February 3rd is the normal date on which the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Blaise and offers the traditional blessing of throats for everyone attending Mass or blessing services that day. The following paragraphs offer a brief description of the life of St. Blaise and the devotion that arose as a result of his holy life. Considering the readings that we have for this Sunday, I thought that the last paragraph was particularly appropriate for our consideration.
“All sources agree that St. Blaise was the Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia who suffered martyrdom under Licinius about AD 316. In accord with various traditions, St. Blaise was born to rich and noble parents, and received a Christian education. He was a physician before being consecrated a bishop at a young age. Keep in mind that at that time the local community usually nominated a man to be a bishop based on his outstanding holiness and leadership qualities; he in turn was then examined and consecrated by other bishops with the approval of the Holy Father. Therefore, St. Blaise must have been a great witness of our Faith, to say the least. During the persecution of Licinius, St. Blaise, receiving some divine command, moved from the town, and lived as a hermit in a cave. One day, a group of hunters discovered St. Blaise and seized him. While in prison, he miraculously cured a small boy who was choking to death on a fishbone lodged in his throat. Eventually, St. Blaise was condemned for upholding his Christian faith rather than apostatizing. He was tortured with the iron comb (an instrument designed for combing wool but was used here for shredding the skin) and finally beheaded. By the sixth century, St. Blaise’s intercession was invoked for diseases of the throat in the East. As early as the eighth century, records attest to the veneration of St Blaise in Europe, and he became one of the most popular saints in the spiritual life of the Middle Ages. One reason for St. Blaise’s popularity arose from the fact he was a physician who cured, even performing miraculous cures. Thereby, those who were sick, especially with throat ailments, invoked his intercession. Eventually the custom of the blessing of throats arose, whereby the priest held two crossed candles over the heads of the faithful or touched their throats with them while he invoked the prayer of the saint and imparted God’s blessing.
While we invoke St. Blaise for his protection against any physical ailment of the throat, we should also ask is protection against any spiritual ailment — profanity, cursing, unkind remarks, detraction or gossip. St. James reminds us, “If a man who does not control his tongue imagines that he is devout, he is self-deceived; his worship is pointless” (1:26) and later, “We use [the tongue] to say, Praised be the Lord and Father’; then we use it to curse men, though they are made in the likeness of God. Blessing and curse come out of the same mouth.
