Saints and Dragons

April 23

FEAST OF ST. GEORGE, MARTYR; accounted Patron Saint of England. The year 285 has been assigned as the date of his martyrdom; which event, however, has likewise been attributed to the year 303.

By a conjecture St. George is that certain man (mentioned but unnamed in history) of whom it is related that in the city of Nicomedia he publicly tore to shreds an edict of Diocletian, as impious and unworthy of observance. For this act he forfeited mortal life, and went up to the glory of the life immortal.

Far different from so kindling yet sober a narrative is the career of our saint, according to widespread romantic legend. Who does not think of St. George as a quasi-impossible personage slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess?

And by all means let us so picture him, only turning the wild legend into a parable of truth. Thus the dragon becomes the devil, whom the Christian champion overcame by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of his testimony, when he loved not his life unto the death; and the princess whom he protected and served appears as no mortal bride of his own, but as the Church, “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.”

Fabrications, blunders, even lies, frequently contain some grain of truth: and though life at the longest cannot be long enough for us to sift all, one occasionally may repay the sifting.

Time Flies: A Reading Diary
Christina Rossetti

Taste and Nutrition

It invites us, by way of the pleasure derived, to make good the losses which we suffer in the activities of life. 

~Brillat-Savarin

The Hungry Soul
by Leon R. Kass, M.D.

Trust The Master, God, to Provide

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Matthew 6: 24ff