Patron saint of exercise

Looking for a little help in the kitchen? How about turning to a patron saint? The Church has a rich tradition of assigning saints as special guardians and protectors of different aspects of our lives. The culinary arts are no exception.

Here are a few of the many patron saints to call on for assistance in the kitchen: If every steak on the grill could be as considerate as St. Lawrence an excellent patron saint for cooks preparing meals. When the emperor of Rome ordered the execution of all bishops, priests, and deacons, Lawrence, a deacon in charge of distributing goods to the poor, was ordered to hand over all the treasures of the church.

Martha, sister of Lazarus and Mary, is a great patron saint of cooking and hospitality because she served dinner to Jesus himself. Although Jesus admonished her to stop worrying about getting kitchen help from her sister, he surely enjoyed her efforts. The Gospel of John records another meal Jesus ate at her house, six days before his last Passover: As the host of the most important dinner guest ever to grace a party, who better to call on for help before the guests arrive?

Elizabeth is often depicted with loaves of bread because she spent so much of her life feeding the poor. The daughter of the king of Hungary, Elizabeth was married Patron saint of exercise 14, widowed at 20 with three children and died at In her short life she used her position to serve the poor, rejecting the luxuries of courtly life to feed the hungry and attend to the Patron saint of exercise, even putting a leper in her own bed.

Elizabeth built a hospital and monastery, but most relevant to her patronage of bakers is the gift of grain she gave to Germany during a famine.

Long revered by French bakers, St. Honore was a bishop in France in the sixth century. His original connection to baking stems from a story about his childhood nursemaid. The paddle fell to the ground, grew roots and blossomed into a blackberry tree that supposedly was still revered a thousand years later.

Even today many pastry shops and boulangeries are named after him. In Paris his feast day is celebrated with a three-day festival of bread. The eponymous Gateau St. Honore, a confection of puff pastry, cream puffs, pastry cream, and caramelized sugar, is traditionally used as a First Communion cake in France. Anthony was a hermit, not a butcher, and his ascetic lifestyle and practice of bodily mortification probably left little opportunity for eating meat. One theory is that pig fat was used in the Middle Ages to treat itchy rashes and St.

Anthony is the patron saint of skin diseases. Another theory holds that pigs are sometimes used as symbols Patron saint of exercise the devil, and St.