Knowing Our Parish Patron Saints
It is a tradition in our Catholic faith that each church bears the name of a saint(s) or a name that reflects Jesus Christ’s gift of grace such as Blessed Sacrament or Mount Calvary as the place where Jesus was crucified for our sins.
How often do you think about the name of your parish church? Do you see it as a name of your church and nothing more?
When we name our churches after a saint, we are asking that saint to intercede for the church congregation before God in Heaven. It is good for us to know something about them.
I have to admit I have not always paid much attention to the saints for which parishes I have been in are named. Honestly, before I was ordained, I paid no specific attention to these saints. I say “specific” because the parish where I made my First Communion was St. Mary Our Mother and my parish before ordination was St. Mary’s of the Lake. Obviously, as Catholics we know something about Mary.
While in seminary, I served in two separate parishes, Mount Calvary and St. Mark’s in Hyattsville in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. I know of Mount Calvary as the place where Jesus was crucified and I know St. Mark from the gospel that bears his name.
In our Diocese of Rochester, while in seminary, I was involved at St. Boniface in Rochester. I knew nothing of St. Boniface. I had assignments at Church of the Assumption in Fairport, NY and St. Mary’s in Auburn, both named for the Blessed Virgin Mary.
My first assignment after ordination was at St. Mary’s on the southside of Elmira (now part of the Most Holy Name of Jesus parish). So, again, as a Catholic I knew something about Mary.
Then, my second assignment was at Our Lady of the Lakes in Yates County and the surrounding area. Our Lady, of course, is a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was a group of churches (St. Michael’s in Penn Yan, St. Patrick’s in Prattsburgh, St. Januarius’ in Naples, and St. Theresa’s in Stanley (the last has since closed). I paid little specific attention to the patrons of the individual churches except for including them in the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass when appropriate.
My third assignment was at Immaculate Conception Church in Ithaca. So, another church named for Mary. Once again, I paid little attention to Mary as the patron saint.
My fourth assignment was the first where I gave specific attention to the patron saint. It is also the one where I have continued to call upon the saint’s intercessor in my own life after leaving the parish, St. Michael’s in Newark.
I read books about St. Michael, learned to pray the Chaplet of St. Michael, and I learned the St. Michael prayer and introduced it to the end of every Mass. We began having a special Mass on September 29th, the Feast of the Archangels, followed by a parish supper as a time to come together as a community seeking the intercession of St. Michael as the patron saint of the parish.
Knowing St. Michael to be the Archangel named in Revelation 12:1-12 who, “by the power of God”, defeated Satan, I continue to say the St. Michael prayer whenever I find myself battling temptation. Evil is real. Satan is real. We need all the help we can get in battling Satan for the salvation of our souls.
After leaving St. Michael’s, my next assignment was St. Luke’s the Evangelist in Livingston County. It was a group of churches (St. Mary’s in Geneseo, Holy Angels in Nunda, St. Patrick’s in Mt. Morris, St. Lucy’s in Retsof, and St. Thomas Aquinas in Leicester (the last being since renamed St. Juan Diego as it now serves a Hispanic Community).
As I did at St. Michael’s, I read books on the patron saints, in this case all six of them. Then I did something I had never done before to help the parishioners know their patron saints. I offered a series of presentations, Our Saints and Intercessors. In the reading I did, the one that much struck me was St. Thomas Aquinas. I had seen him in the way that many do as described by Bishop Barron, “For many, Thomas Aquinas, whose writings are dry, recondite, often impenetrable, seems an unlikely candidate for the title of spiritual guide” (Bishop Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master. Crossroad Publishing: New York. 2008.)., 12)
What I had not seen before this was that “Aquinas was a saint deeply in love with Jesus Christ” (Barron, 11)”. What I came to discover was “As a magister of theology, his purpose is never simply to satisfy the curiosity of the mind; rather, it is to change the lives of his readers, to transform their hearts, in a word, to move them to salvation” (Barron, 19). This led me to appreciate St. Thomas Aquinas as an intercessor when I seek to learn more about faith as a reminder to always remember that the point of learning more about our faith is not to be “wise and learned” (Matthew 11:25). Rather, our goal in learning more about our faith should always be to grow in our personal relations with Jesus.
It was while I was at St. Luke’s that I extended my study of parish patron saints to our diocese. The patron saint of our diocese is St. John Fisher. As I read about St. John Fisher, I also read about his contemporary, St. Thomas More. I then turned my study of them into a presentation (which included St. Michael), Three Saints to Aid Us.
As I learned about the saints of St. Luke the Evangelist parish, I also learned about a particular style of writing, hagiography, used in the materials we have about the saints. Hagiography is written as biographical information. It can be a very good source of information. We just need to realize that it may be told in an embellished way. An example of this is the way that the torture that St. Lucy faced is often told in a very pious way.
I mention this because the next parishes I served in were St. Mary’s of the Lake in Watkins Glen, NY and St. Benedict’s in Odessa. I think most Catholics are aware of St. Benedict as the founder of western monasticism but we tend to not know much more than that. While at these parishes, I tried to find some books about St. Benedict’s in English without much success beyond general information. What I did find was told in a fanciful (hagiography) way. So, I did not learn much more than the general information readily available online about St. Benedict. (If you would like to learn how to apply the Rule of St. Benedict to your life, I recommend Judith Valente’s book, How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing. 2018 and my series of articles about her book).
Recently (just sixteen days ago), I moved to St. Louis Church in Pittsford. When I learned that I would be reassigned, I immediately went looking for books about St. Louis. I found three and just finished reading them. It is written as hagiography so it is embellished but yet truthful. I found the best source of information about St. Louis in The Prayerbook of St. Louis by Matteo S. Bianchi (no publisher listed, 2024).
Bianchi writes of this book and St. Louis, “You are holding the story and prayers of a man who wore a crown yet lived as a servant of Christ” (5). St. Louis was “a ruler, but as a father, a servant of the poor, and a disciple who never forgot that his true throne was in heaven” (5).
St. Louis was born near Paris on April 25, 1214 (the feast of St. Mark) as Louis IX. His mother sought to his education in secular matters but it was faith that most important in his upbringing as she sought to form him as a “son of the church” (Bianchi, 15). He assumed the throne as king when his father died when he was just twelve years old (Bianchi, 16). “He considered it a privilege to defend Christendom and to support the Church with his authority” (Bianchi, 23). He fought in the Crusades for our faith, not his own glory (Bianchi, 23).
As I read about St. Louis I found myself thinking that while what I read was interesting, I did not find much for my own personal faith in it. It was here that the Holy Spirit led me to realize that, while I had used what I read about other saints in the past in presentation, what I found myself focusing on was what the saint means to me (for example, see what I said above about St. Thomas Aquinas). It’s not a bad thing to seek what can help me in my journey of faith. What I needed to realize was that the Holy Spirit did not lead me to read about St. Louis for my own faith but to read it in the context of how we all look at our “rulers” today and how faith and government leadership can go together. Here Bianchi wrote of St. Louis IX, “He showed that holiness is not confined to monasteries or convents but can be lived in palaces and councils, in the giving of laws, and in the hearing of petitions of the poor” (34).
I ask you, “do you live your faith in your daily lives?” If you do not, you may ask St. Louis for his intercession that you do. If you do not already know about the saint for which your church is named, I encourage you to make some effort to learn more about them.
Peace,
Fr. Jeff