On a ranked list of my favorite Catholic saints,
this is one of them.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint
of teachers, lawyers, and archivists,
also patron saint of spinners and potters.
Additionally, patron saint of mechanics, scribes, girls,
and unmarried girls, which seems redundant.
One would think unmarried girls could be eligible for coverage
under the previously mentioned classification of girls.
But this is Catholicism where one can never
be sure of anything except maybe patriarchy, which has no patron
saint, but if it did, St. Catherine would likely
be called upon, as her case list is weirdly extensive
and also includes grease, apologists, millers,
and all of the Philippines, which then includes exactly
half my family tree, my mother's cheekbones, my Lola's recipes,
most of the collected prayers I know but can't remember why.
I feel I've lived a life worth remembering
if I'm able to pay the electric bill or empty the dishwasher.
This would be laughable to St. Catherine, who
by mid-morning has already intervened before God on behalf
of tanners, students, nurses, scholars, philosophers,
and preachers.
Furthermore, both knife sharpeners and knife grinders
fall under her jurisdiction, as do dying people, which
feels like a conflict of interest, as in her time,
there was a correlation between knives and dying people.
This was not her only paradox.
She converted hundreds to her faith;
then these new believers could be promptly executed
by the empire.
Did she know that would be the fruit of her labor?
Was this the will of the saint or the will of the emperor?
Is there a difference?
I, too, have knelt before a god that knelt
before an ordinary Caesar.
I, too, have felt the outcome was unjust.
Though Providence holds little interest in how I feel,
it's as arbitrary as human memory, and memory was not then,
and is not now the responsibility of St. Catherine.
Her responsibilities are the well documented above categories
of patronage, as well as secretaries, the University
of Paris, haberdashers, theologians, librarians,
and libraries, which I assume includes
all the pristine collections presently in existence,
but also those history has forgotten or set ablaze.
Historians are not included on her oddly inclusive list,
a shadowy group of untrustworthy thinkers.
Modern historians currently argue
St. Catherine did not exist, or perhaps was
a different figure with a different name,
or maybe an amalgamation of several people who
can't be identified, thus must also be expunged or excluded
from history's most grand records,
though it's possible these anonymous beings, banished
from history, standing beyond the margins
of collective recollection, might have been recognized
and loved by their neighbors as stenographers, wheelwrights,
spinsters, hatmakers.
[APPLAUSE]