You can’t have too many patron saints!

Patron saints come in all sizes, shapes, and occupations. There are name patrons, saints whose name you share, there are date patrons, saints whose feast days mark some special moment in your life like your birthday, and there are action saints. I should probably call them something else, but I can’t think of a word that covers livelihood (like carpentry) and pastime (like soccer). Besides, “action saints” is an intriguing concept. It makes them sound like spiritual action heroes. Which I am sure they were! (When I wrote the previous paragraph, I didn’t know that there really is a patron saint of soccer! It is St. Luigi Scrosoppi. Look him up!)

As a writer, of course I am interested in the patron saints of writers. I gladly claim all four evangelists, as well as all the other biblical authors, and since I write for a newspaper, I can claim St. Francis de Sales as well. But I want to add another saint who is far less known, though he wrote one of the best-known hymns for Holy Week, the Vexilla Regis, which is “The Royal Banners Forward Go.” He also wrote Salve festa dies for Easter, which in English is known as “Hail thee, festival day” and which was magnificently put to music by Vaughn Williams.

Though these hymns are well known, he himself is not. His name is Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus and he is known as St. Venantius Fortunatus. That is still quite a mouthful, so I shall call him St. Ven.

St. Ven was a Roman gentleman born around 535 near Treviso north of Venice. He suffered from an eye ailment but was cured after rubbing his eyes with oil from a lamp burning before a statue of St. Martin of Tours. He then set out on a pilgrimage to Tours to give thanks to St. Martin. Since the Lombards were ravaging his homeland, he turned his pilgrimage into a tour of Europe until he came to Poitiers. There he met St. Radegund and her nuns, who persuaded him to become a priest and stay on as their chaplain and adviser. He was made bishop of Poitiers shortly before his death in 605.

His Holy Week and Easter hymns were not his only works. St. Ven was a prolific poet, and he shares his feast day with another great poet and saint, John of the Cross. I am no poet, but my devotion to St. Ven is based on a comment about his poetry: “He was a gracious gentleman, with a facility for turning all his experiences – friendships, food, the towns he passed – into poetry.”

That statement caught my attention. I have been writing for The Catholic Spirit for a year now, and when I began, Chris Donohue gave me some good advice: “If you ever get stuck trying to think of what to write next, including a lead, seek the intercession of St. Joseph or say a ‘Hail, Mary.’ It has never failed me.” I hope St. Joseph or Our Lady won’t feel hurt if I also turn to St. Ven, because someone who could “turn all his experiences into poetry” strikes me as being a good patron to ask for help as I gaze numbly at an empty screen. I’m not asking for poetry – that’s reaching for the stars – but as the deadline approaches, I find it reassuring to think that ordinary experiences can be suitable subjects of my next article. I can write about that life-saving cup of coffee, or that unexpected phone call, or the dog’s latest find …well, maybe not that. But ordinary experiences can be inspiring when you start to think about them.

In fact, ever since Jesus’ Resurrection, ordinary experiences, ordinary objects are not just inspiring, they are sublime, for he said, “Behold, I make all things new!” All things, even coffee and weeds and housecleaning and file cabinets have been made new. As George MacDonald wrote, “Everything real is heavenly.” St. Ven, help me to make that known!