The Real Story Behind the Church’s Tradition of Blessing Throats

by Zoe Romanowsky | Feb 03, 2016

Years ago a priest told me that when he was a young boy, his brother began choking on a bone. Panicked, his mother called aloud for the help of St. Blaise, and immediately the bone cleared and everything was fine. Whether the boy was truly in grave danger or not, I don’t know, but the story is similar to one of the most famous legends about St. Blaise: supposedly, while he was in prison for refusing to renounce his faith, he miraculously cured a little boy who was choking to death on a fish bone.

Very little is actually known about this early Christian martyr, however. The first reference we have of him is in the medical journals of a court physician named Aëtius Amidenus, from the end of the fifth or... (read more at Aleteia.org)