In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, Saint Joseph.
Saint Blaise, our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today we celebrate Saint Blaise, an ancient martyr of the Church,
who is the patron of those who are afflicted with throat diseases.
So today we have the blessing of throats as part of the liturgy today.
To remind us of the intercession of the saints,
that they have evangelized,
even particular apostolates, you might say, even in heaven.
Certain cares that God has given to different saints
to intercede for and to watch over us.
So we will ask Saint Blaise to bless our throats in a special way
this day and for the rest of the year.
It says about Saint Blaise in the Saints book here,
the blessing of throats invoking the intercession of Saint Blaise,
has become a popular, a very popular devotion.
Saint Blaise devoted the early years of his life to the study of philosophy
and afterward became a physician.
He was ordained to the priesthood and made Bishop of Sebast in Armenia,
where he was seized and carried off to prison by Agurikoulos, the governor.
On his way to prison, a distracted mother,
whose child was suffering from a disease of the throat, implored his aid.
At his intercession, the child was cured and since that time,
his aid has been solicited in cases of a similar disease.
After cruel tortures, the saint was beheaded in the year 316.
Through his intercession, many have been cured of throat diseases
or protected from them.
The priest in giving the blessing of Saint Blaise, of course,
as we know, is the traditional, the crossing of the candles.
And prays that through the merits of Saint Blaise,
that the person will be blessed and delivered from throat diseases
and from every other evil.
The candles are crossed together, also symbolizing the cross of our Lord
and to remind us that everything, all blessings come through that.
Also, you know, as we pray for the intercession of Saint Blaise, it says,
that every illness of the throat and diseases, well, maybe it's also spiritual ones
that we may have, that we may ask Saint Blaise to help us to use our throats,
our voices, especially for the right things, to praise God and not to blaspheme
or to speak the truth if we have a tendency to lie or also, you know,
maybe if we're suffering from gluttony, that we overcome,
those particular sins as well, not just the physical illnesses
that can come to us in the throat, but to help us to use our throats
for the things which God has created it for.
And especially, those are probably even more dangerous than the physical ones.
In the Gospel today, our Lord cured the man who was, freed the man who was,
greatly afflicted by the devil.
He had a legion of them, it says.
And he drove the devils out.
They pleaded with him that they wanted to at least go into the pigs.
They'd rather go into the pigs and remain, you might say, in that condition,
than go back to hell.
And even though they would go back to hell,
they at least, you know,
they would go back to hell. They at least, you know,
they just wanted to be there in pigs than to be in the company of one another,
I suppose.
And the pigs, of course, the swine,
were driven mad and into the water and drowned themselves.
It's interesting, though, that the people who witnessed this man
and his condition for so long and were even afraid of him so much so that he was
by himself out in the wilderness, you might say, living in a cave,
that when he was finally freed from that and restored to his spiritual and physical well-being,
that the people were not, it seems like they were more distressed by the fact that they lost all their pigs
than the fact that he had been freed from the devil, and that they, you know,
that he was returned to them in sound mind.
And that's probably the condition of most people today,
is they're more concerned about their material well-being
than the spiritual welfare of their neighbor.
And our Lord uses this man once he's freed from the devil,
tells him to go back to his people because he will be a sign,
and they will see that he was, they saw the condition
and knew that he was greatly distressed and possessed,
and now they will see him restored to his right mind
and restored back to God's friendship,
and that will be the sign, then a way to evangelize them.
Many times, our Lord, when he cured someone,
especially he freed them from something he would tell them to be quiet.
In this case, our Lord told him to go and evangelize,
maybe because where he was living was not a territory
that our Lord would be occupying or staying very long.
So he did tell the man to go and go home to your family
and announce to them all that the Lord
in his pity has done for you.
And the man went off and to proclaim in the Decapolis
what Jesus had done for him,
and all were amazed.
In many sense, we too should have that same kind of joy
that that man must have had when he proclaimed the gospel,
the good news to the people around him.
For we have been, by baptism,
freed from the grip of the devil,
who we all, by baptism, are freed from his bondage.
And so we should have that same kind of joy,
maybe not as dramatically,
especially not as dramatically as this man,
but we have been truly freed in the same way.
And we should have that same kind of joy
and want to see others experience that friendship of God
and that grace of being in the state of grace
that comes from baptism.
That should be, and has been I think,
the joy of the missionaries in the past,
the Saint Francis of Delphi, and other Pharisees.
Francis Xavier's, and even Bishop Blaze today, who we celebrate, that they had that joy to know that
what they were preaching and what they were giving to the people when they administered the sacraments
was bringing them the true joy of the gospel because they were bringing Christ and the freedom
that he brings, the freedom of the spirit that frees us from the shackles of the evil one.
Let us thank God for the grace, for the Son of God, for all that he has done for us today,
and as we invoke the intercession of Saint Blaze, that we will truly use our throats to proclaim the
gospel, to proclaim the good news to people that maybe would rather be in their sins and remain in
their darkness, you know. They'd rather have the pigs of homosexuality or the pigs of abortion
or some other pigs in their life than to have the truth, than to have the gospel, and we need to
pray for them and to continue to give witness to the truth and to the true joy and freedom that
comes from following Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Amen.