Your Number is Up

I have been under the weather. That is really a perfect explanation of my health. The weather here is pretty good these days, although another big storm is due tomorrow night. I am less than pretty good.

Lucky me. Sister St. Aloysius makes a mean chicken soup.

I am being facetious. Not about the soup. About the luck. We Catholics don't believe in luck. Luck is off the table. Which brings me to today's question:

Dear Sister Mary Martha,
I have a question for you, if I may. I am asking it here be because you don't seem to have a questions here icon. So my question is who is the patron saint of Winning the Lottery? Is there a Saint associated with the correct numbers coming up? I value your sound advice.

Huge thanks, I love your Blog and read it religiously each day.

Sister you Rock.
Anne

The comments section is the place to leave questions. Maybe I can change the setting somehow so it actually says, "questions and comments".

We have a patron saint for everything. So of course we have a patron saint for people who want to win the lottery. In this case I will send you to St. Lawrence. Because he was roasted to death on a grill, he is the patron saint of cooks. But I believe that he should be the patron saint of comics, because he had quite an ironic, if not side-splitting, sense of humor.

The reason he was roasted to death on the grill was because he flummoxed the local conquering prefect with his quiet wit. The Roman prefect had ordered Lawrence, a deacon, to round up all the treasures of the Church.

We still hear a lot about the treasures of the Church, the gold Chalices, the jeweled crowns. This is precisely what Lawrence was charged with gathering. Lawrence asked for three days to get the job done. His request was granted.

Lawrence spent the three days liquidating all the gold and jewels and candlesticks and anything else he could find and dispersing it among the poor. Then he rounded up all the beggars and lepers and blind and infirm and brought them to the prefect.

"Here are the treasures of the Church, " he announced.

This went over like a lead balloon, but Lawrence's sense of humor lasted to his dying breath. His last words were, "Turn me over, I'm done on this side."

I think St. Lawrence might be able to handle your need for a boatload of cash, one way or another.

Hello Sr Mary Martha

Do you know of any saints who felt that they were constantly under a cloud? Jinxed. Or that God's blessings were being blocked.

Also do you know any prayers to remedy the situation?

Jane

Get this straight. God's blessings aren't being blocked by some kind of neutron cloud. And being "jinxed" is just another word for "bad luck". There is no such thing as bad luck. Or a jinx.

If you're having trouble with God's blessings, it's because you are having trouble with God's blessings.

And yes, there's a saint for that.

St. John of God. One of my favorites. He did everything but accept God's blessings. He did absolutely everything he felt like doing, good or bad, for most of his life until one day, God, like Dr. Phil, came and asked John, "How's that working for ya?" At that point, John was enjoying life in a 16th century mental institution, so you can imagine how it had been working for him.

From that point on, he put his impulsive actions to work for God, hence his saintly name, "John of God. I like this little prayer for the one reminder it holds, a reminder that has the power to turn your life around. Act out of love.

Saint John of God, help us to act out of love as soon as we feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Help us learn to fight the little voices in our heads and hearts that give us all sorts of practical reasons to wait or delay in our service of God. Amen