Happy nameday to our beautiful #1, Rose.
My husband and I believe that the Good Lord ordained this beloved patron saint for our daughter.
We had her when were very young and not fully practicing the faith. We chose her name, never considering the saints or our Faith.
As we returned to the Faith, we held a great sadness that she didn’t have a patron saint from birth. She did adopt many patron saints over her young life. But it wasn’t the same to her.
She began to prepare for her Confirmation around the age of 10. She continued to study the lives of the saints and prayed for her decision to select a special patron saint as an intercessor.
One day we heard a squeal from upstairs. It was followed by feet quickly running towards us. In a tear-filled voice we heard, “I do have one, mama! I do have a name saint!”
In sheer joy, she continued to inform us that this specific saint was hers!
One of the saint’s nicknames was my daughter’s name — an uncommon name for the saint’s time and an unusual spelling of the name in general.
We all cheered and gave thanks to God for His tender care of our beloved girl from the very start. It was, indeed, a consolation for us all!!
It brings me to tears every time I retell the story. Not only did he provide her with a name saint, He also infused the saint’s great virtues in our daughter from her earliest days. GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME!!!
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, ora pro nobis.
…Thou, illuminated by supernatural light and faith immovable, didst show thyself to be a true daughter of the Holy Gospel, by seeing in the person of thy neighbour the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, sole object of thy affections; and therefore didst thou place all thy delight in holding converse with the poor, in serving them, in drying their tears and comforting their spirits, in assisting them with every pious good office, in the midst of pestilence and the miseries to which our human nature is subject.
Thou didst make thyself poor in order to succour thy neighbour in his poverty–poor in the good things of earth, to enrich thyself with the goods of heaven.
…vouchsafe to be the heavenly friend of our souls,… AMEN
The life of Saint Elizabeth may serve as a model to persons of every age and station. Children may learn to fear God from their earliest years, and to increase their devotion with their age; single persons, how to live chastely in their state; married people, how husband and wife ought to live together; and the widowed how to sanctify their solitude. Masters and mistresses may learn how to take care of their domestics, and pay their wages regularly. Those of a higher station may learn to set a good example to others, and not to be ashamed to appear at public worship. All Christians can find instruction in it, for employing their time well, helping the needy, and bearing crosses and trials sent by heaven. God permitted a Landgravine, a royal princess, to be banished unjustly from court, to beg her bread, and, besides other ignominies, to be refused a shelter among her own subjects. Still she complained not; but, submissive to the decrees ot Providence, gave humble thanks to the Almighty for all that He, in His wisdom, had sent her. Even at the death of her husband, what fortitude, what submission to the divine will she manifested! Oh! that all would endeavor, in trials of much less severity, to unite their will with that of God, and patiently bear the cross that He has laid upon them.
Father Francis Xavier Weninger, DD, SJ. “Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Landgravine of Hesse and Thuringia” Lives of the Saints, 1876.
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