There seems to be a lot of these saints that we have that are connected to orders, but they're actually lay oblates or third order, whatever it may be, how many of those there are. And I don't know if that's because within my Catholic life, I was being an adult convert. I didn't have all that much of an awareness that that was a thing. And so, yeah, it's always fascinating to find the. Some of the things that kind of stick out to me. Besides the fact that he was a child hermit, which is obviously particularly unique. You always kind of wonder, you know, especially because that is more of an extreme.
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Yeah.
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Of what an interesting call that the Lord must have clearly put on his heart and then also prepared him. Like whenever you see these kind of extraordinary circumstances, which I would call a child going out to live a. A hermit, like life is extraordinary. Like what an interesting thing. Like what was the Lord preparing him or her for? And then in this example, him and then just recognizing, you see some of these classic marks of holiness, love of the poor. I'm imagining, especially as he went and kind of served the indigenous peoples and then was called back. That was probably a challenge, I'm assuming. Right. For someone who has the love of God burning in their heart, recognizing they were called back, and then submitting to their obedience of whatever spirit of there are. And then really the place of penance in the spiritual life, of really trying to live out in concrete ways the detachment that we all need from the things of this world in order to seek, pursue, and attain God in a fuller sense. So as you were talking, I was like, yeah, this just follows a lot of the normal kind of trappings, marks of holiness of God's saints.
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Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, the point you made about. Just to go back to the thing that's fascinating us here, the child hermit, you said this is kind of an unusual extreme even, and we have to think carefully about that. I think when I teach in our graduate school here, there's a line that I'll say to my students sometimes, and that is we shouldn't do what the saints do until we see as the saints see. And that is kind of what your point is, that God prepared this child, obviously, in a certain particular way and prepared him for this certain particular mode of life. And I think this can be generalized, you know, because sometimes the saints take on fairly extreme penances, for example, and we see that we're kind of like, wow, that's, you know, I don't know. And the thing is, it's hard for us to understand the degree to which the saints see their own sinfulness, for example, or understand God's particular call. And until. It would not make sense for me to take on extreme penances because, you know, the sad truth that I asked the Lord to rectify in my life, but the sad truth is I don't take my sins as seriously as the saints took their sins. And so it would be inappropriate for me to do some of these things. So until we see, like the saints see, we shouldn't do exactly as the.
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Saints do and kind of understand suffering too. Like, which is the consequence of it. Right? To understand suffering in the way they. That they do. The redemptive nature of it that. Agreed, like, introspectively, I'm like, yeah, I couldn't suffer like they do and not break or give up hope, because I'm not where they are. I'm reading through some works of St. John of the Cross, who had a very hard life and was mistreated by his brothers for an extended period of time, like, brutally. And I'm reading this and I'm like, I could never do not. I, like, couldn't do it. Can't imagine it. Unbelievable amount of suffering psychologically and physically. And then coming to terms with. But. But John, St. John of the Cross, he understood what he was going through as participating in the redemption of the world, which is the right understanding of suffering, and that the Lord had him ready to receive that in his own way. And that. Like, yeah, when you hear these extreme penances, these are not things that we called to seek out unless we are called to seek them out. And that there is so much that goes into that in the preparatory phase, so we don't have to. Yeah, but it's. It's a difficult thing to grapple with because you'll read these lies of the saints, you're like, oh, my goodness. Like, these are. These are at times unbelievably challenging stories that you read. And recognizing it's okay, I'm not there and I aspire to be there, but the Lord will. The Lord sanctifies us in his way, not in the. Like, the saints are all perfectly unique. We are all unique, and the Lord works with us in unique ways.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah. So already, Saint Didicus hurt his life. Scott, were there particular things that you think we can remember about him today? Or especially certain things about his life or witness of holiness that we can practically kind of take in into our lives today.
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Yeah, I mean, as I was sort of, you know, praying with this saint and reflecting on him. I'm a theologian at heart, and I have a theologian's mind. And what really stood out to me was how here is a saint, as with so many of them. And it was kind of that pattern that struck me. A saint who did a lot of manual labor, he worked in the trades. I mentioned that early on in his life. But then also kind of tending to the sick. So just, I don't know the value of manual labor today and how important it is. I mean, maybe for me, especially as, you know, kind of pursuing an intellectual life to kind of balance that. But I do think there's something for all of us that it's important for natural reasons to kind of stay connected with real things and work with our hands, but also for supernatural reasons of, you know, just tending to, like, ordinary work. We can sometimes think like, well, I'm. You know, my time is worth so much more, and maybe I shouldn't bother with the menial things. And it's fine to sort of outsource some things. We all do it. But maybe not everything. Like, maybe it's good to be doing some menial manual. Maybe it's just good for us as human beings and as Christians. So that was kind of a takeaway that sat with me.
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I like that.
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There's also another. There's a beautiful story that I didn't mention in his life. He falls sick towards the end of his life, and he is said to have died singing a chant about the cross. And it's kind of a. It's an established chant in the church. And this, to me, it was a beautiful thing of just thinking about how I've been blessed through certain experiences, I've had to have become familiar with some of the church's venerable chants, and I've tried to hand that on to my children. And I do think it's so beautiful and important to just have not only the church's prayers, I mean, above all the church's prayers, but even some of her chants and sacred music just kind of written into our soul so that, you know, how beautiful is it in his story? And how beautiful would it be in my life or in another's life, like, to die with the words of a beautiful sacred hymn, like, on my lips, like, oh, it'd be so wonderful.
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Yeah, I like that. And I've always. I love that about some of the churches, what we would consider More rote prayers is recognizing the value of some of these things that the church provides, whether it's chants, hymns, or. Or prayers, is recognizing, like, there's just certain moments in our life, like, when we would be dying or an extreme sorrow or joy, where you're like, I don't want to come up with my own words.
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I can't exactly. You might not even have. I mean, I've been in situations where there's just so much going on or maybe I'm so consumed or worried about something that, you know, I can sort of get out a very, very simple, spontaneous prayer, which is, you know, like, lord, help me. But it's so beautiful to have these ropes to lean on.
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And it's such a gift. I mean, I. The number of times I have been so I'm just like, like, lord, thank you so much for the Our Father, because there's just some certain moments where you're like, I can't pray. I. Like, you're emotionally in a compromised place or mentally you're just exhausted, but. And you need. But you need something. And that these things have been given us. So. I agree. For. For something like a really beautiful chant that you're assuming has gone through kind of the refining fires of, you know, depth and beauty that. And then to have those as gifts has always been. Yeah, I agree. It's a. It's a great thing to have. So, Scott, thanks. Any parting things to add for listeners before we close out?
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Maybe just how fun it is to discover some of these relatively unknown saints. Like, we both said, we didn't know about this saint, really, until this feast day is approaching, and it's kind of like, oh, maybe be worth learning something. And it sure is. And all the saints are like that. What a treasure we have in the saints. So Saint Didicus just kind of reminds us of that in some great ways.
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I couldn't agree more. Well, thanks everybody out there for listening to Catholic Saints, where we hope to bring glory to God through his heroic men and women, witnesses of holiness and virtue. And if you are listening out there, we are excited to offer these podcasts for free. We do have a giving society called the Mission Circle, which you can find on missioncircle.org if you sign up and join. It's always helpful for us. It allows us to keep making things like this available. So thanks so much for joining us, and God bless.