Saintly Protection from Coronavirus
This has been one of the most difficult newsletters to write. Angst. I’m basically feeling full of angst and frozen. Saint Charbel please perform another miracle and cure me from this paralysis. I’ve been reading and studying and trying to write about this coronavirus and everything I type looks crass and hopeless. That’s the bad news….
The Good News …. However, is that I answered a Who’s Your Saint Quiz yesterday from this motorcycle loving man, Chris B. He gave me a bunch of information, so it was very easy to find saintly suggestions. I ultimately picked Our Lady of Ghisallo, patron of cyclists of all kinds and wrote about going to her Shrine and Chapel near Lake Como. I even went so far as to be irreverent about the coronavirus, writing something like, “You’ll probably want to go to Ghisallo, Italy but you can’t just yet since Italy is basically closed due to the coronavirus.”
That worked out fine. Chris B. good-naturedly responded to the answer to his quiz. That’s always a good sign. He said a few things and sent off the email to me and that was nice. The Golden Ticket was the quote at the end of his email. It said: “The harder you try, the luckier you get.” ~Todd Henning The message moved me and stuck. Today, I got up at 3:30 a.m. to have some solitude (solitude – keep that word in mind because I will be going back to it).
At around 5:00 a.m. I went back to sleep and when I woke up, I realized that by trying hard, I luckily found a way to start writing about the coronavirus. Thanks, and thank you Chris B. from Woodstock, Georgia for responding to the quiz! I finally started “Eating The Elephant!” Let me explain.
When the SaintsforSinners website got its last makeover, the task was daunting. The stories. The photos. New email addresses. New people to work with. My attachment to SaintsforSinners. Seeking something perfect while simultaneously being unable to articulate my vision. What a mess.
The owner of the company who redesigned the website, Jay Sigl, at Sigl Creative saw that I was crazed or maybe I told him I was “freaking out.” I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter. Jay acknowledged the task was excruciating because of all the content that had to be remixed, remade, reloaded into a newly structured design. Jay said, “It’s like eating an elephant.” And I wondered if he was crazy, but he went on and asked, “And how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
So, we just started, one step at a time, redesigning the website. It ultimately got to a presentable point. We did a “soft launch” and then an official launch of the new site. It kept its ethos, the idea of offering hand-painted Saint medals as tokens of hope, and it finally stumbled into the 21st Century! There’s always more to do with a website but we “ate enough of the elephant” to be successful with moving forward. Thanks to the team at Sigl Creative.
To adequately address the coronavirus issues, we need to take the first bite of the elephant. And the harder we try, the luckier we will get. And hopefully soon thereafter, this whole coronavirus mess will be ancient history.
There are so many saints to turn to with regard to finding some help with the coronavirus. It’s like there are 100 elephants in the room. So, once again, we will just start and then take our path step by step, and bite by bite. Here are two of the saints that are perfect for offering help, guidance, and comfort about the coronavirus. There are many more saints to discuss and we will bring them up over time, as we get help and wait and see how everything pans out. For now, though, what we all need is help! And saints providing help are the saints we need.
Two Helpful Saints!
Our Lady of Prompt Succor and Our Lady of Perpetual Succor can help and guide us now. They’re both not really saints but we do have some poetic license and we can utilize the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary to put us on the road to recovery. We’ll also be encountering lots of relevant and saintly help along the way. Let’s get started by taking this first bite!
Our Lady of Perpetual Succor (“OLOPS”)
Our Lady of Perpetual Succor is also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help and she (this should not shock you) provides constant help! We all need Our Lady of Perpetual Help right now. Her guidance will let us think clearly and manage the stresses in our lives and our friends’ and families’ lives at this time. Let me paraphrase Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Being scared, worried, afraid, and unsure about what is going on in our lives is very hard to talk about. Yet, we are just being human. Being Human is something we can manage. And managing is something we should talk about. Let’s try to manage this difficult situation.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help can offer constant guidance as we work to manage our situations. Our Lady of Perpetual Help has a fascinating story of resilience and discovery. To be precise, Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a very famous painting. It’s a Magnificent image of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus I think everyone has probably seen:
We tell Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s story on the website. The medal we have of her now is throwback and basically antique. The filigree is amazing. They don’t make them like that anymore and when we run out, we will hopefully have found more in the meantime. If we do not find more of the antique design medals, we have a back-up Our Lady of Perpetual Help to offer. It is also very nice and even has Saint Gerard on the other side. Wear OLOPH or clasp her medal to your purse, keychain, gym bag, rearview mirror or anywhere else. She serves as a constant reminder that the Blessed Virgin Mary is always interceding and helping us every step of the way.
Our Lady of Prompt Succor
Our Lady of Prompt Succor (“OLOPS”) can also be called Our Lady of Quick Help, yet few people do. OLOPS has special relevance because we have her girls’ school, The Ursuline Academy, right here in New Orleans on State Street. On Chartres Street in the French Quarter, we have the convent.
Our Lady of Prompt Succor’s story is on the website and her medal is painted with radiant blues. OLOPS is typically presented gilded in gold in her official images. Our medal of her is beautiful but gold paint does not adhere to it very well, so we use blue instead.
If we seek Quick and Constant Help and it is received through Our Lady’s Intercessions, we will be way on our way to confronting the cononavirus. With quick and constant help, we can venture further and find many other saints to offer hope and comfort. In a few days, we will begin presenting and telling the stories of the many other saints who can pitch in and assist with the numerous other issues at hand. Let’s work very hard to help each other. Our faith will curiously and luckily let us eat this entire coronavirus elephant, one bite at a time.
As a thank you for reading to the bottom line, we’re reminding you of our offer of a Saint Martha hand-painted medal that we’re offering with every order through Lent. Read more about the offer on our previous blog post.
Thanks for reading to the bottom line!
Rob
RobClemenz@SaintsforSinners.com
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