🕊 🙏 SAINT OF THE DAY 💕 🕊
🙏🏻 Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio 🙏🏻
(Feast Day: Feb. 25,)
Pray for us!
Sebastian de Aparicio y del Pardo was a Spanish colonist in Mexico shortly after its conquest by Spain, who after a lifetime as a rancher and road builder entered the Order of Friars Minor as a lay brother. Source:Wikipedia
Born: January 20, 1502, A Gudiña, Spain
Died: February 25, 1600, Puebla, Mexico
Feast: 25 February
Beatified: 17 May 1789 by Pope Pius VI
Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio’s Story
Sebastian’s roads and bridges connected many distant places. His final bridge-building was to help men and women recognize their God-given dignity and destiny.
Sebastian’s parents were Spanish peasants. At the age of 31, he sailed to Mexico, where he began working in the fields. Eventually he built roads to facilitate agricultural trading and other commerce. His 466-mile road from Mexico City to Zacatecas took 10 years to build and required careful negotiations with the indigenous peoples along the way.
In time Sebastian was a wealthy farmer and rancher. At the age of 60, he entered a virginal marriage. His wife’s motivation may have been a large inheritance; his was to provide a respectable life for a girl without even a modest marriage dowry. When his first wife died, he entered another virginal marriage for the same reason; his second wife also died young.
At the age of 72, Sebastian distributed his goods among the poor and entered the Franciscans as a brother. Assigned to the large (100-member) friary at Puebla de los Angeles south of Mexico City, Sebastian went out collecting alms for the friars for the next 25 years. His charity to all earned him the nickname “Angel of Mexico.”
Sebastian was beatified in 1787 and is known as a patron of travelers.
