St. Paschal Baylon
St. Paschal Baylon, May 17.
It was actually St. Paschal Baylon who inspired me to sit outside locked churches in order to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. (Someone at my parish may have found out I do this because they posted a sign that the church will now remain open until 9:30 PM for visits to the Blessed Sacrament.) Legend has it the saint was at work in the fields and heard the church bells at the time of the consecration during Mass, and from there he adored the Eucharist that appeared to him miraculously.
St Paschal was a simple shepherd in the kingdom of Aragon in Spain before becoming a religious. He entered the Alcantarine Franciscans in Montfort, Spain. He was known for his intense love of the holy Eucharist and spent hours in adoration before the tabernacle. In his duties as a lay brother he remained intimately united to the silent loving action of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was a model of simplicity, humility, and recollection.
The photo at the top is of a reliquary I have of several Franciscan saints with St. Paschal in the center. (I scanned it and it came out badly, my apologies. Go here and click on the image to see it enlarged for better, but blurry detail.)
Did you know that when a person is close to death or is asking for his intercession, sometimes, oftentimes, St. Paschal causes a knocking sound - it’s an auricular manifestation of his presence, or a warning to prepare for death. I haven’t heard anything yet. I should clarify this, the sounds emanate from either one of his images or his relics.
It is said at his funeral when he was laid out in the Church that during the consecration he sat up and gazed at the Eucharist. The truth in hagiography police dismiss it, claiming that since they did not embalm in those days, it could have simply been a natural phenomenon - many corpses have been known to make spontaneous movements. I guess it has something to do with rigor mortis. However, I like to believe even his body was adoring the Blessed Sacrament - “My body sleeps, but my spirit keeps vigil” - as the psalmist says.
St. Paschal pray for us and please remember your friend Shayne, whose birthday it is today.
Pope Paul accepted the liturgical reforms after Vatican II “with pleasure,” Cardinal Noe said. He added that Paul VI was not be nature a sad man, but “he was saddened by the fact of having been left alone by the Roman Curia.” Regarding the late Pope’s famous remark about the “smoke of Satan,” Cardinal Noe said that he knew what Paul VI intended by that statement. In that denunciation, he said, the Pope “meant to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render worship to the Lord by celebrating badly Holy Mass because of an errant interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke of the smoke of Satan because he maintained that those priests who turned Holy Mass into dross in the name of creativity, in reality were possessed of the vainglory and the pride of the Evil One. So, the smoke of Satan was nothing other than the mentality which wanted to distort the traditional and liturgical canons of the Eucharistic ceremony.” - 