Grief and death

Any of these can be asked. There is no order of precedence and no wrong choice, so pick whoever the story fits.

• St. Alphonsus RodríguezHe lost everything, then spent forty six years opening a door, and sent Claver to the Americas.
• St. AnastasiaThe martyr the Church remembers at Christmas dawn: deliverer from poisons, friend of prisoners.
• St. Bridget of SwedenMother of eight, widow, mystic: she spent her last decades telling popes to come home.
• St. Catherine of GenoaA miserable marriage, a plague hospital, and the warmest book on purgatory ever written.
• St. DismasThe good thief: the only person in Scripture promised paradise to his face.
• St. DorothySend me apples and roses from your bridegroom’s garden, the lawyer mocked. In winter, a basket came.
• St. Elizabeth Ann SetonWidowed in quarantine, converted at full cost, and the first American born saint.
• St. Elizabeth of HungaryA princess widowed at twenty who traded the castle for a hospital, and died at twenty four having given it all.
• St. Frances of RomeForty years a wife in plague era Rome: proof that the vocation you did not choose still counts.
• St. Gertrude the GreatThe mystic of Helfta whose name is on the most prayed prayer for the holy souls.
• St. Hedwig of SilesiaThe duchess who carried her shoes, and consoled a grieving people while burying her own son.
• St. Ignatius of AntiochWrote seven letters on the road to the lions, and coined the phrase the Catholic Church.
• St. JosephHusband of Mary, a working man, and the patron of a peaceful death.
• St. Joseph CafassoThe priest of the gallows: he walked sixty condemned men to their deaths and called them his hanged saints.
• St. LazarusJesus wept at the tomb of this man, his friend. Four days dead, and called out by name.
• St. Louise de MarillacAn anxious widow who became the co-architect of organized charity, and the patron of social workers.
• St. Marguerite d'YouvilleWidow of a bootlegger, mocked as the tipsy sisters: she took the insult as a name.
• St. MarthaLord, don’t you care? The patron of everyone doing the work while others sit.
• St. Nicholas of TolentinoThe friar the Church names first among intercessors for the souls in purgatory.
• St. PolycarpEighty six years I have served him: a disciple of John, faithful to the end of the living link.
• St. Rita of CasciaMarried into violence, outlived it, and is asked for in impossible situations.
• St. Stephen of HungaryHungary’s first king: he wrote his son a manual of everything he knew, and then had to bury him.
• Sts. Louis and Zélie MartinThe first married couple canonized together, who buried four children and kept believing.