All Saint's Day

I grew up as a Roman Catholic, so November 1st was more than the day after Halloween, the one in which we gorged on our bags of trick or treat candy. November 1st is also All Saints Day. Some denominations of Christian religion besides Catholics also have patron saints....plenty of them. A patron saint is the guy or gal (there are a few women Saints not counting the still human kind a husband declares of their wife when wanting favors from her.."Darling you're a saint").

Saints have the job of advocating in heaven for a certain person, activity, location, or illness. Because patron saints transcend into the metaphysical once canonized, they are able to carry out certain tasks and focus on certain needs when it comes to their own special patronage. It's sort of what politicians promise to do for us if we vote for them. I am not saint. But you already knew that. Some who believe in saints think that it's better to pray to a saint than to pray to God, because it shows that they are seeking an intercession and not a direct answer from God (the only one less likely to answer a human entreaty is a politician, so don't waste your time asking or praying to one of those).

Maybe it is true we all have some sort of spirit on our side, since there seems to be a patron saint for anything and everything imaginable. If you are a Catholic All Saints Day is a "holy day of obligation", meaning you have to drag yourself and the kids away from the Halloween candy to attend a church mass in recognition of the saints. It sounds reasonable if you don't plan to also recognize some of the more odd choices that have been made into saints. Here are some of the saints, once canonized by the church, but maybe now are out of date. (If they can recall automobiles for defects, maybe they should recall these saints too)

* St. Ambrose (patron beekeeper saint) Saint Ambrose was given the title ‘Honey Tongued Doctor’ due to his ability to calm the crowds and preach the doctrine to many. He once compared female virgins to bees. I'm not sure the few virgins out there today would like that analogy.

* Saint Anthony the Abbot’ (patron saint of pigs and gravediggers) It's enough for me to explain the pig connection. I will leave the gravedigger aspect to your imagination. At the time of his life, many skin diseases were treated with applications of pork fat, which helped reduced inflammation and itching. As Anthony’s intervention aided in the same conditions, he was shown in artwork often accompanied by a pig So people who worked with swine quickly took him as their patron. I guess if you are especially fat, smelly or sloppy, St. Anthony is the one you need to pray to.

* St. Sebastian (patron saint of cranky children). This one converted to Christianity two very naughty boys and as a result, people though he was capable of handling any delinquent. I think if St.Sebastian were alive today he would be a very busy man with so many rotten kids out there in need of conversion. Just dealing with Lindsay Lohan would be a full time job.

* St. Clare of Assisi (patron of television)- Claire was made a saint in 1958, and is the modern tech saint. One day she was so sick could not attend mass. However, she was able to have a strong vision that she was in mass and claimed to have seen and heard mass on her wall (An early big screen TV?). This event led to her becoming a patron saint of TV as well as the saint of telephones, clairvoyance, eye diseases, and others. If Claire saw any of the reality garbage on TV today I think she would probably want to unplug the set and forget visions of any kind.

* St. Drogo (patron saint of ugly people)- On one pilgrimage one day Drogo became sick with an unsightly and unidentified bodily disorder that made him deformed. His looks frightened people in the town, so he had a holy cell built so that he could still attend church but not be seen. It is said that he lived only on water, no food, for 40 years. Telling someone he or she is ugly and needs a saint is weird in itself.
And to conclude the honor roll of odd saints I have one more, a guy who is proposed to be one.

* St. Isidore of Seville- In 1999 he was said to be the patron saint of the Internet because of his reputation for having a wide knowledge of information. I don't want to know if he would log on to adult sites if alive today, but what Internet Saint could escape a little Internet porn.

May you have a saintly day everyday....