A blizzard of saints

The Fourteen Holy Helpers are in the news! One of our photographers at The News, Mark Mulville, took this picture the other day in our blizzard, and as I wrote in the Buzz Blog, it is going viral.

Here is the picture:

Which of the Fourteen Holy Helpers do you consult if something is going viral that you do not want to, i.e., a disease? That would be St. Christopher and St. Giles. They were the two Fourteen Holy Helpers invoked in the Middle Ages against the Black Death.

Anyway. Good for Fourteen Holy Helpers Church to remind the world of the practical power of the saints. That is what the church stands for. I put in the Buzz Blog the Fourteen Holy Helper you pray to in order to stop snowstorms. That is St. Vitus! And the Fourteen Holy Helper in charge of safe travel who is of course St. Christopher.

Reading back I realize my Web log is preoccupied not only with Leonard Pennario but with the Fourteen Holy Helpers. They even mentioned me in their bulletin once. I loved that. The trouble is I am not very organized as far as tying it all together on the Web log, all I have learned about the Fourteen Holy Helpers or the Vierzehnheiligen as they are known in Germany. But if you go to that little search thingie in the corner and type in "Holy Helpers" all this stuff will appear.

I love that as Mark Mulville's picture goes viral, as sanctioned by St. Christopher and St. Giles, it gets the name of the Fourteen Holy Helpers out there. Someone in California or wherever is laughing at the sign and sees "Fourteen Holy Helpers." And that person has to wonder about that. Because our Fourteen Holy Helpers is the only one in the world outside of the basilica near Bamberg, Germany.

So this person will Google the Fourteen Holy Helpers. And before long he or she will be praying to St. Barbara and St. Vitus and other 12, and going to get his or her throat blessed on the Feast of St. Blaise.

Before long amazingly the Fourteen Holy Helpers will be venerated in America as they were in Europe during the Middle Ages. That is how this will work.

It will snowball!