Ports in a Storm

Hi, Sister. Recently my family sold our house-- a lot more quickly than we expected. This is great, except that now we have to find a new place to live in just a few weeks, and we're having trouble. I know you're supposed to ask for the intercession of St. Joseph to sell your house. Who are you supposed to ask for prayers when you want to find a new house...fast?

That's St. Joseph, too. He buys and sells real estate. You may recall that St. Joseph had to move his family right quick. Over night.  He found a place in Egypt (not that you'd want to go there these days).

Hi sister, I just learned that I had salmonella poisoning, although thankfully it wasn't severe. At about the same time my best friend became extremely ill and had to be operated. All this to say we barely came out and are intensely grateful for our lives. As my friend put it, its like God came down and shook us and said wake up and see that your not immortal, fools. Is there a saint or a particular prayer for situations like these? 

I am a little confused. A prayer for when these things are happening or a prayer of gratitude that you came out unscathed?  I don't think you need any intercessory prayer to be grateful, unless you were already praying for the intercession of a saint and the saint came through for you. I always thank people for praying for me.  I hope everyone does, even if those people were in Heaven at the time that they prayed for you.

So a patron saint then for when the storm is raging. That would be our old pal St. Scholastica. She was the sister of St. Benedict. They were twins.

Not identical twins. Don't you hate it when people cluelessly ask a mother of twins, a boy and a girl, "Are they identical?"  I have actually seen that happen.  "Do you know what identical means?"  I would be tempted to make that my answer. Or, "One is a boy and one is a girl, so, NO."  The mothers in question have always been gracious and simply answered, "No."  Perhaps they were thinking, "...you dumb bunny..."

Anyhow, St. Scholastica was having a swell visit with her brother at his monastery. She was having such a good time that she didn't want to leave.  She prayed there would be some excuse for her to stay and a huge storm blew up. She got to spend the rest of the evening with her brother and then she died the next day.

Now she is the patron saint invoked against raging storms, which is a little odd, since she brought the storm rather than ended it.  She was pretty happy about the raging storm.

The fact remains that she is the patron saint to keep us safe from storms and when there is a raging storm I do think of her.

You might also think about St. Paul.  God came and gave him quite the shake, too.

Angels and Josephs

We're still discussing one of my favorite topics.


I'm sorry, you lost me after you said this priest taught you about dreams and then went on to say he didn't believe the miracles of the OT (at least the manna and the Red Sea) were really miracles at all, other than the timing. So how is it this man, who couldn't figure out the miracle thing, which is clearly spelled out in the Bible, be an expert on dreams, which are usually so vague and confusing? So St.Joseph was really the angel in his dream and the warning in the wise men's dreams were really from themselves? I don't believe that all dreams are safely tucked away into that defragmentation theory. If you've had a vision dream, you'll know it. And they aren't always clear as to their meaning, at least not right away. I truly believe God uses dreams sometimes to get our attention and put us on a path of discovery.
Kathy

Oh, Kathy, you'll have to read what I said more closely. I did not say the priest did not believe in the miracles of the Old Testament. I said he was undaunted by the fact that manna grows on trees and that he believed it was a miracle because the Chosen People stumbled across it right when they needed it.

He wasn't an expert on dreams. He was just explaining a couple of things he had read about dreams. I don't even know why he went into that. It didn't really have anything to do with the point he was making, that the Prophets were relating a dream they had had.

I'm the one that took up the gauntlet. I found that one piece of information so fascinating that I read everything I could find on the subject, including the silly stuff, like 'dream dictionaries'. I had the same reaction when I visited the train that hauled Abraham Lincoln's body across the country after his assassination. There was one piece of information I found so fascinating (that Lincoln was re-embalmed over and over again during the trip), it launched me into reading everything I could find about Lincoln.

But your point is a very good one, because we do indeed find people in the Bible, in the Old Testament and the New, who have angels visit them with very important information that must be heeded. That said, we don't want to believe that angels are visiting people in their sleep, just because they think that's what happened. I'm sure you enjoyed the lovely picture up top of the angel visiting St. Joseph. But we don't want to think very long about this angel visiting Joseph...

Smith.

I've actually covered this before. Go ahead and read that. I'll wait here and pass the time watching this:







I would just really want to caution people that St. Joseph didn't have angels visit him in his sleep night in and night out. I would think that if actual angels visited you in your sleep, angels coming with the power of a message straight from God, that you wouldn't wonder for one minute whether it was really undigested beef.

Summer Rain

St. Swithun, along with Batman, has a whole new fan club of people new to the bandwagon.

Thanks for that introduction to St. Swithun, Sister! I didn't know anything about him. I also love the picture of him standing in the rain! Any chance the artist would sell more copies of it?

That painting was done by a fellow Esty artist, B Meg Designs. I'm sure she would be more than happy to accommodate you. I told her there were no real pictures of St. Swithun from which to draw and I told her his story. She came up with that wonderful plaque which hangs right by the door so I can at least pretend it might be raining.

I'll bet you could ask her to paint just about any saint you'd like for that matter. What else is she doing with her time? She's an artist!

Dear Sister: Could you tell me who drew the picture of St. Swithin that you posted at the top of this post? The one with the geese. It looks very much like something my son, Ben Hatke, drew. Ben is a pretty well known artist and illustrator and I can usually recognize his work. Thanks! Mrs. Hatke

I'm sorry I can't. Why don't you show it to Ben and ask him. I can't see a signature on there. Your son is very handsome. My father liked breakfast the best, too. When he wouldn't eat we could always tempt him with eggs.


Long time reader, first time petitioner: I'm trying to find a patron saint for camping. A group of friends and I are going camping next week and I wanted to get a head-start looking for assistance for good weather and a happy camping trip.

You could always go with St. Joseph. I'm sure he did plenty of camping on his way from Nazareth to Bethlehem, from Bethlehem to Egypt, and finally from Egypt to Nazareth. I'll bet he has some fabulous camping tips. Oh, the stories he could tell. Scarey Herod stories around the campfire! And he didn't even have a car!

I'd also have to throw in a word for St. Anthony the Hermit. Anthony was the original hermit monk. He invented hermit monking. He found he just couldn't be holy around other people all the time. Back then they weren't even talking on their cell phones all the time or text messaging constantly or any of that superlatively annoying stuff. So he packed up to go live in a cave.

Unfortunately, people followed him. So he moved to a farther cave. And on and on. I don't think the people that followed him were as good at being holy or camping as St. Anthony was. They found it necessary to live a little bit near each other. They formed a hermit monk support group.

The hermit monk support group eventually came to be called a "monastery".

And now you know...the REST of the story. Thank you Paul Harvey. My father loved him, too.



In February 2006, I visited St. Swithun's (or Swithin's, as they spelled it on the historical markers) original burial site and his reconstructed shrine at Winchester Cathedral in England. Unfortunately, during the Reformation, his relics were pulled from his second tomb and thrown into a big pile of other saints' relics that had been in the Cathedral, in the yard outside the Cathedral. After the mob that desecrated the relics had left, monks came back and collected all the bones, placing them in large chests that are now inside the Cathedral. So St. Swithin is still there, but nobody knows where exactly among all the jumbled bones. Some of his relics (head, arms) had also been sent to other places (for example, Canterbury had his head), but I don't know if they were similarly desecrated (probably, the mobs were very thorough) and lost. And, although my visit was in February and in July, it was raining cats and dogs. But only in Winchester. Not raining north of there, or south of there, just in Winchester. I guess he's still upset about all the mistreatment.

Yes, I knew about that. I didn't want to bring it up. It upsets people. Hope your vacation wasn't ruined by all the rain or saint parts.