This calendar of saints is drawn from several denominations, sects, and traditions. Although it will no longer be updated daily, the index on the right will guide visitors to a saint celebrated on any day they choose. Additional saints will be added as they present themselves to Major.

Friday, September 21, 2012

September 21 -- Feast of Saint Mark of Modena

Provided Ambiance for the Translation of His Own Relics

Mark Scalabrini was a Dominican friar who rose of the office of Prior of the Order.  The Dominicans praise him for having kept strictly to the Rule during a time of secular temptation, but he's more popularly known as a miracle worker (thaumaturge). 

Although he gets credit for many miracles, most are just rolled together without any specifics.  Only two seem to have been distinguished -- one during his lifetime and one at his translation.

A woman brought her dead son to him and begged that the boy be resurrected.  Mark prayed a while before telling her that her son was in heaven and she would do well to leave him there.  She persisted, so Mark resumed praying until the young lad rose.  Ten years later, a failure in life and a source of shame for his mother, he died again, leaving her more distressed than the first time.  Thus, Mark could be the patron saint of told-you-so.  But he's not, because that's not very saintly.

Mark died in 1498, the same year that Girolamo Savonarola was burned at the stake in Florence.  Times being what they were, he did well to avoid being so zealous that he was condemned on earth and so corrupt that he would be condemned by heaven.  Although he was buried with great honor, the translation seems to have been a little haphazard.

When the time came to move his bones from the Dominican Church in Pesaro to Our Lady's Chapel in Pesaro, they overlooked appointing someone to ring the bells.  Fortunately, the bells rang of their own accord.  The also overlooked having someone with a censer handy, but the saint provided a sweet perfume throughout the chapel.  Extra points for the saint who tends details at his own translation. 

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