Popularly known as the saint who protects from ailments of the throat, Saint Blaise was a bishop and martyr of the fourth century, writes Rosa Fox

 

Appealing to saintly people who lived long before my time is my way of finding help without always bothering family and friends.

As a young wallflower in dancehalls of the dim and distant past, I remember mouthing quietly ‘Holy Saint Ann, please send me a man’ and ‘Mr Right’ eventually came my way.

Driving down a busy street searching for an empty spot, I still mutter through gritted teeth ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space’. And one appears – eventually.

Having survived winter’s colds and flu, I’m off to Whitefriars Street church for the blessing of throats by St Blaise. Patron saint of healers, I know his feast day is February 3rd, and a recent visit to the beautiful city of Dubrovnik in Croatia taught me a lot more about him. As patron saint of this city, St Blaise has had a hard job helping Dubrovnik down the years to survive invasion, war and earthquake.

Blaise was born in Armenia (now Turkey) in AD313 and was a devout Christian in a time when believers were being persecuted during the Diocletian era. He was a physician and then became a bishop. His faith and kindness drew unwanted attention from the Romans determined to wipe out Christianity.

When life became impossible, he fled into the hills and, in the manner of St Francis of Assisi and our own St Kevin, lived in a cave and developed a deep love of the animals whose habitat he shared.

Legend tells of a wolf who stole a pig from a poor widow’s homestead. Loss of the pig meant acute hardship and Blaise spoke to the wolf and persuaded the animal to part with what would have been a very good dinner and return it to the widow.

News got out, his hiding place was exposed. Blaise was captured and thrown into prison where he refused to renounce his Christian beliefs. The widow he’d helped managed to being him in food. Another smuggled candles into his pitch-dark cell.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own