I’m asking very nicely now. Please help, Saint Blaise. I can remember childhood days, white candles held in front and crossed on my frail neck, how from behind them I would look, a roe behind two branches, apprehensively. Mid-winter, and Saint Blaise’s Day, my eyes were blinking, fixed upon the aged priest wholly intent on praying just to you, but bending over me kneeling before the altar; true to sacred lore, he muttered in a learned language neither I nor he well understood. Yet my health was preserved; you understood the formula; you kept from me diptheria, and inflammation of the tonsils, even croup, with this result: I have grown up, keeping, for half a century, so very well that I’ve not thought of you at all. O Bishop of Sebasta, don’t be hurt by my ingratitude. Help me today! You know the childish way in which we all go on: we don’t look back, we cut and run away along the drifting highway, letting go the hands of higher beings; you just smile at us as adults do, being wise, not hurt by what is simply lack of thought, smiling at us once more when, troubled, we return, as I, I must admit, have done today with beating heart… Please smile at me, Saint Blaise! Yes, smile at me, upon my knees before your simple altar-stone, a whimpering whelp – smile if you like, Saint Blaise, but help! The trouble is, you see, a treacherous disease is killing me, starting to squeeze my larynx tighter, and my air is running out, just as a climber’s breath comes short and climbing gets more difficult, or like a ton- weight on my back; so I go on in everlasting panting, while the surgeon’s knife is threatening to preserve my life by cutting up my wretched throat, that very throat which I, farsightedly, held out (remember, Blaise!) between your candles long ago… Your consecrated larynx too, when those so-wicked heathen were intent on killing, blunt knives cut: so you know the feeling! You know the blade’s edge and the taste of blood, you know moments of desperation too in the contraction of the torn windpipe, the fight in terror as we suffocate. Help! It is over now for you, you know it all, you wise grown-up! You know quite well what pain is bearable, how much is not too much even for all the goodness which is God, and what life’s worth… And even, maybe, that death is nothing to write home about. Mihály Babits, 1883-1941 O God, who makest us glad with the yearly festival of blessed Blaise, thy Martyr and Bishop: mercifully grant that, as we now observe his heavenly birthday; so we may likewise rejoice in his protection; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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