Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The SIUC Faculty Union Feast of St Dymphna, May 15

Bees

We all know the Patron of beekeepers is St. Ambrose...

And we know the story of St. Modomnoc bringing the bees to Ireland...

One of the best known stories regarding Saint Modomnoc concerns his work as a beekeeper. Bees were kept both for their honey and the production of mead. Modomnoc was given charge of the bees in a sheltered corner of the monastery garden where he planted the kinds of flowers best loved by the bees.He talked to the bees as he worked among them and they buzzed around his head in clouds as if they were responding. He would walk among the hives in the evening and talk to them, and the bees, for their part, would crowd out to meet him. He was never stung. When the time came for him to return to Ireland, three times the bees followed in great swarm and settled on the mast. St. David perceiving this occurrence to be a good omen allowed Modomnoc to bring the bees to Ireland.When he landed, he set up a church at a place called Bremore, near Balbriggan, in County Dublin, and here he established the bees in a garden just like the one they had in Wales.

Here's a new bee story...about the latest American to be beatified, Father Solanus Casey.

One day, Fr. Groeschel and another friar were visiting the beehives kept by the friars, when the bees started swarming angrily.
Fr. Groeschel was instructed to get Fr. Solanus, who started talking to the bees and calming them when he arrived.
"He started to talk to the bees. 'All right now. Calm down. All right,'" Father Groeschel recalled in a story to Our Sunday Visitor. "And they started to calm down and go back into the hive.... I was absolutely in total shock.”
Fr. Solanus recognized the problem - there were two queen bees in the hive - and without the standard protective gloves or netting, stuck his bare hand in the hive and pulled out the second queen without getting stung.
He was also known for calming bees by playing his harmonica, which is now on display at the Solanus Casey Center in Detroit.

Saint Patrick - Comedy GOLD!

The Yellow Cab Feast Day of St. Fiacre, September 1

St. Fiacre (Fiachra) is not mentioned in the earlier Irish calendars, but it is said that he was born in Ireland and that he sailed over into France in quest of closer solitude, in which he might devote himself to God, unknown to the world. He arrived at Meaux, where Saint Faro, who was the bishop of that city, gave him a solitary dwelling in a forest which was his own patrimony, called Breuil, in the province of Brie. There is a legend that St. Faro offered him as much land as he could turn up in a day, and that St. Fiacre, instead of driving his furrow with a plough, turned the top of the soil with the point of his staff. The anchorite cleared the ground of trees and briers, made himself a cell with a garden, built an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin, and made a hospice for travelers which developed into the village of Saint-Fiacre in Seine-et-Marne.

 A "fiacre" is also a a hackney coach; that is, a horse-drawn four wheel  carriage.

"Le fiacre" by Edouard Manet

 From Wikipedia:

The earliest use of the word in English is cited by the Oxford English Dictionaryas from 1699 ("Fiacres" or Hackneys, hung with Double Springs"). The name is derived indirectly from Saint Fiacre; theHotel de Saint Fiacre in Paris rented carriages from about the middle of the seventeenth century. Saint Fiacre was adopted as the cab drivers' patron saint because of the association of his name with the carriage.

Not surprisingly, St. Fiacre is the Patron Saint of Cabdrivers!

Saint-Fiacre in Seine-et-Marne

The Glenlivet Feast Day of St. Columba, June 9

St. Columba (521 A.D. - 596 A.D.)was an Irish abbot who, apparently satisfied with the way things were going in Ireland, headed off to Scotland to convert the Druids and Picts. He founded the Abbey in Iona.

St. Columba is the patron of bookbinders, poets, flood victims, Derry, Ireland as well as all Ireland AND Scotland. He is one of the 12 Apostles of Ireland along with:

1. Saint Ciarán of Saighir (Seir-Kieran). In the Martyrology of Oengus, saint Ciarán of Saighir is not listed as one of the twelve apostles of Ireland.^[3]
2. Saint Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon, in the barony of Garrycastle, County Offaly, died in the year 549.
3. Saint Brendan of Birr, now Birr, County Offaly. He died on 29 November 571.
4. Saint Brendan of Clonfert (Brendan the Navigator). He was the son of Finnloga, the patron saint of the see of Clonfert, in County Galway, was born in 484, and died in 577 aged 94.
5. Saint Columba of Terryglass, abbot of Tir-da-glas, now Terryglass, in the barony of Lower Ormond, in the county of Tipperary, and died in 552, the same year as St. Finen of Clonard.
6. Saint Columba of Iona was born in the year 521, and died in the year 597, aged 75. Columba was an outstanding figure among the Gaelic missionary monks who some of his advocates claim introduced Christianity to the Kingdom of the Picts during the early medieval period.
7. Saint Mobhí of Glasnevin, patron of Glasnaidhen, now Glasnevin, near Dublin. He died on 12 October 545
8. Saint Ruadhain of Lorrha, the patron of Lothra, now Lorrha, in County Tipperary. He died on 15 April 584.
9. Saint Senan of Iniscathay (Scattery Island)
10. Saint Ninnidh the Saintly of Lough Erne, the Pious, the patron of the parish of Inis Muighe Samh, now Inismacsaint, in the north-west of County Fermanagh. He was alive in 530 but the year of his death is uncertain.
11. Saint Laisrén mac Nad Froích, the son of Nadfraech, he was the brother of Aengus, the first Christian king of Munster and died in 570.
12. Saint Canice the patron of Aghaboe in County Laois, who died in 599 at the age of 84.

I Need to Pay Better Attention to the News

I thought they voted on a referendum on same-sex marriage...

From Eye of the Tiber:

Ireland overwhelmingly approved a referendum to allow “snakes” back in the country on Saturday, becoming the first country in the world to allow such a move by popular vote. Though the final tally is yet unknown, the referendum achieved the support of an estimated 65 percent of the population.
Michael Fitzpatrick, prominent supporter of the “Hell No” campaign, conceded the referendum’s defeat Saturday morning.
“It is a sad day now that Ireland has approved reentry of paganism,” Fitzpatrick said, explaining how, although snakes have never actually existed in Ireland, that the referendum would now allow the “pagans,” which he believed the snakes represented in the time of St. Patrick, to take back their country from Catholicism.
Supporters of the reentry of paganism erupted with jubilation in Dublin, which has long been a liberal stronghold. But the referendum received support throughout the whole country.
As a result of the referendum, which amends Ireland’s constitution to approve of snakes “without distinction as to length or toxicity of their venom,” pagans in the country will be permitted by law to begin deconstructing everything Catholicism has built as soon as this summer.

Condensed Milk Company of Ireland Feast of St. Ailbhe, September 12

St. Ailbhe is beloved in Ireland, and how could he NOT be? I mean, some consider him  a pre-St. Patrick saint...even though he died 68 years after St. Patrick. His dad abandoned him and King Cronan ordered him killed, but the King's servant left him by a big rock, where he was eventually suckled by a she-wolf. When he became Bishop of Emly an old she-wolf being chased by hunters fled to the bishop, so he took her and her family in. He baptized St. David, Patron Saint of Wales. As he approached death, he boarded " a supernatural ship came and he boarded to learn the secret of his death. After returning from the other world, he went back to Emly (Imlech) to die and be buried."

Wait! There's more! 

There was a church dedicated to Saint Ailbe in the hamlet of Saint Elvis near Solva, Pembroke, Wales, UK, near St David's; it is long in ruins. There is still a shrine to St. Elvis which bears an inscription making the connection between the two variants of the name, and confirming that St. Elvis baptised St. David.

A shrine to St. Elvis!

Red Man Chewing Tobacco Feast of St. Murtaugh, August 12

.Bishop of Killala, Ireland, appointed by St. Patrick. Also called Muredach, he was a member of the royal family of King Laoghaire. Murtagh reportedly met with St. Columba at Ballsodare, near Sligo, in 575. Soon after that, he became the Pittsburgh Pirates' manager.

Feast of St. Mochoemoc, March 13

St. Mochoemoc was the brother of St. Ita. St. Ita taught St. Brendan at a school for boys she founded. St, Brendan went on to great things including founding a school in Clonfert. His nephew, St. Moinenn, became head of the monastic school after Brendan's death. When Moinenn died, his job was taken over by St. Cummian Fada,

I tell what, Ireland was CRAWLIN' with saints back in the day. 

Clonfert Cathedral, built starting in 1180 and dedicated to St. Brendan.

The History of St. Patrick

Feast Day of St. Modomnoc O'Neil February 13

St. Modomnoc got along well with bees. I mean, he LOVED the bees, and the bees LOVED him. St. Modomnoc was a member of the powerful O.Neil family in Ireland but went off to Wales to study for the priesthood under St. David.

While at the monastery Monodmnoc was assigned the role of beekeeper (the priests liked their mead). The bees would follow him around and he would talk to them. When it was time to go back to Ireland, he bade farewell to the bees. The bees followed the boat. He returned to the monastery and tried to sneak away. No good - the bees followed. Finally, St. David told him to take the bees with him.

And that's how bees were introduced to Ireland (supposedly, but it's a good story). He settled in Bremore in County Dublin, a place that to this day is known as "The Church of the Beekeeper".

Feast of St. Tassach, April 14

I asked earlier if there were any Irish saints who did NOT know St. Patrick personally. A second question...are there any Irish saints who don't have alternate names?

From Catholic Online:

"Bishop, also known as Asicus. One of the first disciples of St. Patrick, he was a gifted artisan, creating for St. Patrick croziers, patens, and chalices. He was later appointed the first bishop of Rahoip, Ireland, and gave Patrick the last rites."