23 January: St. Raymond Peñafort – surfer extraordinaire

Today is the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort (+1275).

What you see below might leave you slightly puzzled.

The painting is in the Spanish church in Rome, Santa Maria in Monserrato.

Here is another view.

This is St. Raymond Penafort (+1275), whose tomb you visit in Barcelona.  He was a great canonist and is patron of canon lawyers.  With St. Peter Nolasco he founded the Mercedarians.

St. Raymond had gone to Majora (lower left corner of the higher painting and the left side on the lower) to convert the Moors.  As it happened King James I of Aragon was hanging out there with his mistress.  Channeling his inner John the Baptist, St. Raymond demanded that King send her away.  The King refused and Raymond said that he would return to Barcelona.  However, the King blocked Raymond’s departure, forbidding any boat to bear him away.   In the presence of a Dominican as a witness, Raymond went to the shore, took off his clock and put the end over his staff as a sail, stepped on to the trailing part and zoomed off 160 miles to Barcelona.  The King was impressed, it seems, and mended his ways.

St. Raymond pray for us and for politicians who support and are involved in intrinsically evil things that cause public scandal.