America's Largest Catholic Newspaper
Recently I was reading the cartoons and funny sayings that my niece Mary Beth has posted on the refrigerator in her kitchen. One item made me burst out laughing. Unexpectedly, though, it led me to some serious and sorrowful reflection.
I could tell that the item had been clipped from a parish bulletin. It had a boldface headline: “Feast of St. Blasé.” The lines that followed informed the reader about the hours when throats would be blessed on the feast of “St. Blasé.”
The reference, of course, was to St. Blaise, who is invoked against choking and diseases of the throat. Many parishes continue the custom of blessing throats on his feast, February 3. He certainly has nothing to do with the attitude of bored unconcern that defines “blasé.”
Mary Beth and I laughed over the mistake, and Mary Beth, who has a wonderfully offbeat sense of humor, said, “Oh yeah, St. Blasé, the patron of “Whatever…,” and we laughed harder.
By the way, I don’t know the name of the parish that slipped up on the saint’s name, and I wouldn’t reveal it if I did. It’s not in the New York Archdiocese, and anyway I don’t want to embarrass anyone. In fairness, it’s true that the saint’s name is sometimes spelled Blase, but there is no accent on the e.
The mistake, however, did more than make me laugh; it led me to do some research on St. Blaise. As with many saints of the early centuries of Christianity, stories about his life are rooted in legend. He is said to have been a bishop of Sebastea, in Armenia—modern Sivas in Turkey—in the early fourth century, and to have been martyred in or around 316, in a persecution under the Roman emperor Licinius.
St. Blaise’s connection to maladies of the throat is based on a legend about a boy who was in danger of death because of a fishbone that was stuck in his throat. The boy’s mother brought him to St. Blaise, whose prayers dislodged the fishbone and saved the boy’s life. St. Blaise was widely venerated in Europe in the Middle Ages, likely because of his reputation as a healer.
According to legend, St. Blaise was martyred by beheading. For me, that brought his story instantly into the 21st century. The gruesome practice of beheading seems to belong to ancient history, but of course it does not. It is going on now, as Christians and others in the Mideast are being persecuted by Islamic terrorists. The beheading of the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff has sickened all people of conscience, and the continuing violence against Christians and religious minorities is a crime that cries out for response and rescue by civilized nations. We are shielded by distance and lack of communication from the full knowledge of the victims’ suffering. That is one reason that the heroic Mr. Foley and Mr. Sotloff were in the Mideast: to tell the hidden story of persecuted peoples.
My curiosity about St. Blaise began with a humorous play on words, but it led me to reflect on the tragedy that is taking place in the part of the world where he lived and died. I know that I am only one of many millions of people who are horrified by what is happening. We cannot allow it to continue. We all need to pray for an end to the violence, and for world leaders to find a way to stop it.
I also am thinking of two of the freedoms that we possess as Americans: freedom of religion, and freedom of speech and the press. We can never afford to take them for granted—to be blasé, if you will, about them. We can lose them if we are not vigilant. Ironically, they are the freedoms we especially need to exercise in defense of those in peril in the Mideast. They need our prayers, and they need us to speak out on their behalf.
