|
REPRINTED FROM THE COLUMBIA NEWS SERVICE, MAY 23, 2003
Thank yous to a saint: a public and private tradition
By Stephanie Levitz
Tucked between ads for call girls and notices for garage sales, in almost every classified section of every newspaper in America, a single line of type puts a public face on a very private tradition.
"Thanks to St. Jude for prayers received," read these tiny ads. If they are signed at all, it is simply with initials. Mention of what the prayers are for is rarely given. Yet day after day these simple notices stand in testament to the Catholic faithful's unwavering belief in the power and necessity of saints.
"God is a remote spirit," said Father George Concordia, a Dominican friar who oversees the Shrine of St. Jude on Manhattan's Upper East Side. "Saints are physical. They give people a face and a image to turn to, a personality to associate with."
To help people connect with their faith, the current head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, has canonized over 400 people -- more than the previous four centuries of popes combined, according to the National Catholic Register.
"People are devoted to saints so it helps them practice their religion," said Concordia, 72. "It helps if they find a saint from their area or a saint for an issue they can associate with."
St. Jude was neither of those things when he first appeared on America's religious landscape in the late 1920s. A prayer card carrying his image, found by a Chicago priest, was the genesis of the enormous devotional movement to St. Jude in America. The saint, patron of hopeless and desperate causes, was one of 12 men selected by Jesus Christ to carry out his work after his death. While he had a following in Latin America, he was all but unknown to American Catholics.
Nicknamed "the hidden saint," religious lore says that St. Jude was neglected by Catholic faithful because of the similarity of his name to that of Judas, the man who, according to the Christian tradition, betrayed Jesus Christ. Why he became the patron saint of hopeless causes is unknown -- though some priests and scholars speculate that people accustomed to praying to saints would try every other saint with their problem and when all else failed, try St. Jude.
Kathleen Buchanan prayed to Mary, Jesus and "anyone who listened to me," when she was seeking spiritual guidance over her youngest son's addiction to crack cocaine.
Buchanan, who lives in North Carolina, said that when she started praying to St. Jude in earnest, her son's life turned around.
"Our son was literally brought to his knees," said Buchanan, 64, and a retired schoolteacher. "He signed himself into rehab and has been drug free for over eight years."
In exchange for her prayers, Buchanan promised St. Jude that she would publish a thank you.
People often make promises to saints in return for fulfillment of their prayers. St. Jude is the only saint for whom the publication of a thank-you note is the customary promise.
"St. Jude is the most vulnerable and needy of the saints," said Robert Orsi, a professor at Harvard Divinity School and the author of "Thank You St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes."
"Because he is the hidden saint, he was especially in need of promotion," said Orsi. "The custom of publishing a thank-you note was both a way to thank him and get the word out about what he could do."
Father Tort, the priest who had found the St. Jude prayer card, built a shrine to St. Jude in Chicago. Then, he began encouraging his congregation to pray to the saint and send their petitions and thank-yous into the church newsletter. From there, the tradition took off.
A decree from the Vatican Council in the mid-1960s cited a concern that devotion to saints was eclipsing devotion to God. Soon after that, interest in the saints waned a bit on the part of America's Catholics, but St. Jude remained a popular figure.
"As long as people suffer unemployment, disease and distress of any kind, there will always be a figure like St. Jude," said Orsi.
Popular devotion to St. Jude reached a zenith in the early 1990s, when thousands of people flocked to churches and shrines built in his honor. At the time, the growing prevalence of AIDS, the first Persian Gulf War and a stagnant economy were the key issues on many people's minds, driving them toward a saint who seemed to address these hopeless causes.
Ten years later, the tides of people in church has ebbed again, although the issues have not gone away. Instead of seeking out St. Jude under the cool brick arches of a church, people are discovering him on the Internet and build Web sites to the saint to honor their promise to publish.
Daniel Carpini, 44, built his Web site, stjudenovena.org, to show gratitude to the saint for helping him get his life back on track after his computer business failed.
"I remembered how when I was small and something was wrong, an aunt or my mother used to tell me to pray to St. Jude," said Carpini. "So this time I did."
While many people create Web sites that are simple tokens of thanks to St. Jude, Carpini's Web site goes further, providing articles on St. Jude, prayers, a gift shop and allowing people to post their messages of thanks.
"Creating, maintaining and administering the Web site is a very cathartic thing," said Carpini.
Part of publishing a thank you to St. Jude is therapeutic, say both Concordia and Orsi.
"Moments when you are so desperate are intensely claustrophobic," said Orsi. "By making the promise to publish and following up on it, you are opening up a space for yourself."
|
|
