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Life is tough. Nuns are tougher.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

2dz st

Wasn't there a movie once called "If This is Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium"? It was somehow linked to the thought that life becomes so hectic that the markers of everyday living become increasingly backwards. For a Catholic it would go something like, "I'm at Mass, so it must be Sunday".

Or not. Because it might be a holy day of obligation, or Saturday evening. It could be somebody's wedding or funeral.

With this in mind, we turn to today's question from a reader:

who is ur patron Sister?

Seriously, we are not texting here, people. Are we so insanely busy we can't be bother to use our pinkies to hit the shift key to capitalize the beginning of a sentence. Can we not take the millisecond to type two more letters for the word "your"? We're not tweeting here. We have an unlimited space in which to express ourselves.

For a moment there, my patron was St. Leander, the overly picky slave driver older brother and teacher of St. Isidore. St. Leander drove his brother to become the most educated man on the planet and therefore the patron saint of the internet.

I mostly roll with St. Martha, as I have so much in common with her.

But on any given day I might call upon the intercession of St. Anthony to find things that Sister Mary Fiacre has hidden but doesn't remember, not that she would tell us if she did remember.

At which point I will have to call upon the intercession of St. Theresa the Little Flower, the patron saint of people who are annoyed by the annoying habits of others.

Sister St. Aloysius will leave again soon for her summer brain trust, leaving me to try to remember how to boil water. I will be speaking with St. Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks as he was roasted to death on a grill. We'll think of him on the upcoming July 4th holiday as well.

If things get too pathetic in the kitchen, I'll call upon St. Catherine of Sienna, the patron saint of dieters. She survived only on the Host. (But not for long, she died in her early thirties. Don't try this at home.)


I often discuss strategy with St. John of God, who ran a makeshift hospital all by himself, as we run a make shift nursing home on a wing and a prayer here at the house. We have wheelchair to chair, wheelchair to bed, down to a science.

Lately, we've been having what is known as "June Gloom". Every day starts out gray and cloudy until the marine layer burns off later in the day. I love it. I much prefer day after day of June gloom to what lies ahead: Africa Hot. It always looks like it will actually rain, which is crazy talk after February. But I do love it when it rains. So I consult St. Swithin, the patron saint of rain. He loved the rain, too. He made a big fuss that he be buried in the church yard where the rain would always fall on him, but his sainthood caused him to be moved inside the church. Ironic.

Every time we crawl into our couch on wheels that passes for a car, we say hello to St. Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of avoiding car trouble. "Mother Cabrini, put down your linguine, look down from heaven and fix my machini." A reader passed that prayer onto us. While we're on the road, we may have to call upon Our Lady of LaSalette, the patron saint of road rage.


The list is endless: when I stubbed by toe I turned to St. Bartholomew, who had his skin peeled off. Certainly, he understands pain. We steel ourselves with St. Joseph when we have to brave the Home Depot. St. Bernadine of Sienna (gamblers) is great on Bingo night. Our recent graffiti incident turned our prayers to St. Luke, the patron saint of artists. We figured if he could put paint on, he could help us get it off.

"ur" patron saint must be St. Sebastian, the patron saint of the extremely busy.


13 comments:

Zbaerenlovesme said...

I love you, Sister.

mph said...

Why is St Luke the patron saint of artists? I thought he was a doctor.

Sharlene said...

Priceless!

Bryant said...

more interesting topics next time sister :) please

katy said...

Let's see *your* interesting blog, Bryant!

katy said...

Speaking of patron saints, we are trying to sell our house and, while I don't want to bury a statue, I thought I would look on line for a prayer to St Joseph for selling a house. The ones I found all refer to St Joseph being a carpenter and teaching his son the trade and that's why the real estate thing. I seem to recall reading that later translations make Joseph a stone cutter, not a carpenter but I guess that could still work. Anyway, one of the "prayers" tells St Joseph he will be "left in the dark and suffer as Jesus suffered" until the house is sold!! This is a prayer??? OMG!

Any other ideas? :-)

Donna. W said...

I'd almost pay to read this blog, if I had to. Almost, I said.

As usual, thanks for the smile. That shorthand-talk annoys the heck out of me, too.

Tami said...

I'm with you SMM on the twittering shorthand. It makes me crazy even when people text me. I want whole words please.

NCSue said...

Good evening, Sister,

I don't see how to ask a question or email you on your blog, so am trying the back door approach to let you know that you've received an award. See http://acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/06/blog-award-how-lovely.html.

Your blog is tops!

Anonymous said...

Dear Sister,

I hope you don't mind my posting this here, but I couldn't find a place to posit questions. (I'm not the most technologically oriented of people.)

The gospel today was the story of Jesus healing Jairus' daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage. Having been raised Catholic and sent to Catholic school my whole life, the story wasn't new to me, but for the first time, I couldn't understand it.

It says that when the woman touches Christ, He "feels the healing power go out of Him," and demands to know who touched Him. I can't fathom why Jesus, as powerful and fully divine as the Holy Ghost and God the Father, could neither control the "healing power" nor know who touched Him. Where is the omniscience?

I how you don't find the question impudent, Sister. The problem has troubled me all day and I can't determine any sort of answer.

Love your blog, hope you can help!

Anonymous said...

Dear Sister,
I use the prayer to Mother Cabrini on occasions when my computer goes on the fritz. She always comes through. I might add, that I learned the prayer in a slightly altered form: "Mother Cabrini, put down your MARTINI. Look down from heaven, etc. . ." Don't you agree that believing that there are martinis in heaven is a legitimate exercise of the theological virtues of Faith and Hope?

Fr. Mundabor

Anonymous said...

OMG! I'm laughing so hard I'm crying! I can't figure out how to text-abbreviate any of that, so you get the whole words! St. Theresa is my patron saint - what was I thinking! Now I have people annoying me all the time! Keep up the good work, Sister! I'm with the one who said she would almost pay to read your blog!! God Bless!

Anonymous said...

With all due respect to "katy" and "4Chiwawas"... I would hope that when you use the abbreviation "OMG" your thoughts are "Oh My Gosh" and not the use of the Lord's name in vain as this particular abbreviation refers... Especially when posting on the website of a religious! Seems almost sacrireligious to me!
Speaking of texting and tweeting the use of "OMG" is "like, really" one of the most irritating things to see texted, aside from the breaking of a commandment... now we are going to dumb down further what is already an, ahem, idiotic vernacular!