January 15
The saints and feasts remembered on January 15, each with a short life, a Bible passage and a prayer.
Saint Arnold Janssen
Founded the Society of the Divine Word to send missionaries around the world
Arnold Janssen was born in 1837 in Goch, a small town in western Germany close to the Dutch border. Ordained a priest in 1861, he spent years teaching mathematics and natural science at a school in Bocholt. He grew convinced that German-speaking Catholics should be sending their own missionaries abroad.
The timing was bad: Bismarck's Kulturkampf was restricting the Church in Germany. So in 1875 Arnold crossed into the Netherlands and opened a mission house in a former inn at Steyl, with very little money and plenty of doubters. It became the Society of the Divine Word. Its first priests left for China in 1879, and he later founded two congregations of sisters. He also ran a printing press, using magazines to explain the missions and pay for them.
He died at Steyl in 1909 and was canonised in 2003. He is remembered as a patient, persistent teacher whose small beginning grew into communities that still serve in dozens of countries.
The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 · BSB
A prayer
God of every nation, you gave Arnold Janssen the courage to begin a great work with almost nothing and to send messengers of your Word across the world. Give us his patience and trust, so that we may share the good news of Jesus Christ wherever you send us. Amen.
The lives are written with AI help from public-domain histories and checked before publishing; the prayers are ours. Bible quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), in the public domain. How we write.