{"id":3995,"date":"2010-02-03T06:42:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T06:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html"},"modified":"2010-02-03T06:42:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T06:42:22","slug":"blaise-of-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html","title":{"rendered":"Blaise of glory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stblaise3.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>
\nWhen I was growing up, going to Catholic school in Maryland, it was a yearly winter ritual: every February 3rd, the Sisters of St. Joseph would line us up and lead us into the church, to receive a blessing of the throats on the feast of St. Blaise.<\/p>\n

Do people still do that? I know we offer the blessing at the masses in my parish today. Do other places do it, too? <\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure it was all that effective. I remember always getting a sore throat and a bad cold shortly after being blessed. (I suspect that was more my fault than St. Blaise’s.  To this day, I never dress warm enough.  Scarf?  What’s that?)<\/p>\n

Anyway: looking for information about St. Blaise, I found this:<\/a> <\/p>\n

Saint Blaise’s protection of those with throat troubles apparently comes from a legend that a boy was brought to him who had a fishbone stuck in his throat. The boy was about to die when Saint Blaise healed him.<\/p>\n

Very few facts are known about Saint Blaise. We believe he was a bishop of Sebastea in Armenia who was martyred under the reign of Licinius in the early fourth century.<\/p>\n

The legend of his life that sprang up in the eighth century tell us that he was born in to a rich and noble family who raised him as a Christian. After becoming a bishop, a new persecution of Christians began. He received a message from God to go into the hills to escape persecution. Men hunting in the mountains discovered a cave surrounded by wild animals who were sick. Among them Blaise walked unafraid, curing them of their illnesses. Recognizing Blaise as a bishop, they captured him to take him back for trial. On the way back, he talked a wolf into releasing a pig that belonged to a poor woman. When Blaise was sentenced to be starved to death, the woman, in gratitude, sneaked into the prison with food and candles. Finally Blaise was killed by the governor.<\/p>\n

Blaise is the patron saint of wild animals because of his care for them and of those with throat maladies. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also found this prayer<\/a> to the saint:<\/p>\n

O glorious St. Blaise, who by your martyrdom left to the Church a precious witness to the Faith, obtain for us the grace to preserve within ourselves this divine gift, and to defend — without concern for human respect — both by word and example, the truth of that same Faith, which is so wickedly attacked and slandered in these our times. You miraculously restored a little child who was at the point of death because of an affliction of the throat.<\/p>\n

Grant us your mighty protection in similar misfortunes. And, above all, obtain for us the grace of Christian mortification, together with faithful observance of the precepts of the Church, which keep us from offending almighty God. Amen. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was growing up, going to Catholic school in Maryland, it was a yearly winter ritual: every February 3rd, the Sisters of St. Joseph would line us up and lead us into the church, to receive a blessing of the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. Do people still do that? I know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hanging-with-saints","category-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nBlaise of glory - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blaise of glory - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was growing up, going to Catholic school in Maryland, it was a yearly winter ritual: every February 3rd, the Sisters of St. Joseph would line us up and lead us into the church, to receive a blessing of the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. Do people still do that? I know…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-02-03T06:42:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/02\/stblaise3-thumb-380x285-11247.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"jmcgee\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Blaise of glory - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Blaise of glory - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"When I was growing up, going to Catholic school in Maryland, it was a yearly winter ritual: every February 3rd, the Sisters of St. Joseph would line us up and lead us into the church, to receive a blessing of the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. Do people still do that? I know…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2010-02-03T06:42:22+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/02\/stblaise3-thumb-380x285-11247.jpg"}],"author":"jmcgee","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html","name":"Blaise of glory - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/02\/stblaise3-thumb-380x285-11247.jpg","datePublished":"2010-02-03T06:42:22+00:00","dateModified":"2010-02-03T06:42:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/02\/stblaise3-thumb-380x285-11247.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/02\/stblaise3-thumb-380x285-11247.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/02\/blaise-of-glory.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blaise of glory"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150","name":"jmcgee","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","caption":"jmcgee"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/jmcgee"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}