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Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Saintly Devotions or 'Chain Mail'

When our group went to Spain, we had a good deal of “on the bus, off the bus, meet at the bus” as anyone who has taken group tours knows. At one point I lost the bus and along with it, the group. I began to pray to St. Anthony, one of my favorite saints, to help me find the bus. I wasn’t railing at him although when I lose things at the office, I do sometimes talk to him rather forcefully. Another favorite is St. Jude. I focus on these two for obvious reasons: one saint finds articles — in this case a bus — and St. Jude, as the patron saint of lost causes according to one source. I have a list of those, some critical and others trivial.

St. Anthony generally comes through as he did with the bus, and St. Jude consistently amazes me as well. These are saints I turn to with occasional requests, alternately humbly, stridently or fearfully, but they have never bombarded me with demands or threats about anything.

On the other hand, I now receive “letters” from people I know that not only advocate I say certain prayers or take certain actions (like forwarding an E-mail) to receive sure rewards of various kinds. These “chain mails” also sometimes make threats: If you don’t forward this to at least five, eight, 10 or possibly more, people, something dreadful will happen. In both the good and the bad scenario, nothing too specific is mentioned, but the time line usually is — within the day or at the outside, within the week the forces of light or darkness will visit me based on my response to the E-mail. My dear friend, and former college roommate in Texas, Lucy, sends these E-mails with the caveat: “I usually don’t send these, but I couldn’t resist this one.”

Over time, the twinges I felt as I hit the delete key have diminished. I used to read the notes to see what I might “win” or “lose” depending on what I did. These days, I’m just hitting delete. Depending on our technology skills and knowledge of SPAM filters, we all receive junk E-mail, but it usually comes from an anonymous source. Chain E-mails generally come from people we know. At the risk of offending some well-intentioned folks, I wonder just how many people perform the requests in the E-mails and forward them to their friends. I don’t have as many friends as the chain mails say you need for forwarding the chain mail, and I would have far fewer if I did send them on with any degree of regularity.

While we all need prayers and definitely need to pray, believing the messages in these chain mails suggests more of superstition about our beliefs than faith. St. Anthony generally comes through in an incredibly brief amount of time — knowing, I suppose about my tenuous hold on any kind of patience — and St. Jude seems to require more time, or maybe I need more time to adjust my own needs and the prayer and reflection allow me to do that. What I don’t need are promises or threats coming to me through the internet.