Catherine of Siena was an Italian mystic and laywoman, who was greatly respected by the Church leaders of her time. She became an advisor to the pope, encouraging him to move the Vatican back to Rome. (During a very difficult time of persecution, it had been moved to Avignon in France.) She is associated with music and is usually portrayed playing an organ or some other musical instrument.
Her feast day is this Tuesday, April 29.

We celebrated the feast of St. Joseph, the husband of Mary, on March 19. But St. Joseph has a second feast day, St. Joseph the Worker, on May 1. This is a more recent feast, established in the 1800s, because of the upheavals, especially in Europe, due to the rise of socialism and communism and the Worker Movement. This was before the Bolshevik Revolution, but these movements were creating a great deal of turmoil throughout Europe, and many nations, especially monarchies, were feeling very threatened.
    
These movements were also anti-religious, because they believed that the churches had aligned themselves with the capitalists and those who were suppressing the people. It was during this time that the popes began publishing the first social justice encyclicals, showing their sympathy for the worker movements and the goals of labor unions. These included Rerum Novarum (The Condition of Labor 1891, by Pope Leo XIII). 
    
These groups and the labor unions celebrated May 1 as May Day, with massive parades and protests. The Church declared May 1 to be the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker to make sure people understood that the Church was with them in their struggle for justice.
    
Theologically, one of the most important teachings of the Church on work, is that it is in our work that we become partners with God, building up this world of raw materials that He has given to us, into nations, cultures and societies.

The Feast of Sts. Philip and James will be this Saturday, May 3. We do not have a great deal of information about these two Apostles. In fact, there is confusion regarding James, as there is another Apostle named James, brother of John, the Beloved Disciple. It is thought that he is the author of the Epistle of St. James, and that he was the first bishop of Jerusalem. These beliefs are challenged. He is the son of Alphaeus and is known as James the Lesser, because of his size, or because the other James, brother of John, is more important. This James was the first of the Apostles to die a martyr’s death, being beheaded by King Herod.
   
There is a scene in the Gospels where some Greeks came to Philip and stated that they would like to see Jesus. He arranged for that to happen. He was involved in distributing the loaves of bread and fish multiplied by Jesus. He was martyred in Hierapolis, in Turkey.