Once upon a time in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that one had not the pleasure of ever visiting previously this ridiculous redactor was walking a friend home. Midway in the walk, the friend (who was a transplant to the center of civilization from the forsaken barbarian land of Ohio) stopped and broke into laughter almost hysterically. “What’s so funny?” one asked perplexed. “You,” stammered forth the response, “You’ve never been here before, right?” Which query one affirmed simply with a terse “That’s right.” After another gregarious giggle, the friend exclaimed, “But you look like you belong here!” Solemnly speaking this miffed Manhattanite decisively declared: “Well, when you’ve grown up in New York you sure as beans better look like you know where you’re going before something happens to you!”
This little lesson in savvy street survival smoothly segues to the simple story of a saintly scrawny scholastic and unlikely patron saint of self-defense, Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin. There are some variations on the story and the one that I have chosen to relate is probably the least canonical but perhaps most colorful. The year 1860 was quite tumultuous in the soon-to-be-non-existent Papal States, as the apostolic works of many religious orders were curtly curtailed by the new national Italian government. Without the merciful moderating ministrations of Holy Mother Church, the naturally rowdy Italian countryside made the contemporaneous American Wild West look positively civilized.The Passionists moved their novices, including one Br. Gabriel Possenti to the town of Isola in the Abruzzi Mountains of the Kingdom of Naples. Now for the fun part. A terrible troop of mean marauders belligerently burst into the terrified town. They got near the Passionist monastery while loudly and liberally violating the second commandment. Coming to a second floor balcony our pious protagonist properly protested the impious incursion. The apparent leader scoffed out loud and challenged: “So waddaya gonna do about it, Skinny?” Now staying at the monastery’s infirmary was a wounded constable from whom the simple son of St. Paul of the Cross borrowed a sidearm.
“Good Sir, do you see that lizard by your feet?,” was our holy hero’s rebuttal.
“Yeah, so what? Youze gonna tell it ta bite me? Hah,” the belligerent buffon scoffed.
Promptly St. Gabriel pulled out the handgun and shot the unfortunate lizard straight between the eyes.
After making a small puddle where he stood, the leader of the mellowed mauraders stammered: “So, so sorry, good Reverend Brudder, that we, um, boddered ya. Bye!”
While the Congregation for Divine Worship, whose competence it is to declare in these matters, seems to have accidentally misfiled the application by the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc. (“An Organization Dedicated to Promoting St. Gabriel Possenti as the Patron Saint of Handgunners”) of PO Box 183, Cabin John, Maryland 20818 perhaps it is not inappropriate for the sensus fidelium to invoke him as the patron saint of the Second Amendment.
Mr. Screwtape
Related Articles
No user responded in this post