Believe it or not, outside of the apostles, Thomas Aquinas, and St. Francis, Apollonia was one of the first saints I ever came to know anything about. A few years back, I was continuing to nurse a budding fascination with Roman Catholicism when one February morning, I decided to see if I was missing any good Catholic commemorations. Being about four years ago today, I was directed by Butler's Lives of the Saints to none other than Apollonia, Virgin and Martyr.
It was Apollonia through whom I learned that whenever something terrible happens to you on your path to sainthood, you become the patron saint of others suffering from that terrible thing. It was a method of patronal selection that puzzled me at first; why would Apollonia, whose teeth were crushed with pincers when she refused to renounce her faith, be the patron saint of dentists and those visiting them? After some thought, I came to understand that the wisdom of the Church was twofold in this matter: firstly, that however bad one's toothache happened to be, one could take solace in the fact that it wasn't near as bad as Apollonia's, and second, if anyone knew how to plead before the throne of God for relief in dental ailments, it would be St. Apollonia.
And so my odd, albeit mild devotion to this third century saint, who leapt toothless into the fire, as if tell her pagan persecutors to quit fooling around and get on with things, began. I've asked her intercession a half a dozen times or so, usually on behalf of others. Right before my wife had a root canal a couple of years ago, I picked up a nickel- sized St. Apollonia medal for her to wear around her neck as she prepared to experience kinder instruments and kinder circumstances than the young woman depicted on the medal. As you might imagine, everything worked out just fine.
St. Apollonia, ora pro nobis!
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