Saint of the Day Quote: Saint Joseph of Cupertino

I like not scruples nor melancholy: let your intention be right and fear not.

Saint Joseph of Cupertino

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

I am always amused when secularists contend that by definition there can be no miracles.  History is replete with well documented cases of them.  For example, Saint Joseph of Cupertino lived in the full glare of history from June 17, 1603 to September 18, 1663.  Born to a widowed mother so poor that, like Christ, he was born in a stable, he was a Conventual Franciscan Friar.  Although poor at his studies he was ordained to the priesthood largely due to the ecstasy he experienced before the Eucharist, and his manifest good nature and simplicity.  Joseph spent most of his life in religious ecstatic states and during these states he would sometimes fly.  We have accounts of hundreds of witnesses to his flights including a Spanish ambassador and his wife and Pope Urban VIII.  That Joseph of Cupertino flew is as well attested as an historical fact can be prior to photography and film.  Investigated by the Inquisition at one point, he alarmed his judges by falling into an ecstatic state and levitating.  Go here to read about the enormous contemporary documentation describing his flights.

Canonized in 1753, Saint Joseph is the patron saint of weak students, pilots, those who travel by air, and the learning disabled.  I would suggest that he might also be made a helper to Saint Thomas as the patron saint of skeptics!