How many years did the Catholics have to go before St. Anthony helped them find all their missing stuff? On the day he was canonized did some enormous backlog of remote controls and expired winning lottery tickets miraculously slip from beneath dressers and couch cushions the world over? Or were they gradually released back into circulation as to not freak out the believers? I wonder if heaven needs a new saint for something? They’ve got them for sneezing, backaches, lumberjacks, a winning season. Is there some missing niche that's just waiting to be filled?
Right now some unsuspecting shmoe out there has no idea that years from now tiny concrete statues of him will be pressed out on some Tijuana assembly line. Would he celebrate the foreknowledge that his countenance will one day be planted in millions of gym lockers by those desperate to ward off their jock itch? The guy is innocently spending eternity, just starting to get really good on the harp, when WHAM the Pope brings the hammer down and he's stuck for the eons immortalized as the one soul you confide in when you’ve got a wicked case of crotch rot. Can you imagine his embarrassment in heaven as he walks by a clique of old school saints and they pretend to like him? “Pssst, hey Peter lay thine eyes upon young ‘Chafing Charlie’ coming hither.” “Tee hee Bartholomew, watch this. Ahoy Saint Charlie! How doth thine globes hangeth?”
Some saints just don’t feel very relevant anymore and laze about all day watching the other saints scurry about to answer their daily pleas, burning the midnight myrrh. Saint Roch is the patron saint of Bubonic plague. Talk about a fellow resting on his laurels. Sure he had a busy run back in the Dark Ages, but last I heard he doesn’t put in more than a half day each Monday before disappearing up Highway 101 with a set of golf clubs. And it doesn’t help that there are seven other saints for plague. At that rate they can afford plenty of R & R.
The saints aren’t just for the sickly, no there are saints for nearly every task, toil and lifestyle. Best saint to have around for a party? That would fall upon the besotted shoulders of St. Amand, patron saint of brewers, vintners, and bartenders. Strangely enough he also drew the straw for boy scouts. A number of saints with combination assignments seem to have been granted them with a rationale lost to the ages. Saint Barbara is who artillerymen would give a nod to, while at the same time the stonemasons and builders whose work they are attempting to undo, pay her homage as well. One has to ask whom she would back in a castle siege. Either way she had job security. Not all of the double-dipping saints’ interests are contradictory. St. Nicholas (no not that one) is conveniently saint to both sailors and prostitutes.
Just as old Saint Roch’s duties have fallen out of fashion of late, it may be time to update the job titles of some of the other occupational saints. While Saint Isidore is solely responsible for the entire IT industry, there are nearly a dozen that still list shepherds and shepherdesses on their resume. And you techie types thought Thanksgiving with the in-laws brought every whining need for computer advice out of the woodwork? Here is the one guy responsible for keeping all the other saint’s PCs seaworthy up there. Can you imagine the mid-afterlife crisis such a thankless workload must have brought on by now? Few know that Saint Isidore is also the only saint wearing white dreds and an ironic concert tee as we speak.
This brings me back to my initial question of whether heaven is in need of a new niche saint. Well actually it doesn’t really bring me back, I just figured enough rambling had taken place by now and it was high time to bring some point to the entire exercise, as not all of us are trapped in a snowed-in bunker. If you think there’s a chance you may be in the running for beatification, make a conscious effort to have some good photos of yourself taken while you’re still young. Otherwise they’ll just have to use your driver’s license photo, and would you really like to see thousands of dashboards with that mug on them?
