#february3stblaise

One Minute Reflection – 3 February – Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, Gospel: Luke 4:21–30 and The Memorial of St Blaise – Martyr (Died c 316) and St Ansgar (801-865)

And they rose up and put him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong.   But passing through the midst of them he went away….Luke 4:29-30

REFLECTION – “A doctor came amongst us to restore us to health – our Lord Jesus Christ. He discovered blindness in our hearts and promised the light that “eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and has not entered the heart of man” (1 Cor 2:9). The humility of Jesus Christ is the cure for your pride.   Don’t scorn what will bring you healing, be humble, you for whom God humbled Himself.   Indeed, He knew that the medicine of humility would cure you, He who well understood your sickness and knew how to cure it.   While you were unable to run to the doctor’s house, the doctor in person came to your house… He is coming, He wants to help you, He knows what you need. God has come with humility precisely in order that man might imitate Him.   If He had remained above you, how would you have been able to imitate Him?   And, without imitating Him, how could you be healed?   He came with humility because He knew the nature of the remedy He had to administer – a little bitter, it is true but healing.   And do you continue to scorn Him?   He who holds out the cup to you and you say:  “But what sort of God is this God of mine?   He was born, suffered, was covered with spittle, crowned with thorns, nailed on the cross!”   O miserable soul!   You see the doctor’s humility and not the cancer of your pride.   That is why humility displeases you… It often happens that mentally ill people end up by beating their doctor.   When that happens, the unfortunate doctor is not only not distressed by the one who beat him but attempts to treat him…   As for our doctor, He did not fear being killed by sick people afflicted with madness, He turned His own death into their remedy.   Indeed, He died and rose again.”…St Augustine (354-430) Father and Doctor of the Church

PRAYER –  Lord our God, make us love You above all things and all our fellow-men, with a love that is worthy of You.   May we look to Your Divine Son in love and imitation.   Holy Father, You sent St Ansgar, Monk and Bishop, to bring the light of Christ to many nations of Northern Europe.   Through his prayer give us grace to live always in the light of Your truth.   Grant too, that by the prayers of St Blaise, we too may be granted the grace to follow Your only Son, no matter our sufferings, to You, in our heavenly home.   We make our prayer, through Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever amen.

Saint of the Day – St Blaise (Died c 316) – Martyr 

 Today the Church remembers the life and witness of Saint Blaise, a 3rd century Armenian bishop who endured terrifying torments and surrendered his life rather than repudiate his profession of Faith.

Much of the life of Saint Blaise is history that has passed into legend but even these legendary accounts offer spiritual insight.

It is said that Blaise was renowned as a wonderworker, effecting miraculous cures. T  his would have been enough to attract attention but he was also not averse to calling out the Roman officials who ruled the region in which he lived, Cappadocia, for their tyranny and intolerance of Christian faith and practice.   The combination of a reputation for supernatural power and the courage of his convictions was not welcomed by Rome and the governor ordered Bishop Blaise to be arrested.   Blaise was able to elude capture and took refuge in the wilderness.   It was there in the caves of Cappadocia that his ministry and his mission continued.

There is an account of Saint Blaise that identifies not only his pastoral care for the Christian faithful but also for the animals of the wilderness.

It seems that a woman had witnessed her piglet carried off by a wolf and spoke of her plight to the bishop.   Saint Blaise called for the wolf, demanded her return the piglet to its rightful owner and reminded the wolf of the grave penalty that awaited a thief.   The wolf complied and returned the piglet to its owner- a credit to the bishop’s power of persuasion.   The woman would later return the favour to Saint Blaise when he was finally captured and imprisoned.   She brought to him candles to illuminate his dank and dreary cell.

This legend hints at how the saints represent, in their holiness, the restoration of a paradise lost and regained in Christ.   The ease and familiarity with which the Biblical character of Adam is believed to have communed with nature before the fall is recapitulated in Saint Blaise- he is a sign that anticipates the restoration of all things in Christ where the lion will rest with the lamb and in this case, the wolf will return stolen property to its rightful owner.

Saint Blaise has been invoked for centuries as a specialist in diseases of the throat.   The origin of this practice might be in the story of a child brought to the saint who was either choking or suffering from some other malady of the throat.   Saint Blaise blessed the boy and he was restored to health.

The practice of blessing throats on the Feast of Saint Blaise is a commemoration of this miracle, that crossed candles are often used to impart this blessing might also be a recollection of the kindness of the woman who gave candles to the saint as he languished in prison.

Saint Blaise was an extraordinarily popular saint during the Middle Ages in Europe. Presentations of his miraculous and mighty deeds were commonly represented in art and sculpture, and he was included in a listing of saints called the Fourteen Holy Helpers (or Auxiliary Saints), holy men and women who could be counted on as intercessors for all manner of maladies from madness to travelers in distress.   During times in which a sore throat could be a signal of an impending epidemic or an early death, the faithful were all too happy to accept the help of a heavenly specialist in such matters like Saint Blaise.

The legends regarding Saint Blaise report that his sojourn in the wilderness did not protect him for very long.   He was eventually arrested and brought to trial.   The judge advised him that only a pinch of incense offered to the image of Caesar and the gods of Rome could win him his freedom.   Blaise refused.   He was cruelly tortured and beheaded.

The Church does not mourn Saint Blaise, for we know that in Christ this world is not all that there is.   While tyrants like Caesar and his successors can threaten us with death, Christ promises us a life that like his own, is transformed through suffering and death, into resurrection.

The scriptures proclaim, “though they slay me I will trust in you.”

Saint Blaise did precisely this.   He trusted that Christ would not abandon him to the power of death nor allow his suffering to be meaningless.   Our lives might never be raised to the legendary status of Saint Blaise but we can trust in Christ as he did and live in hope that one day we will join him in communion with all the saints who have gone before us in faith and who, from their place in heaven, guide and protect us still. (Fr Steve Grunow)

BLESSING of ST BLAISE

THROAT BLESSING of ST BLAISE

Although separated by customs, language, politics and more, Catholics around the world celebrate many of the same God-inspired devotional acts, practices and rituals handed down through the centuries by Holy Mother Church.   Such a devotion is the optional memorial celebrating St Blaise and the blessing of throats today, every 3 February.

Throat blessings The candles used in the blessing of throats may be those blessed yesterday, on Candlemas, or when blessed during the St. Blaise memorial.

With the crossed candles touched to the throat of each person, the celebrant says immediately:

Through the intercession of Saint Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness.    In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.

Each person responds:  Amen.

Blessed Memorial of St Blaise – Hieromartyr/ Holy Helper/Bishop/Physician/ (Died in 316) 

The first reference we have to him is in manuscripts of the medical writings of Aëtius Amidenus, a court physician of the very end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century; there his aid is invoked in treating objects stuck in the throat. Marco Polo reported the place where “Meeser Saint Blaise obtained the glorious crown of martyrdom”, Sebastea;[3] the shrine near the citadel mount was mentioned by William of Rubruck in 1253. However, it appears to no longer exist.

From being a healer of bodily ailments, Saint Blaise became a physician of souls, then retired for a time to a cavern where he remained in prayer. As bishop of Sebastea, Blaise instructed his people as much by his example as by his words, and the great virtues and sanctity of the servant of God were attested by many miracles. From all parts, the people came flocking to him for the cure of bodily and spiritual ills. He is said to have healed animals (who came to the saint on their own for his assistance) and to have been assisted by animals. In 316, the governor of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia Agricolaus began a persecution by order of the Emperor Licinius and Saint Blaise was seized. After his interrogation and a severe scourging, he was hurried off to prison and subsequently beheaded. The legendary Acts of St. Blaise were written 400 years later. The Acts of St. Blaise, written in Greek, are medieval.   The legend as given in the Grande Encyclopédie is as follows:

Blaise, who had studied philosophy in his youth, was a doctor in Sebaste in Armenia, the city of his birth, who exercised his art with miraculous ability, good-will and piety.   When the bishop of the city died, he was chosen to succeed him, with the acclamation of all the people.   His holiness was manifest through many miracles: from all around, people came to him to find cures for their spirit and their body; even wild animals came in herds to receive his blessing.   In 316, Agricola, the governor of Cappadocia and of Lesser Armenia, having arrived in Sebastia at the order of the emperor Licinius to kill the Christians, arrested the bishop.   As he was being led to jail, a mother set her only son, choking to death of a fish-bone, at his feet and the child was cured straight away. Regardless, the governor, unable to make Blaise renounce his faith, beat him with a stick, ripped his flesh with iron combs, and beheaded him.

Blaise is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, saints who were patrons for almost every aspect of life.   People in the Middle Ages showed devotion to these saints as a group

One Minute Reflection – 3 February – The Memorial of St Blaise – Martyr (Died c 316) and St Ansgar (801-865)

...Do not use your freedom as an opening for self-indulgence but be servants to one another in love….the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control; no law can touch such things as these…Galatians 5:13,22-23

REFLECTION – “If I were worthy of such a favour from my God, I would ask that He grant me this one miracle: that by His grace He would make of me a good man.”- St Ansgar to a parishioner who was praising him for being a miracle worker