St. Peregrine, Healed By Faith

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May 1, 2001

Do you know what you're looking for?

If you want to read an article about a Saint, you could be looking for a miracle. But what you will always find is solace, a solstice of sorts, in perhaps one of the longest days or years of your life. The Saints knew what a solstice was, and they knew what it meant in terms of sickness, disappointments, and dark times of despair.

On May 1st we celebrate the feast of St. Peregrine, patron Saint of cancer. Peregrine is also known to invoke for those who suffer with the brutal effects of serious diseases.

So, just what is a solstice in life? Well, whatever it is to you, a solstice can be a rather long and dreary time. As I grow older they continue to roll, fast and a bit furious. Now, the shorter duration is good, if only they did not happen quite so often. Intensity, however, has a certain flavor with the passing of years, with still much to do and people you want to be here for. But with the realization that everything comes and goes, is the blessing that all experiences pass in time, and like the arrival of the purple crocus in spring, something new starts again. Youth grows onwards, and for most of us, not too gracefully, into the long and short days and years of our lives.

For me, each year when May rolls around, I do not think of St. Peregrine. What flashes into my mind like a still from a movie scene are childhood school processions and the crowning of Mary, the Queen of May. I was picked to carry the crown of perfume scented roses, floating, it seemed, on a white satin pillow. After a long sweaty march past rows of apple blossoms and little girls in organdy and dotted swiss I stood on tiptoe and crowned Mary. It was a lopsided job, I just could not reach that high. She smiled anyway, and I swear she bent her head to receive that crown of petals, tinted with the palest pink, twined by the nuns into an ivy wreath.

Okay, what does a sentimental memory have to do with our Saint Peregrine? Well, for three successive years I was picked to crown Our Blessed Mother. After that, I was never picked again. I held back my tears and buckled a smile, folding my hands in procession. One of the younger nuns whispered in my ear, "...other people need a chance, it can't always be you..." her black veil blocked the sparkling yellow rays of the sun. Goose bumps pricked my flesh forcing the hairs on my bare arms to stand up straight. Yes, it was a day when clouds puffed forth from daisies and disintegrated in the wind. The Saints were versed in disappointments, too. Perhaps St. Peregrine, after years of prayer and pleading for a chance to be healed, never thought he would get his chance. A cancerous wound festered in his leg. No matter how many times he wrapped it, blood and oozing pus crushed under his heels into the earth below.

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