Sunday, October 02, 2005

St.

When I first arrived in Gatineau (the city formerly named as Hull) I managed to misplace myself on the twisting roads of this fine Québec city. On the way home from work I decided to avoid the busy Maisonneuve thoroughfare by turning left on Papineau. I thought I might get through to St. Laurent ( the 4th century martyr patron saint of librarians, brewers, paupers, students and cooks who gave all the churches money to the poor before the Romans could steal it) by turning left onto St. Jacques (Ledoyen, priest martyred during the French Revolution). This was an incredibly dwarse decision, considering that I actually needed to turn right. I corrected my mistake and made my way to St. Laurent (which might actually refer to a Laurentius or his brother Laurentinus who were martyred in the third century in Carthage) I thought it would be quicker to get to St. Redempteur (Thomas Rodriguez de Cunha martyred by Muslims in 1638 somewhere in Malaysia) by turning onto St. Hyacinthe (which could refer to a soldier martyred in Rome in AD 120, to Emporer Trajan's chamberlain who starved to death rather than eat meat offered to idols, to a man was killed after he cut down a tree dedicated to an idol somewhere in north-west Turkey, to an apostle to Poland who famously carried a crucifix and statue of Mary safely away during an attack on his monastery, to a man who was martyred with St. Alexander and St. Tiburtius in AD 690 in Italy, to the servant of St. Philip whom he was martyred with, to a man martyred in southern Italy alongside St. Quintus, St. Felician, and St. Lucian, to a missionary beheaded in Vietnam in 1773, to a Dominican priest who was burned alive in 1622 in Nagasaki Japan, or to a noblewoman who humbled herself and served the aged poor in Italy in the early seventeenth century.) Unfortunately, St. Hyacynthe was a dead end, so I turned right onto St. Henri (which probably refers to St. Henricus Gallus of Albano who was a French bishop and cardinal in the twelfth century). I decided to turn back onto St. Laurent. I looked to my left as I travelled a long and saw that St. Florent (which probably refers to a French deacon beheaded by barbarians in AD 451 in Rheims) also ended in a dead end. I finally found my way northwards and turned left onto St. Étienne (which is the French version of St. Stephen who, you may know, was the first Christian martyr) and then right onto St. Hélene (the mother of Emporer Constantine the great who supposedly found the relics of the true cross). After twisting on a few more streets I found myself on Sacré Coeur which I followed to St. Redempteur and past St. Joseph (the father of Jesus and the patron saint of Canada) and to my house.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, Prince John, you are surrounded by sanctity wherever you go.

John den Boer said...

Everywhere you go in Quebec you the sanctity is apparent . . . and then hardly anyone goes to mass on Sunday.

Edu Duda Moraes said...

Gatineau must be so beautiful... We hope be there soon...

Eduardo and Gislaine
Immigrants going to Gatineau
eduardo@crea-pr.org.br

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