Guess What Today Is?!?!?!?!

Wasn't he a cute kid?!

Today is a very special day in more ways than one - first of all we celebrate the 85th birthday of Pope Benedict - Alles Gute zum Geburtstag as they say in his native German!

And secondly, we celebrate the memorial of a very dear friend and intercessor - St. Drogo.  Haven't heard of him?  Well, then you've come to the right place.  St. Drogo happens to be basically awesome.  Lots of people think so because he has at least 27 patronages, although oddly enough very few have actually heard of him.  One of my many goals in life is to end this tragedy.  One way I will do this is to make a t-shirt, but I digress. 

I know you're on the edge of your seat at this point wanting to know more of this glorious saint of God, so I shall keep you waiting no longer:  St. Drogo lived in the 12th century in northern France and was orphaned as a teenager.  He made many pilgrimages to the Eternal City and was a shepherd to many sheep (literally, as in he hung out with woolen animals in a field).  It is reported that he could bilocate as people claimed to have seen him in the field and attending Mass at the same time.  He somehow got an unsightly physical affliction at some point (we don't really know exactly what or how he got it) and became a hermit consuming only water, barley and the Eucharist for decades.  Further information has been difficult to find such as how he died, what was and how did he get the affliction, and other details of his life.  People who know about St. Drogo tend to associate him and know of him because he is the patron of coffee (why? I dunno - I like to think that he would brew a cup on his pilgrimages by creatively constructing a coffee maker out of leaves, sand and bark), but my love for him has to do with a lesser known and unusual patronage.  Here is a partial list of some of his many patronages:

- coffee

- cattle

- shepherds

- deaf people

- midwives

- against hernias
- against gall stones
- sheep
- unattractive people

St. Drogo and St. Germain Cousin have a lot in common.  For years, friends and I searched high and low for a medal of St. Drogo to wear in his honor - he has always been so good to us - for example, while doing some pro-life work on the road one day and being quite exhausted, we called on St. Drogo's assistance and low and behold a random car pulled up to us and offered us some coffee - the awesomeness of St. Drogo strikes again. But back to the medal issue - searching high and low the world over for a Drogo medal and no beans - it was devastating.  Then it happened.  One of the road-coffee-receivers who shall remain anonymous but for the initials of E.B., discovered the medal which had eluded us all for so long.  You can get your own from the Sisters of Carmel and tell the world about the greatness of this obscure, humble yet noble saint - St. Drogo.  So today join me in celebrating our brother in Christ with a good cup o' joe, a wool sweater, seared lamb and a paper bag.  St. Drogo, truly, you are great.  Ora pro nobis.