A Prayer to St. Lucy of Syracuse

It used to be that the end of the year rolled around and I’d still have vacation days left over. The policy was use ‘em or lose ‘em, but you could roll them over if you promised to take them during January.

At my new job, a place where time may be accrued forever, there seem to be people who are sitting on weeks or months of vacation. You’ll never see me do that. I’m using every day.

Why? Because it would be tragic to die and leave vacation time on the table.

While not a big prayer, I found myself thanking God that I had a couple of days off recently. How silly. There’s no greater gift than a day at home, but God has bigger matters to look after.

This got me thinking that there must be a patron saint of days off. I was wrong.

So who do we pray to? There are scores of saints for specific occupations, everything from gravediggers to toy makers, so you could always pick from among those — but I’d suggest the catch-all category of laborers. Among the eight patron saints of laborers, I’ve decided to pray to  St. Lucy of Syracuse because she has the coolest name. And like so many saints, she was martyred:

After torture that included having her eyes torn out, she was surrounded by bundles of wood which were set afire; they went out. She prophesied against her persecutors, and was executed by being stabbed to death with a dagger.

Wow. If that doesn’t sound like a bad day at work, I don’t know what does.

St. Lucy doesn’t float your boat?  How about a prayer to St. Lydwina of Schiedam, patron saint against prolonged suffering, which is what work is sometimes like. Turns out she’s also the patron saint of roller skating, but that’s another blog post.