 |
| St Paschal, the King of the Graveyard - $150 on eBay |
I am much enjoying my U3A Spanish lessons. I wish I’d learned Spanish at school instead of French, it’s a much more fun language and probably a more fun people as well (sorry France – you do have some great ski resorts).
Today we were told that we should have a name saint and were set the task of choosing one.
There is a Saint Eric, but he’s Swedish, so wrong part of the world.
The old traditions give you a name day and Eric’s name day is 17 May. Next step is to relate your name day to a suitable saint and I have selected St Paschal Baylon.
He’s quite a guy, most saints are a bit dry and dusty - St Eric (a Swedish king) paid for the bible to be translated, lots more just got killed by the Romans, the Wenns, the Japanese ... in fact almost every race, when first faced with a preacher, thought it best to kill him.
Anyway, St Paschal was a bit more of an action man, especially after he died, when he became a walking, talking skeleton. He also cured half the sick in Villareal. Speech therapy and ophthalmology were among his many skills.
My name saint was born at Torrehermosa, in Aragon, on 24 May 1540, on the Feast of Pentecost, called the "Pasch" (passover) in Spain, hence the name Paschal.
His parents were peasants and he spent his youth as a shepherd. When he was 24, he joined the Franciscans. He chose to live in poor monasteries because, he said: "I was born poor and am resolved to die in poverty and penance." He certainly wasn’t a Tory voter!
He was a mystic and contemplative, and he had frequent ecstatic visions. He died on 17 May, which is his current feast day, in 1592.
His tomb is in the Royal Chapel in Villareal, in the old province of Valencia, where he died, and it immediately became an object of pilgrimage. Beatified by Paul V in 1618, he was canonised by Alexander VIII on 16 October 1690.
The best part about St Paschal is that 40 years before he was canonised, an indigenous Guatemalan who was dying of fever claimed to have had a vision of a sainted Paschal Baylon, appearing as a robed skeleton. The bony vision said if he was made a saint, he’s save the town from fever but the man having the vision would die in nine days. The sick man told everyone what he'd seen and it all subsequently happened – a classic case of “shooting the messenger”.
The event became the basis of the heterodox tradition of San Pascualito, a folk saint venerated in Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas. He is called "King of the Graveyard."
His veneration is associated with the Latin American cult of death and may be related to the worship of a pre-Columbian death god. You’ll not be surprised to hear that none of this is approved by the Roman Catholic Church.
Sadly, the Catholic gift shop online has no memorabilia to offer for San Pascualito or St Paschal (St Christopher seems to have the market sewn up), but there are plenty of representations of SP available on eBay, usually as a skeleton, sometimes caped or wearing a crown.
His name is also used by a Mexican heavy metal band. These are their CD covers (below) and you can see/hear them on YouTube.
Bizarrely, there’s also a primary school in Liverpool devoted to St Paschal. The school’s website has a lot of information about the great man, but doesn’t mention the South American death cult.
Apparently, after his death, sick people came in large numbers and many were cured. The official accounts of Paschal’s canonisation tell of no less than 25 miracles that were wrought during the three days that the body was lying in state before the altar!
A man who could not speak for 40 years began to talk; a blind man took the hand of St Paschal and touched it to his eyes and was cured instantly ... and so it goes on, one miracle after another.
Even the king of Spain shipped up to pay his respects (he knew a bandwagon when he saw one).
I don’t know why, but his tomb was opened several times to see whether decomposition had set in and each time it had not. At the Pope’s request, the tomb was opened again in 1611, 19 years after Paschal’s death, and still the body was well preserved! This fact is sworn to by official medical witnesses who conducted a scientific examination, although I’m not sure what scientific examination would have been conducted in 1611?
So perhaps we should open him up now and see whether he’s still in one piece? Sadly, during the Red Terror at the time of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), his grave was desecrated and his relics burned by anti-clerical leftists (bloody leftists!).
So this is my name saint, a living skeleton who can cure all ills, inspiration to Latin American rockers and a patron of English primary education. I’ll raise a glass to him on May 17th.
No comments:
Post a Comment