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The Mysterious Saint

© by Sheila M. Coyle

Hello, everyone!

You may think because it's February that I am going to write about St. Valentine. You really will not know unless you continue to read. But that is up to you, just like when the Saints served as instruments for miracles, it was not up to them.

For the Saints, miracles were not really the point. Saving souls was the work they were about. They knew that signs and wonders are temporary but eternal life is everlasting. This seems to be the vein of thought for most of the Saints I am familiar with, and as I have mentioned in a previous article, these little vignettes deal more with myths and legends. Except that under all the dealings of the Saints was a sanctity committed first and foremost to the works of God.

This particular Saint that I am writing about this month lived during the Roman era of Christian persecution. Young men and women of the time were encouraged to worship pagan gods and were forbidden marriage. This, and other sacred rites were performed in private places by priests risking their lives for the spiritual welfare of others. Now, this saintly priest I am talking about was also a physician and a healer, working with herbs and a kind of alternative therapy that these days may be termed holistic healing. A true healer believes in the healing power of every human being, and helps to liberate the systems of those who are sick. Considering that this priest was also a physician, or it could be the other way around, he was a much sought after healer.

But first he was a priest.

And this is what got our Saint in trouble. The authorities found out about him perhaps through his healing works, or maybe word leaked out he was marrying people against the rules, but they either knocked on his door one day or banged it down with a hefty beam, wherever your imagination takes you, and dragged him into a dungeon to suffer for his Christian beliefs.

Before this happened there was a jailer at this same dungeon who had a daughter suffering from an illness. Our Saint's sympathy went out to the Roman jailer and the girl, and the Saint worked for many months, perhaps years, on a cure. When our Saint was thrown in the clink the girl visited him, perhaps out of gratitude and to cheer him up with a bit of hope. On the day the Saint was to be thrown to the lions or boiled in oil, he wrote a letter to the girl and gave it to her father, the jailer. The Saint said, "give this to her." When the girl opened up the letter a yellow crocus, a sign of the first rite of spring, fell from the folds of the Saint's hurried scrawl.