St. Gratia

Gratia whose feast day is November 16th. According to tradition, Gratia was a native of Cattaro (Kotor) in Dalmatia who followed the trade of the sea till he was thirty years old. Coming one day into a church at Venice, he was deeply impressed by a sermon from an Augustinian friar, Father Simon of Camerino. Gratia determined to enter that order and was accepted as a lay-brother at Monte Ortono, near Padua. Here, brother Gratia was employed in the gardens, and soon earned the respect and veneration of the whole convent. When he was transferred to the friary of St. Christopher at Venice, a mysterious light was seen above his cell, and miracles took place at his intercession. When the church was being repaired and he was working on the building, his cistern was marvelously supplied with water all through a dry summer, and the water remained fresh even when the sea got into it. In his seventy-first year, Gratia was taken seriously ill, and insisted in getting out of bed to receive the last Sacraments on his knees. He died on November 9, 1508. The cultus of Blessed Gratia was confirmed in 1889.