Novenas

As the days of the boards draw near, I am doing double time in my review and triple time in prayer. Usually, before I start studying, I say a brief prayer and then I study away. In my study table there are torn papers containing old prayers, both originally written or attributed to a saint. As an old time devotee of Our Lady of Guadalupe and The Divine Mercy, I always managed to say a prayer to them, especially the Chaplet. Recently, I have decided to say a novena for every 7 days left prior to my board exams. This morning I started the Novena to the Sacred Heart. I have other novena prayer booklets at home, one for Our Lady of Fatima, another for Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and the other for Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Yesterday, while strolling inside the mall with my family, I happened to pass by a religious store and saw this novena leaflet for a less familiar saint, St. Expeditus, patron saint of urgent cases. I did a research on this saint and here's what I read from Catholic Online:

At one time there was much talk of a Saint Expeditus, and some good people were led to believe that, when there was need of haste, petitioning Saint Expeditus was likely to meet with prompt settlement. However, there is no adequate reason to think that any such saint was ever invoked in the early Christian centuries; in fact it is more than doubtful whether the saint ever existed. In the "Hieronymianum" the name Expeditus occurs among a group of martyrs both on the 18th and 19th of April, being assigned in the one case to Rome, and in the other to Melitene in Armenia; but there is no vestige of any tradition which would corroborate either mention, whereas there is much to suggest that in both lists the introduction of the name is merely a copyist's blunder. Hundreds of similar blunders have been quite definitely proved to exist in the same document.

There is also a story which pretends to explain the origin of this "devotion" by an incident of modern date. A packing case, we are told, containing a body of a saint from the catacombs, was sent to a community of nuns in Paris. The date of its dispatch was indicated by the use of the word "spedito", but the recipients mistook this for the name of the martyr and set to work with great energy to propagate his cult. From these simple beginnings, it is asserted, a devotion to St. Expeditus spread rapidly through many Catholic countries. It should be pointed out that though the recognition of St. Expeditus as the patron of dispatch depends beyond doubt upon a play upon words - still the particular story about the Paris nuns falls to pieces, because as far back as 1781 this supposed martyr, St. Expeditus, was chosen patron of the town of Acireale in Sicily, and because pictures of him were in existence in Germany in the eighteenth century which plainly depicted him as a saint to be invoked against procrastination.

So, okay, I crossed out St. Expeditus's name from my list of saints I will be storming with my prayers. But I did make a list of other saints which I feel will be more sympathetic to my cause.

1. Nicholas of Myra - patron of students, as well as: pharmacists, newlyweds and old maids.
2. Jerome - also patron of students, Father of the Church. Since his own time, he has been associated in the popular mind with scrolls, writing, cataloging, translating, etc. This led to those who work in such fields taking him as their patron - a man who knew their lives and problems.
3. Isidore of Seville - patron of computers; the Internet; schoolchildren; students.
4. Damian - patron of doctors, Twin brother of Saint Cosmas. Physician who accepted no payment which brought many to Christ.
5. Raphael the Archangel - patron of doctors and nurses, Lead character in the deutero-canonical book of Tobit in which he travelled with (and guarded) Tobiah, and cured a man's blindness; hence his connection with travellers, young people, blindness, healing and healers.
6. Servatus - patron saint for success, usually depicted as bishop holding a key in one hand while placing his crozier on a dragon.