Thursday, January 16, 2014

YOUR FRIENDS WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER


I wouldn’t bet my left hand on it, but I believe that all of Christmas has finally been tracked down, wrapped in toilette paper, put in a box, and hidden in a closet for the next 11 months.  And you know what this leads me to believe?  We need more things to celebrate!


 
Who are some of your patron saints that you should be making friends with and enjoying their feast days?  Saint Bartholomew’s feast day is on my birthday.  Sts. Cosmos and Damian share my baptismal date.  St. Leo the Great’s feast day is the day on which Bishop Lennon named me pastor of St. Sebastian.  St. George is the name of the town my family came from in Slovenia.  It was on St. Joan of Arcs day that I was ordained.  This is part of my cadre of friends with which something clicks when I hear them mentioned at Mass, or in a Litany of Saints, or come across in a book or on the internet.  I ask for their intercession, do something fun to mark their feast days, and consider them “my saints.”
 
Who are yours?  When where you married?  On what day did you buy your house?  When did you graduate?  One reason Sebastian is named Sebastian is that his birth certificate reads, “Born late January.”  So I chose January 20th which is, of course, St. Sebastian Day.
 
So go ahead!  Find a significant event in your life.  If you are fortunate, there will be a saint to celebrate on that day with whom you might develop a relationship and find an excuse to celebrate.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I put a comment here earlier today, and now it's not here.

Might this be a scam?

Unknown said...

I had a fun time on my patron saint scavenger hunt! I picked 2 on my birthday to look up because they had weird names: St. Firmus of Tagaste and St. Fabius. Because I had never heard of the others, I had to "Google" them as well. Thanks for the fun Padre!

Anonymous said...

I think it would be so interesting if you would comment on this article on your blog. It's about the reason why we have a supposed vocation crisis and how to fix it.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/sacrificing-religious-life-on-the-altar-of-egalitarianism

Cathy Ann said...

I am a fairly new "consecrated virgin living in the world" in the Cleveland Diocese. When I was informed by the bishop's secretary that the date for my Mass of consecration was to be Friday, Oct 5, 2012, I immediately understood the significance of that date.

Just prior to the phone call, I had seen a short video clip on EWTN about victim-soul Blessed Anna Schaeffer of Mindelstetten, to be declared a saint on 10/21/2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, with feast day to be celebrated each year on October 5!

...St. Catherine of Alexandria is my baptismal patroness, along with St. Ann. I tried desperately to be born on Nov 25th, but the nurses held my mom's legs together and would not let me emerge until the doctor arrived, finally, at 12:15 am on Nov 26! One nurse stayed after the end of her shift, to console my mom, expecting me to be stillborn!

After this tribulation, my mom figured that my birthday was intended to have been Nov 25, feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria. And since mom loved "Wuthering Heights", with the characters Catherine and Cathy, she gave me the legal name "Cathy Ann".

Fr. V said...

Cathy Ann,

That has got to be one of the BEST naming stories I have ever heard.

Anonymous said...

this blog needs an improvement

bloggers, please state your full baptismal name

no hiding allowed

r m kraus

Anonymous said...

Fr. V., We were married on the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist in St John the Baptist Church in Erie 43 yrs ago. This was something that always made my husband smile. The priests that gave us an anniversary blessing over the years always commented on the feast day with a grin.