Please listen to George’s preaching! NOVENA TO ST. CORONA!

Cover photo: St. Corona. Image courtesy of Creative Commons

 

By George Nedumparambil

 

With all the Cathedrals, churches, chapels, mosques and temples all over the world having been shut for more than a month, the business of organized religion is really broke! 

 

How on earth can they hope to survive, without the steady flow of hard cash from staunch believers who either can’t go to their places of worship or cannot be weaned from their drug addiction of daily prayers together with their money deposited in alms collection receptacles?

 

St. Marx’s Opium!

After all,  is not the eternal TRUTH prophesied  by saint MARX that religion is the OPIUM of the people can never go wrong!  Is there anyone  on this God’s earth who doesn’t know about it?  All know it for certain, don’t they?

 

It is in this context that Charismatic preachers like dear George Nedumparambil,  have risen  to the occasion  to promote this very timely devotion to St.Corona. Please read below all about it and donate generously for the  greater growth of organized religions! james kottoor,  editor ccv.

 

Please listen devotedly to

George’s  preaching below!

 

If you think that the Catholic Church has been idling away their time, you are probably wrong.  They are probably busy investigating as to how to turn an adversity into an opportunity.  They need it.  They missed their Easter harvest of bountiful cash flow and continue to miss Sunday collections. 

 

Tenants in their commercial outlets are reportedly asking for rent-free status, hospitals and educational institutions have turned cost centres instead of being profit centres during lockdown period.  They need all the money that they can extract out of the hands of the gullible believers once the lockdown is lifted. It looks like that they have hit jackpot. Someone has been able to discover an obscure saint.  The saint’s name is St. Corona. A WhatsApp message is making its round about St. Corona and suggesting that this saint could be the patron saint of viruses.

I did a search on this saint on Wikipedia.  According to information available on that site, there is a  legend about one Victor who was a Roman soldier of Italian ancestry, who was tortured, including having his eyes gouged out, and was beheaded. Most sources state that he and Corona were killed in Roman Syria during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (around the 160s-170s AD), but various hagiographical texts disagree about the site of their martyrdom, with some stating that it was Damascus, while Coptic sources state that it was Antioch. Some Western sources state that Alexandria or Sicily was their place of martyrdom. They also disagree about the date of their martyrdom. They may have been martyred during the reign of Antoninus Pius, or Diocletian, while the Roman Martyrology states that it was in the third century when they met their dead.

The story is that while Victor was suffering from the tortures, a sixteen year-old wife of another soldier, named Corona or Stephanie (name meaning "crown") comforted and encouraged him. For this, she was arrested and interrogated. The story goes that  Corona was bound to two bent palm trees and torn apart as the trunks were released; this suffering  is considered largely fictional, and she herself may also be fictional. Other sources state that Victor and Corona were husband and wife.

There is also debate as to where Corona was from; differing accounts place her in Syria, Sicily, and Marseille.

 

Veneration

Victor and Corona's memorial day is 24 November (11 November in the Orthodox Church calendar). Their feast day is 14 May. Outside the town of Feltre in northern Italy, on the slopes of Mount Miesna, is the church of SS. Vittore e Corona, erected by the Crusaders from Feltre after the First Crusade.

Corona is especially venerated in Austria and eastern Bavaria. There is a chapel dedicated to her in Sauerlach, near Munich. There are two churches named after her in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Passau and two towns named after her in Lower Austria. A statue of her stands in the Münster Cathedral.

Around 1000 AD Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor brought Corona's relics to Aachen in western Germany. Her relics were rediscovered during excavation work at Aachen Cathedral in 1910.  The relics were removed from a crypt and placed in a shrine inside the cathedral. (This writer would like to exclaim, Mama Mia to this finding of the relics).

Corona is associated with superstitions involving money, such as gambling and treasure hunting, a result of a later treasure hunter who credited his success to invoking her. She is called upon by a treasure hunter to bring treasure, and then sent away through a similarly elaborate ritual.In March 2020 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh suggested invoking her for support of the world economy during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. She was not historically a patron saint of or invoked against pandemics or disease, but has been invoked against the current pandemic. Her relics will be available for public veneration once the pandemic has passed.

 

Catholicsorg.com also states that St Corona is regarded as patron saint of treasure hunters, and St. Victor and Corona's feast day is celebrated on May 14.  The Church needs a treasure hunter and the believers require someone to pray for intercession.  What a marriage of convenience and what perfect timing!

Mother of Perpetual Succor, St Antony and St Jude, here is competition coming your way soon.  You will need to face up to this emerging threat: Novena to St. Corona, the Patron Saint of Viruses.  And what is claim of this saint to be patron saint of viruses – her name.This threat is real.  All of you need to protect your turf as otherwise the money will go elsewhere.  The virus is not reported to be going anytime soon.  Even if it goes, it is reported that the virus may come back in another avatar.  The threat of the virus is thus perpetual and so is the threat to the current cash flows brought in by novenas to Mother Mary, St Antony and St Jude.

Coming out with a novena is very easy.  Just tweak the wordings of existing novenas in the market and presto the Novena to St Corona is ready.  The church that first to start this Novena is in for a big jackpot.  

St. Corona pray for us all!