Not saint but saints- today we get a twofer of saints for the Feast Day of Saints Abdon and Sennen.Abdon and Sennon were from Persia. Since Abdon was a cooper and Sennen was his buddy, they became the patron saints of barrel makers. My dad's great-grandpa was a cooper who repaired whiskey barrels. He died of cirrhosis of the liver because he liked to drink up the liquid left in the bottom of the barrels.
And you thought I wasn't well-bred. I digress.
Saints Abdon and Sennen liked to show their faith in Christ by spitting publicly on pagan idols. This got them thrown to the lions. The lions weren't interested. So they got to meet the gladiators who hacked them to pieces. According to my Saint-A-Day guide "'the more their bodies were mangled with wounds, the more were their souls made beautiful by Divine grace'. As if to confirm their traditional patronage, these Saint's holy relics were eventually smuggled to France, concealed in wine barrels."
If Abdon and Sennen were our contemporaries they would not be saints, they'd be Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe.
1 comment:
Patron saint of coopers, now that's cool. Several years ago, I visited the Guinness brewery in Dublin. On the tour, they have an awesome video of the coopers at work. Virtually no measuring tools, all done by eye and learned from experience.
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