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| But it's not really about the May-frost, is it? |
Having a last look through the 2016 Farmers Almanac I came across a paragraph titled: The Chilly Saints: Mamertus, Pancras and Gervais, whose 15th century feast days fell respectively on May 11, 12 and 13. And since these days could still experience late crop-damaging frosts, the holy saints were popularly regarded as the Chilly Saints or the Ice Saints.
But I'd venture if we were to talk with the holy three they'd reveal a much greater interest in the transformation of icy or chilly hearts than protecting corn seedlings from the night frost. "Melt the frozen; warm the chill" we pray on the Feast of Pentecost. The Christian religion isn't about the weather, but about the transformation of hearts. We've cultivated all kinds of ways to keep Christ at arms length.
One self-aware and honest wife shared, "I have a husband who asks nothing of me except an ironed shirt, and I grumble under my breath about that." Oh holy Mamertus, warm us!
At the end of Mass one Sunday, returning up the center aisle to the sacristy after having greeted the folks at the door, a man stepped out of the pews blocking my way and said angrily, "I am SO sick and tired of hearing about THEM!" "Who's them?" I asked. "The poor," he snapped back. I'd no recollection of having said a word about the poor in the homily and even checked my text to find what I might have said to set off such an inner ice storm. Nothing - that I could see anyway. Oh Holy Pancras, melt us!
Two sisters lived one floor apart in a city walk-up apartment. The sister on the third floor had taken a bad fall at work some years earlier and was on disability. Eventually she died and on the night of her funeral, the sister who lived on the second floor announced to her own gathered and grown children, "Well, at least I won't have to be running up her milk and mail anymore." Oh Holy Gervais, thaw us!
