St. Paschal Baylon

Who they were

Paschal Baylon was an Aragonese shepherd who taught himself to read while minding flocks, stopping passersby to ask them to name the letters in his little book. He entered the Franciscans of the strict reform as a lay brother and spent his life as cook, porter and gardener, while his interior life gathered at one point, which was the tabernacle. He knelt there in every spare hour and often through the night.

Sent across France on an errand during the religious wars, he defended the Real Presence in an impromptu dispute with a hostile crowd and took a beating for it that marked him for the rest of his life. He died in 1592, and the tradition that his eyes opened at the elevation during his own funeral Mass is told as the beloved tradition it is. In 1897 Leo XIII formally named him patron of Eucharistic congresses and associations, which makes a cook the canonical head of the devotion that St. Peter Julian Eymard and St. Manuel González García built the modern wing of.

Why people turn to St. Paschal Baylon

Adorers, whose formal patron he is. Cooks and kitchen and cafeteria workers, with St. Lawrence and St. Martha. Shepherds, and the self taught, with St. Isidore the Farmer.

How to ask their intercession

His practice travels: the spare five minutes given to whatever tabernacle is nearest you. He did it between shifts in a kitchen, so the excuse about time does not really survive contact with him.