Perhaps we can adopt him as the patron saint
of Dads, who are much like comedians.
I'll bet Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Dave Barry don't know
they have a patron saint.
I don't know about Leno and Letterman, but I think Barry would
get a kick out of knowing the patron saint of comedians is also
the patron saint of epileptics -- and of actors, dancers, people
who can't get up in the morning, and those encountering a storm,
which also seems an apt description embracing Dads, by the way.
Every columnist
-- Dad or not -- has a bit of each of those creatures in his or
her being, and we all could use saintly help, especially as deadline
approaches.
So today in my heroic-father mode, I urge readers to sainthood.
Not their own, but to the saints of history.
The fact is that today's feast day honors a saint who has a disease
named after him. A particular form of chorea, a nervous disorder,
is popularly known as St. Vitus' Dance.
Today is the feast day of St. Vitus.
For readers who may have slept through Sunday School or confirmation
class, or who come from iconoclastic or non-Christian religious
traditions, let me review some saintly history.
Vitus was a fourth-century martyr who died on June 15 around the
year 303 and was probably still a teen-ager when he was put to
death for his faith. Not much seeming hope for a father-model
here.
Little is really
known of St. Vitus, and history doesn't help much because apparently
there were several Vituses among the early Christians.
The most widespread legend tells us Vitus was the son of a Sicilian
senator who converted to Christianity from paganism when he was
12 years old.
A legendary story says that a judge who was beating the young
Vitus experienced a withering of his arm, but the child saint
prayed and healed the stricken jurist.
We're not told why the judge was beating Vitus; I like to think
the youth was dancing in the street with laughter.
As with many in the early church, Vitus's faith brought him persecution.
He was taken from his Sicilian home by his nurse and his tutor
to another town where he became a healer.
Many of Vitus's healing prayers apparently were on behalf of those
suffering epilepsy; thus he became the patron saint of victims
of that disorder.
Legend has it that
Vitus healed the son of the emporer Diocletian, but the emporer
so hated Christianity that instead of being rewarded Vitus was
charged with being a sorcerer and tortured for not worshiping
the Roman gods. Diocletian is the model father the Romans provide.
Shortly after that, Vitus was martyred.
It's difficult to grasp how such a young and seemingly serious
saint could become the patron of comedians. I guess you had to
be there.
Several years ago, writer Phyllis McGinley produced a fascinating
book called "Saint Watching," in which she attempted
to paint portraits of the saints of the Christian church as human
beings instead of as the mystical pietists that fill the usual
denominational depictions.
She didn't have much to say about St. Vitus, but she included
him in a chapter called "Holy Wit," where she tried
to show that most of the saints lived amid a perceived holiness
that "quivers with gentle hilarity."
McGinley found great
pleasure in knowing St. Vitus is the patron saint of people who,
like her, can't get out of bed easily in the morning, many of
whom probably spend nights watching Leno and Letterman. It's likely
Vitus was a late sleeper. Another strike against him as a role-model
for working fathers.
I came upon St. Vitus through a glance at a church calendar.
I came upon Phyllis McGinley years ago as a writing teacher reviewing
books for classes.
Thinking about a saint drove me back to McGinley.
I don't think there's anything particularly religious about my
contemplation of this saint who comforts comedians or my reading
of this writer who brings the holy down to earth.
In this era of the search for heroes (and, incidentally, we fathers
still search for them), I find some solace in the saints.
It also occurred
to me that I find much more inspiration and interest in reading
the stories of these virtuous souls we call saints than I find
in reading many of the legends that former education czar William
Bennett has urged upon us with his books of virtues.
Many of the saints were heroes.
McGinley calls them "a peculiar race, obscured for a long
while by curtains of legend."
She tried to open the curtains to let them "step down from
their pedestals and let themselves be seen for the quirky and
fiercely individualistic but humane and charming people"
they became.
In my reading, I came across a prayer to St. Vitus that I thought
could be applied as well to fathers as to comedians: "Inspire
comedians to make people dance with laughter and so bear goodwill
toward one another."
That, my friends, is an heroic goal.
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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.com