The Devil Made Me Do It

Sister, my poor son has a devil of a temper--old-style irascible, this kid, and it gets the better of him all the time. Emotions just bubbling up everywhere all over the place. Now we have (along with appropriate disciplines) instructed him to ask his patron saint (Stephen) and guardian angel to pray for him, but are there any saints for a hot temper? Or perhaps better, one who was calm, collected and measured in all things? He needs some heavenly intervention.

It he left handed?  Just kidding.  That was an old nun joke.

St. Stephen, the patron saint for headache pain (as he died getting hit in the head with rocks), is a better patron saint for you than for your son, it seems to me.

I always recommend St. Peter for the hot headed.  He flew off the handle a lot, but he turned out all right. "Upon this rock I shall build My church", and all that.

Maybe you need St. Jude, the patron saint for impossible causes. Or St. Rita, for difficult cases.

Maybe you need to take a look at what's causing him to fly off the handle all the time. How old is he?  If he's two, I wouldn't be too concerned. But if he's 12 or older, I'd sit him down for a talk.  He needs some coping mechanisms.  I knew a lady that gave her son an egg when he was mad, and tell him to squeeze it til it broke.

Have you ever tried that?  You can't break an egg by squeezing it in your hand.  One of the wonders of God's creation.  If that didn't get him past his initial tantrum (this was a teenager), he was to take it outside and hurl it against a tree.  That will break it.  And his anger, apparently.

Anger, by the way, doesn't stem from hate.  It arises out of hurt. Anger is unaddressed hurt, physical or emotional. So the question isn't "what are you mad about?", it's "what's hurting you?".  You don't need to solve his problems. You just need to be compassionate.  "That must feel terrible" is a better response than "you'll feel better tomorrow".

To that end, I recommend St. Padre Pio, who had the ability to read souls. He'll be good for the whole family. Cool as a cucumber, that one.  He compared confession to dusting the furniture. It should be done once a week.  But every day, he believed, one should take a spiritual inventory. I think doing that would be a great help to your son.  He should take his spiritual temperature every day, and try to assess what he needs to clean and what he has already cleaned. And then take Padre Pio's most famous advice:

"Pray, Hope and Don't Worry"

St. Pio didn't have a easy time of it. He was very sick a lot of the time. He had the stigmata, which is not like some Jesus tattoo.  The wounds are the actual wounds of Christ and are painful accordingly. He had horrible fights with the devil that left him bruised.  So, I think his words, "Pray, Hope and Don't Worry" are particularly sobering.

Unless your son is two. Then really, really...don't worry.

Loud Quiet

Since you mention questions can be asked in the comments section, I have a question I need to ask, please. I teach faith formation in our church, and the kids in my class are getting confirmed this year. We were talking about patron saints, and suggested that the kids choose someone that they have an affinity with -- maybe a saint shares their weaknesses or strengths or interests. One girl asked me for suggestions for a patron saint of shyness. Searching on the internet I found references to St. Dymphna, but I'm not sure I want to recommend her. It seems like a lot of the saints lived quiet, holy lives. Can you recommend someone nice for this nice little girl? Thank you for your wonderful blog.

You're welcome. And thank you for the wonderful work you do!

No, poor St. Dymphna and her crazy father is not the way to go for shyness.

St. Rosalia springs to mind. She went off to live an cave. Apparently no one gave her another thought. She moved from her original cave to another cave. Still no one came by for a visit. She wanted to be away from everyone, so it worked out well for her. No one noticed when the years passed and no one heard from her. Gone and forgotten.

At some point, the new cave caved in on her and that was that. No one knew. Until years later some men were excavating her last cave and found her remains. "Oh yeah," they finally said, "this is that Rosalia who went off to live in a cave. We forgot about her."  They took her remains back to town. The town was suffering from a terrible plague and when Rosalia finally came home, she cured everyone.

Perhaps this isn't a great story for an eighth grade girl who is shy.

How about St. Therese, the Little Flower? We think of her as this great saint. We know everything about her. We have her hair in a glass case and all her things from before she was a nun. She is a Doctor of the Church. Only three women hold that title and all three were declared Doctors of the Church only in recent years. Her book, "The Story of a Soul" sealed that deal.

But the truth is, when little Therese died at age 24, the nuns fretted because they couldn't think of anything to say about her. It's a little embarrassing when you can't think of a eulogy.

"She washed the dishes well." The end. Let's eat.

She had lived a life of quiet prayer and contemplation, completely undistinguished. She is the patron saint of missionaries because she wanted to be one. She never went anywhere in her life. She is also the patron saint of airline pilots. I think that was supposed to be a little joke.

But she left behind the story of what it means to be in harmony with God. Very big stuff.

And she was cute as a button.

An Angel Gets a Moustache

Marion T I agree with you. The way our prayers are answered, the way our angel protects us is not always the same as we would desire. When one hears a distinct voice commanding one to RUN HOME, just in time to prevent a fire from consuming one's house, where did that come from? I rather think it's from a benevolent presence and not simply one's imagination. Father Barron speculates, in the Catholicism series, that each angel is its own species and that makes the most sense to me. I cringe whenever I hear from a Catholic who should know better, "Well, dear old Auntie Meg is now an angel in Heaven, watching over us!" when old Auntie Meg has shuffled off her mortal coil. Charity would compel me to eventually straighten her out on that notion but I'm a coward and don't know how to avoid hurt feelings there. Any suggestions?

There has been a suggestion or two in the comments section (which is also the place to leave questions, by the way).  I'll add my two cents.

It depends on the circumstance and the person. You wouldn't want to say anything that might embarrass the speaker of the misinformation if you were in a group of people, calling her out as a dumb bunny. You could say something very simple, like, "Oh I hope she is watching over us in Heaven! That means she's a saint! Everyone who is dead and in Heaven is a saint."

At least it doesn't sound like we're lowering Auntie Meg's pay grade.

I, too, cringe at such comments, but I can generally get away with a mild reminder (based on my get up) that Auntie Meg is a saint in Heaven, not an angel. I might even go so far as to mention that angels are a separate entity from human beings.

I tend not to do that, though.  For one thing, these things are generally said at funerals and wakes, when people already have enough to think about.  I might pipe up if it comes up in a regular old conversation, not at a mourning fest.

And even then....not so much. It really depends on the circumstances. I pick my battles, as they say. And sometimes, you just know your thoughts fall on deaf ears.

My mother is one of those people who insist, along with countless others, that if you shave the hair off anyplace on your body, it will grow back darker and thicker. I've listened to her admonish young people never to "start shaving" and tell the story about how Aunt Char's sister shaved her face and ended up with a thick black beard.

Maybe that's actually what happened to St. Wilgefortis.

The truth is Aunt Char's sister probably shaved her face because she already had a thick black beard. If shaving caused hair to grow back thicker and darker there would be no bald men or women and no men with scraggly beards.

After hearing her say it again recently, I did a little research. A lot of people believe this myth. Maybe I'm the one who is wrong? Maybe when women shave, their hair grows back darker and thicker?

The doctors at Mayo Clinic beg to differ, as does every single other person who knows anything about hair, shaving and hair growth.

But I'm not going to mention this to my mother, because she will tell me they're wrong and I'm wrong because she saw what happened to Aunt Char's sister. Which isn't even empirical proof, although I'm sure I could never convince her of that, either.

I imagine that people who want to believe that Auntie Meg is an angel in Heaven will continue to do so, no matter what you say to them. It's not the worse thing you could get wrong, theologically speaking.

Angels Don't Need Wings

I knew my post the other day would yield a guardian angel story or two. I was not disappointed. This one was my favorite:
My mom insists that she was protected by her guardian angel when she was a kid growing up in Louisiana. She was picking blackberries and as she reached up, she got pushed backwards really hard and fell onto the ground. She looked up into the bush and there was a huge snake on the branch. She swears up and down she never saw it or heard it and no one was around her. 

Score one for the guardian angel! And I guess for your mom, as well. Paving the way for our next comment.

Sister St. Aloysius is too narrow in her intellectual view of the role of Guardian Angels. If saints who are earth bound can bi locate, who is to say that angels cannot? I see nothing contradictory in my Guardian Angel eternally adoring the face of the Father and simultaneously protecting me from temptations and errant buses.

Neither do I. I think perhaps I didn't explain very well. I believe I more or less said this if you re- read. I must have confused you with my last comment about invisible winged creatures protecting us from getting hit by a bus.

As the risk of confusing everyone further, I must admit that I am sometimes baffled when watching some poor jamoke on the news, covered in bandages from head to toe, after being accidentally shot out of a cannon they crawled in to inspect, saying something along the lines of, "My Guardian Angel sure was looking after me!"

I know. They mean they shouldn't have survived. But I can't help but think, "Where was your Guardian Angel when you crawled in there?"

Maybe I am more of a "glass half empty" person than I care to admit.

The thing that intrigued me about Sister St. Aloysius' comment was that it took the burden off guardian angels to stop people from showing up on "Dumbest Home Videos" and onto the true job of your guardian angels, the protection of your soul. I didn't mean to imply that they can't or don't do both, although I certain ended up implying just that.

Perhaps my real point in talking about it at all is to dispel the notion of big winged creatures, as angels don't have feathers, I'll wager. They aren't former people who earn feathers in Heaven. They are an entities with free will and that's where the similarity between angels and us ends. Did you know that the Church frowns on the notion of naming your Guardian Angels? Yep.  That's to pull you back from thinking about them as winged people from Heaven that you get to call by name. You don't know their names and unless you have a mystical vision, you never will. They are not to be "PERSONified".

I admit that I bristle sometimes at the notions people have. The other day I was walking to the Post Office along a very narrow sidewalk that stretches for blocks on end all along the marina here. It's a beautiful walk with all the boats in the harbor on one side and a bike path on the other.  But for a long stretch it's a narrow sidewalk right next to two lanes of on coming traffic and a big curve in the road. I can't tell you how many times I've walked it, and every single time I worry that one false move by any driver, distracted by a phone call or text, or the guy in the next lane crossing his lane line and the driver next to me swerving just slightly to miss him and I'm mowed down like a corn stalk in the fall.

So imagine my shock when, returning from the Post Office that fine day, just where I had been walking, a car had done just that. Jumped the curb and come to rest a little sideways in a giant hedge. Anyone walking there at that moment would have been toast. A woman with a baby in a carriage had just done what I had, and we stood looking at the car and the ambulance and the fire truck agape.

If our Guardian Angels were indeed watching out for us, what about those people in the car?

The hedge, I guess. The glass is half full.

Last Week In Heaven

Somehow our house has become a black hole for the internet! I've had to visit with you from school and I don't have time for that. Forgive me for my neglect and some big neglect it has been.

This has been a great week in saints.

Which reminds me, there is a raging argument here on the blog on the "That's the Queen of Heaven, Just Ignore Her" post, which is a very good read if you have a cup of coffee at your elbow and children who don't bother you when you get on the phone or the internet. Some of you have at least one of those things going on, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, back to last week.  Not only did we kick off the week with Archangels, we also honored our Guardian Angels and everyone's favorite garden statue saint, St. Francis of Assisi. I've waxed poetic about St. Francis before, in particular bemoaning his place in history as the patron saint of birds and squirrels and his place in our minds as a bird bath holder.  He had a lot more going on than that.  I'm sorry I didn't give you a heads up for his feast day.

But a couple of days before Francis, we had the feast of our Guardian Angels. I recently was shocked to hear a nun telling someone that the notion of Guardian Angels was just some sort of a Catholic fairy tale for children. I had to grab her and push her under the stairwell and shake my bony crooked finger in her face. And I thought nuns were better educated these days! I had  hoped that nuns weren't wrong nearly as much as they used to be.

The whole incident triggered quite a discussion between me and Sister St. Aloysius. Ever the intellectual, she had a take on Guardian Angels that was new to me, that frankly made a lot of sense. She always makes a lot of sense, even when she's standing out there in left field. When the ball comes to her, she is always ready.

I always thought of Guardian Angels as an angel companion that was ever at our sides, like the prayer "ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide."   But she sees them more as an advocate, every person's personal advocate, in Heaven, but AND by one's side.  It certainly is a more 'adult' view than our rather childish image of a giant invisible winged creature.

She has drawn her conclusions, the separated brethren will be pleased to know, from this passage from Matthew (18:10):  "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven."

Our Guardian Angels aren't standing by snatching us back from being hit by buses or kissing scraped knees. They are advocates for our souls and only our souls. They work on us through our senses and our imaginations but never on our wills, except by working through our intellects.  And they are with us for eternity, even after we make it to Heaven.  Like retirees at the Knights of Columbus lodge.

Perhaps my mistaken acquaintance confused the idea that angels work through our imaginations with actually being imaginary. Perhaps she had had little sleep and her mind had drifted into a pleasant fantasy of dozing in the arms of a sweet messenger of God while she half listened to a lecture on St. Thomas Aquinas' thoughts on angels and how they protect our souls. And then, while her lids drooped, she wondered why her angel hadn't stopped her when she was 8 from riding her bike down a bumpy hill that was much too steep, with her feet off the pedals and her pigtails flying, until she was going so fast she couldn't stop and broke her arm.

Perhaps he did stop her. From breaking her head.  She's a nun now, so he's doing a great job.

Take it to the (River) Bank

This has been a great couple of days for Heaven. Yesterday was Angel Day. Not that that's what it is really called. It was the feast day of Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, three archangels who "stand before God". Somebody asked me once if there were any girl angels. (Keep in mind that angels are not dead people, they are a whole separate entity.)  I don't think there are any boy angels. I don't think angels are either girls or boys. I realize that in the Bible when they show up they are mentioned as "three young men" and the like.  But the truth is that they could not have manifested as women, roaming around by themselves in those times, let alone that if they had, no one would have paid any attention to them. We really have come a long way, baby. Sure they have boy names, but what of it?  We were thinking of them as boys.  What were we supposed to call them?  "Pat", "Chris" and "Vivian"? In any case, it was their feast day yesterday.

And today is the feast day of one of our very favorite saints, St. Therese the Little Flower. I was amazed to read today that she was only made a Doctor of the Church in 1997. It seems so long ago, I thought it had to have been 1954 or so.Time stops while it flies, one of life's ironies.

We love St. Therese, who I think of as the patron saint for people who are annoyed by the annoying habits of others.  Therese knew the value of offering up suffering for the Poor Souls in Purgatory and there was plenty of suffering for Therese in a cloistered convent with all those women doing nothing but menial tasks and praying.  She didn't want to miss any suffering so she wrote down every annoyance that she bore so it could count for something.  On her deathbed she mentioned that she'd like to spend her Heaven doing good on Earth, so you might consider her a friend when you'd like someone to pray for you.

And speaking of saints' days, here a a question from a reader regarding good old St. Christopher.

I would love for you to explain to me in lay terms why Pope Paul VI removed his saint day from the calendar. Also, I am happy to learn that he is also the patron saint of athletes as well as travelers. I will never leave on a trip without my medal around my neck.

I've explained it before, but people really hate hearing it. It was because the story of St. Christopher, when told fully, is rather obviously a myth. It is precisely because of stories like that of St. Christopher that the Church began a more thorough vetting of candidates for sainthood. At one point a dog almost got in.

The full story of Christopher is that he was some sort of large soldier type. He wanted to serve whomever was the most powerful person. So he was fighting for some king and the king lost to the devil. Christopher left the king and started fighting for the devil until he saw the devil bow down to the Cross.  An old hermit told Christopher that the way to follow Christ was to humbly serve mankind. The hermit put Christopher (a name that means "Christ bearer", which means his name must have been something else before the famous "incident") in charge of ferrying people across a river on his shoulders.

Then comes the part where Christopher is carrying a small boy who grows ever heavier on the way across. Christopher can hardly get to the other side and when he does he asks the boy, "How come you're so heavy?" And the boy replies, "I am the Christ Child and I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders."

I think it's kind of a silly story. The whole beginning has a "Three Pigs", "Three Billy Goats"  feel to it.  The only part I like is the part where the hermit tells Christopher the best way to follow Christ. You can take that to the bank.

A bunch of saints were quietly taken off the calendar. The fourteen Holy Helpers went, too, for much the same reasons. But no one minds if you wear your St. Christopher medal. I'm sure there was a holy man out there somewhere, very possibly doing nothing but helping people across a river, serving Chris,t like St. Therese, in the most humble way. And he certainly carried the Christ Child across that river because as He would have told you, "Whatever you do to the least of My brothers, that you also do unto Me."

God's Point of View

What about any tips on forgiving and loving our enemies, especially family members that harm us maybe even in a criminal way eg. outrage of modesty? Thanks!

A little, although I think it is extremely difficult to get our heads around it all. There is a name for people who successfully navigate the waters of forgiving the unforgivable: saints.

The first bit of confusion lies in the idea that when we forgive someone it somehow means we okay with their transgression.  Often accomplish this very simple form of forgiveness and we do employ it all the time when someone forgets our birthday or shows up two hours later for the Thanksgiving dinner with their contribution to the feast, the appetizer. The type of person who hangs onto these petty grievances is a sad soul indeed.

These are the moments when the phrase "love conquers all" seems to be true.

God's love conquers all. Ours is often found wanting.

The key word to your question is "enemies". Forgiveness is a very different task when we're no longer talking about the snippy remark your sister made about your new shoes or that person who shot into the parking space you spotted after they just pulling into the lot you've been circling for 20 minutes. An enemy is someone who is actively trying to harm you.

Do we have to forgive them? I sorry to tell you, yes.  In fact, Jesus went a step further and said we have to love them.

To be honest, I find it easier to love them than to forgive them.  I, too, get hung up in the barbed wire fence of forgiveness implying that I'm okay with the horror they're perpetrating. As far as I can tell, I have to forgive them over and over again.

Which sounds awful, until I imagine God saying to us all, "Welcome to my life."

The only way I've been able to keep my head above water in the forgiveness department is to try to see the person as God must see them. His beautiful child, his wonderful creation, all bent and twisted and run over by a bus. To try to have compassion for the tortured soul so removed from harmony with God's love.

I must add that if someone is doing you harm, or trying to do you harm, you don't have to forgive them from four feet away or sitting in a car with them. You can do it in another state or from across town (if the town is big enough to provide you a safe distance).

The first hermits were people who felt they could not connect with God strongly enough while hanging around with other human beings and so moved farther and farther away from people.  Some found it too difficult to live that austere lifet without the encouragement of other people who were also trying to do it and that's how monasteries were formed.  But I digress.

I just bring up the monks to point out that they went to extremes to keep their own souls safe and you must do the same. Like when you're a  plane and they tell you to make sure you have your own oxygen mask on first before you pass out trying to put one on someone else.

The only other encouragement I can give you is to tell you that forgiving and being forgiven has more power than just about anything else I can think of.

Forgive me for the dangling participle.

I'll Get Around To It

Hi Sister I am a terrible procrastinator (actually no, I am a great procrastinator – but it is terrible!), in fact it has taken me weeks to get around to asking you for help! Everyone says just get started, or just set yourself a deadline which is easy for the non-procrastinator to say, but I am out of control! Do you have any suggestions for getting some discipline in my life? Many thanks! Sara 

I haven't been procrastinating in answering. I have had one computer related problem after another. Practically by the hour.  Even the eighth grade boys have been flummoxed.  I actually can't believe I finally am able to post. It seems like a miracle.

It is not a miracle. Miracles are spontaneous and unexplained. I don't know what the explanation is that things are suddenly working when for days they have not been working, but I'm sure there is one (who is probably called "Sister Mary Martha").  And the road back has been anything but spontaneous.

To your question: First off, of course we have a patron saint for procrastinators.  St. Expeditus.  Although, truth be told, poor Expeditus has little to do with procrastination, and his patronage of foot draggers, like St. Luke and his paintings, is giantly dubious.  If it weren't for the Church proclaiming him a saint, I'd go so far as to say his very sainthood is questionable.

It seems some nuns got their hands on a box of bones that they thought said, "St. Expeditus", when in fact the box said something that actually translates more along the lines of  "Priority Mail".  It's as though they got a box that said "Fragile" in a language they didn't understand and thought it said "St. Frageelly."  Nonetheless, St. Expeditus is the patron saint of the time challenged and postal workers.

And of course, Fed-Ex.

I do have suggestions.  Start by asking yourself some questions. Why aren't you doing what you need to do?  Is it tough to face? Even something like paying bills can be tough to face as you watch your hard earned money fly out the door. Jesus said, "Take no purse" on you path to follow Him. So grab a pen and smile.

Or is it just that you would rather watch "Real Housewives of AnyWhere" than do what you're supposed to do? What is it you're supposed to do, anyhow?  Clean the house? Take the dog for his shots? Call your mom?

Or is it that you can't make a choice about what to do next, so you do nothing? Like when you go to one of those restaurants with a six page menu and you can't decide what to have and finally, when the waitress comes, you panic and order a tuna melt and feel bad because it's not at all what you wanted.  This is easy to resolve. Choose.  Just one thing. It opens the door for the rest.  If someone says to you, "Oh, look, they serve breakfast all day" you suddenly realize you can have a blintz! If you decide you want something hot, you can skip the sandwich page!

Here is your conundrum. You need discipline in your life. In order to have discipline in your life you have to have some discipline.

Uh-oh.

I suggest you make a "to-do" list.  Prioritize it in the order in which it needs to get done. Do as much of it as you can every day, even if it is just one thing, but if you are going slowing and only doing one thing, then you'll have to add to the bottom of the list (or the top) as new tasks arrive.  If it takes you all week to clean the bathroom, the kitchen will need work by then.

Try to keep moving.  If you can get yourself going, you'll soon find you feel so much better about getting things done than you do having watched "Play Date" on the Lifetime Channel that your own sense of accomplishment will motivate you.

But you do need discipline, and only you can muster that.  For that I recommend St. John of God, who could never settle on anything until he literally drove himself crazy. Once he finally made a choice he was a human dynamo.

Tell Me a Story

I love this blog :D I have a question as well--I work as a story person (writer & story artist) and I'm trying to pull together blogs that have the basic principles in their storywork of creation, learning, & teaching. I'd like to draw an illustration for blog sidebars in a "Secret of Kells" style. Is there a patron saint you would recommend that's very story & creation-centric to draw? (I hope this question isn't dumb)

No patron saint question is too dumb.  I was once asked who was the patron saint for tennis elbow. I can't remember what I came up with.  There's always the trusty fallback of St. Christopher, patron saint of athletes.

I digress.

The patron saint of artists is St. Luke. Frankly, I have always found this a bit lame, as they say.  St. Luke is the patron saint of artists because he supposedly painted a portrait  or two of Our Lady. There is no evidence of this or that St. Luke ever so much as picked up a pack of colored pencils.

He's always depicted with his easel and oils. I don't think oils were invented yet. I don't know much about art history. I'll have to look that up. Certainly people painted things with something. Not colored pencils.

But St. Luke is still a grand patron saint for you because he wrote not only the Gospel of Luke, but the Acts of the Apostles. He palled around with St. Paul and other disciples and apostles and Mary and he gathered their stories.

His Gospel is really the most personal story of Jesus, with the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Visitation, and Jesus getting lost at the Temple.  It depicts Jesus as a constant champion of the poor and downtrodden. It includes the story of the Good Thief.  Great stories all. All our favorite stories about Jesus are in the Gospel of Luke.

And all the great stories about the Apostles and the early church!

If St. Luke ever actually painted anything the painting did not survive. There are a couple of painting floating around out there that some folks seem to believe are his, but there is no good reason to believe they are his works. We hope your paintings fair better. At least they will actually exist.

I hope you'll come back and explain what &amp means or is or does.

The Mummy

So funny and so sensible! It's kind of related, but I have to go stay with my cousin who is seriously ill. We've always been close - more like brother and sister. But the problem is with his wife. If I was charitable, I'd say she was "shy" (that's what my mother says. She is a good woman). I'm less charitable, I'd say she was unfriendly to her husband's family. She can't compromise on anything - it's all right or all wrong (mostly wrong!) and once she makes up her mind, that's it. However crazy, she sticks to her guns and won't budge. I am happy to help my cousin but I am really worried about coping with his wife while I'm there. And I am only staying with them so that she can keep going to work while he's ill and doesn't have to take unpaid leave. Any advice on being nice and keeping the peace, please?

Yes, keep the peace by being peaceful.  When a person is seriously ill, all bets are off. However cantankerous or pig headed that woman may or may not be, her husband is so sick that you have to come and stay with them.  Isn't that enough to just let everything else go? Get a grip.

When I was a little girl we spent Sunday's with my cousins. They were a big unruly family. We were a small quiet family.  We kept our toys nice. They hardly had any toys and the ones they had were cheap and torn up and rather uninteresting. We ran around outside and ate food I didn't care for very much. I ran too close to a rose bush and was raked across the forehead with a thorny branch. One of the boys laughed at me.

So every Sunday I whined about going there. One Sunday I believe my mother had had enough of my whining.

Me: Ugh to we have to go there! I hate going there!

Mom: Did it ever occur to you that right now as we speak they are all saying, "Ugh. Do they have to come here?  We hate it when they come here!" ?

It had not occurred to me. (I feel compelled to add that every week, after all that complaining, I always whined when it was time to go home as I was immersed in fun.)

Has it occurred to you the your cousin's wife is not looking forward to having to deal with not only a seriously ill husband and all that stress and worry and pain and expense, but relatives who will stink after 3 days (as the saying goes) moving in for extensive stays?  She can be grateful and horrified at the same time, you know.

Here is my advice, which I actually lifted from some lady whose name I cannot recall. She was some sort of "life coach" who was yammering on TV.  She was talking to a client who had to face her mean old sister and was dreading the encounter.  "See her wrapped in bandages, " the life coach said.

What a wise thought! See her the way she really is, in pain and worried sick and trying to cope as best she can. Wrapped in bandages.

You're the healthy one here. Your job is to be nothing but loving, no matter what.

I hope you make good soup.

Damage Control

	Hi, Sister, Do you know a patron saint I can invoke for strength and perseverance and against being discouraged? My house and most of my hometown were just flooded by a hurricane. On a less drastic note, I'm struggling to complete my master's thesis, and it feels like I'll never finish. Oh you poor thing! Our prayers are with you. At least you can offering your own suffering for the Poor Souls in Purgatory. We can't speak for your poor neighbors. Of course there are many saints who have weathered storms and saints who are invoked against storms.  There are saints who were trying to head off to be missionaries or trying to escape God's plan for them (by boat) and were dashed against the rocks before they headed on the right path. St. Barbara is the official saint against lightening and storms, but I'm going with St. Scholastica for you! St. Scholastic was the sister of the famous St. Benedict of the Rule of Benedict fame.  In fact, they were fraternal twins. She was visiting her brother in a little house just outside his monastery walls (because she couldn't go into the monastery).  They were having a wonderful engaging conversation about philsophy and life and theology that went on all day and into the evening, when Benedict announced that he had to vamoosh before evening prayers. Scholastica begged him to stay but he insisted he must leave. Not surprising for a man who made up a strict list of rules for everyone to follow. Having lost this round, Scholastica bowed her head in prayer. I'm sure her brother thought that she was just praying for him, but she wasn't. She was praying to God to keep Benedict from leaving. A violent storm arose. Benedict was trapped. For the night. Their conversation continued until morning when the storm broke and the siblings parted, never to see each other again. Scholastica headed back to the house in which she was staying for her visit and died.  I think she's your girl for a little storm control. You will, by the way, finish your master's thesis. Unless you don't. That will be up to you.

A Little Discipline

Sister, Who is the appropriate patron saint for teachers who are tiny and diminutive compared to their large high school students and are scared of mutiny? Thanks, and many blessings!

You don't need a patron saint. You need a habit. Everyone is afraid of a nun in a habit. Young and old, large and small. People are so afraid of nuns, either that one is going to crack them with a ruler or simply that they might say something inappropriate of offensive, that they just shut up.

That makes for an orderly classroom.

Anyone from the dog whisperer to those TV nannies will tell you that the key to discipline is follow through. No empty threats must pass your lips.  If you tell them they must be quiet and they are not, you have to kick them out or send them to the principle one by one and two by two until you are left with no one.

And no negotiating!

A student is talking to another student. "Bob!" you say to the talker in a calm voice.  "Go sit over there."

"But..., " Bob begins.

"I'm not going to discuss this with you. Go sit over there."

Bob moves.  After ten minutes, tell Bob he can go back to his usual seat.

Discipline is not about size. It is about discipline. Your own.

Like this, only in a habit

The teacher I most feared in grade school was about 4'2". Granted she was a nun and,  as if that wasn't enough, she had a face that could stop a train. Like an old witch, really, where the nose and chin look as though they are about to meet at some  point in not so distant the future. So she had all that going for her, too. We had over 50 children in our classroom. No one dared misbehave. Or  misspeel misspell anything.

We don't really want our students to fear us. Not really. We want to create an atmosphere of mutual respect.  That can't happen without discipline. 

I'll get off the soapbox atop my high horse now and recommend the newly minted saint, St. Andre of Montreal.  He was teeny.  Under five feet.  His job was behind the reception desk there at the monastery.  It could be he had to face some scary types there behind the counter.  Or not.

He was a little nothing of a nobody little man.  But he thought there should be a giant Oratory built to honor St. Joseph and he put his little mind to that. The St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal literally looks like you've reached the top of the beanstalk and found where the giant lives, magic harp and magic chicken and all. Brother Andre did that through the sheer power of his will and prayer.

That's discipline!

Thank you, Please

We have gotten a cavalcade of questions but I wanted to take a moment and say, "Thank you." Thanks for reading, writing in, answering each other's questions sometimes more quickly and succinctly that I ever could. And thanks for being understanding when I don't keep up as well as I should.

When I was a young teenager I had a nun who was our theology teacher. This was at an all girl Catholic school. She never taught what you might think of when you think of "theology"--the study of God. There was no catechism, that was all in grade school.  There was no Bible reading or study of the New Testament. We actually did a lot of that in grade school, too.

But she did give massive week long assignments. Assignments that actually took an entire week to complete. Two of them have stayed with me, and one, in particular, has been rather a lifelong assignment.

For one week we had to thank everyone for everything, no matter how large or small, no matter who it was. We were to be relentless and diligent. She must have been surprised at the end of the class when no one thanked her for giving out the assignment. That would have right in the spirit of the thing.

But I loved theology and all its many thoughts and prayers and meanings, and I was always game to take on a challenge.  No big deal, to thank people constantly. Maybe a little silly. Who really needs to be thanked all the time, anyhow? I really don't.

Off I went.  I really didn't realize how many people actually were doing things for me all the time. I'm not sure I really covered everyone and everything. I certainly hadn't thanked her for the assignment. Nonetheless, I was extremely busy all week thanking people.  It was eye opening and thought provoking.

And it felt really good.

You know, at first, you might not really mean it.  You say, "thanks" but you don't actually feel any gratitude. But it sneaks up on you.  By the end of the week I was very grateful for the people in my life and all the things they did for me. It made me want to do more for them.

And I still do it.  Once I started, I never stopped.  It's as automatic to me as a smile or a hand shake can be.  But not so automatic that I don't actually feel the gratitude.

So, I'm passing it off to you.  Try it.  Have your kids try it. One week.

Thanks.

Please and Thank You

Dear Sister, I'm a little new to learning about the Saints, so I'm hoping you can direct me here...is there a patron saint for unappreciated homemakers? (I thought that sounded better than "Who should I pray to when I want to throttle my husband?") I'm trying SO hard to be a loving, gentle, *sigh* obedient wife and mother, but it sure isn't easy when I feel taken for granted all the time. Thanks for any guidance you can give me.

You don't need a patron saint. You need a cast iron skillet. Hide behind the door and clong him with it.

I'm joking.  Although everyone should have a cast iron skillet. It's great for both cooking and attractive biceps.

I have two recommendations. The first is St. Zita, who is the patron saint of homemakers. Little Zita was a maid (so right there, you should feel a kinship).  She was actually greatly appreciated as such, but her boss didn't care for her giving out bread to beggars at the back door and running off to Mass everyday. At one point he told her she couldn't go to Mass until her work was done. She went anyhow, with the bread unbaked and the kitchen uncleaned. When she returned everything was done.

The angels did it. Kind of like the shoemaker and the elves.  Wouldn't that be the best thing in the world? To come back expecting your messy house and all that work to do to clean and tidy up and make dinner and find it all sparkling and clean and dinner in the oven?

Perhaps you should just pick up a copy of The Shoemaker and the Elves and sit around in front of your husband and cry every time you reach the end and all the shoes are made. Eventually he'll want to know why you're crying and you can explain.

There's a word for this type of behavior: passive aggressive.

You have three choices. You can continue as you are, suffering in silence.
You can continue as you are but suffer cheerfully, offering up your suffering to the Poor Souls in Purgatory. (And for that, you'll want to turn to St. Therese the Little Flower who spent her brief life doing exactly that.)

Or you can man up, as they say, and sit that fellow down and have a frank talk with him.

I believe when people do this they tend to approach it the wrong way. They approach these things in an accusatory fashion, "You make me feel terrible and unappreciated all the time."  Have you ever noticed that when you accuse someone of something, even if they are actually 100% guilty, their first response is, "No...that's not what happened", or something to that effect? When people are accused they go on the defensive, even if a couple of moments later they realize you are correct.

Human nature. Flawed.

I propose that you take a tip from people who handle interventions. They actually don't talk about the other person, exactly. It's the first step in understanding that you are not responsible for their actions or reactions.  What they do is talk about how much they love the person, how valuable the person is to them in their lives. Then they talk about how the person's behavior--the behavior--is impacting them. There is a clear distinction between the behavior and the person. Jesus understood this very, very well.

That's my suggestion to you. Tell your husband how much you love and appreciate him. But explain to him that you aren't feeling that from him and it's making you feel bad and it's making your work as a homemaker into difficult drudgery.  Tell him you're willing to tell him thank you a lot more often. Ask him if he'll do the same for you.

The angels won't do it for you. But they will be there to help.