Hi everyone,

It’s me – Beerguyrob. Balls asked me to sub in today, as he has a marijuana shipment prior engagement that cannot be ignored. In that vein, I will do my best to emulate the tribute to tWBS he does in this spot every week, while putting my own unique spin on the whole endeavour. I last hosted a Sexy Friday in November 2018, and the reviews were mostly positive.

So, let’s get at it, then.

Good Friday ends the 40 days of Lent, which as we all know is the 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday, which is the period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter.

In that vein, I think it’s only fair to look at the sexy saints of the Lenten Period and Good Friday.

This year, Lent runs from February 17 to April 3. As we all know, Lent is a 40-day period of fasting in preparation for Easter, first mentioned in the Canons of Nicaea (AD 325). This is done to emulate the 40 days Christ spent in the desert facing Satan’s temptations, which is totally the same as not eating chocolate after Valentine’s Day until it’s bunny season.

Roman Catholicism – being the one true faith, of course – holds that men and women who died as martyrs for their faith or who lived what were deemed to be exemplary lives in other ways should be venerated. They were believed to be men and women of “heroic virtue” who after their deaths held a privileged place with God in heaven. So it’s only right to look upon their forms and worship them. (All descriptions are adapted or directly from Wikipedia, unless noted)

February 23rd – Saint Polycarp 

Polycarp was a Christian bishop of Smyrna. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he was intended to be bound and burned at the stake. But after  ignition the flames surrounded him like sails, and instead of being burned he seemed to glow like bread baking, or gold being melted in a furnace. When the captors saw he wasn’t being burned, they stabbed him. The blood that flowed put the fire out. But despite his association with fire, he is the patron saint of those with ailments such as earaches or dysentery.

February 27th – Saint Gregory of Narek

Grigor Narekatsi was an Armenian mystical and lyrical poet, monk, and theologian. He is widely revered as one of the greatest figures of medieval Armenian religious thought and literature. His most well-known literary work is a book of prayers, known as the “Book of Lamentations”. It is considered a masterpiece of Armenian literature. St. Gregory himself defined the work as an “encyclopedia of prayer for all nations,” and hoped that it would provide guidance in prayer for people of all walks of life. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic and Armenian Catholic Churches, and was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Francis in 2015.

March 4th – Saint Casimir

Casimir Jagiellon was a prince of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After his elder brother Vladislaus was elected as King of Bohemia in 1471, Casimir became the heir apparent. He became known for his piety, devotion to God, and generosity towards the sick and poor. Casimir realized from an early age that his life belonged to someone else, but to a much higher King than his father. Despite pressure, humiliation, and rejection, he stood by that loyalty through his whole life. He even rejected a marriage alliance his father tried to form. He became ill (most likely with tuberculosis) and died in March 1484 at the age of 25. He is the patron saint of Lithuania, and the painting of him in Vilnius Cathedral is considered to be miraculous because, according to a legend, the painter attempted to redraw the hand in a different place and paint over the old hand, but the old hand miraculously reappeared.

More conventional explanations claim that three-handed Casimir was the original intent of the painter to emphasize the exceptional generosity of Casimir, or that the old hand bled through a coat of new paint. But miracle also works.

March 8th – Saint John of God

John of God was a Portuguese soldier turned health-care worker in Spain. When he was young, he was kidnapped and put into service as a soldier, his mother dying and father then joining a monastery in his absence. (This is why his last name is lost to history.) To make up for the misery he had caused during his time as a soldier, he left the military, rented a house in Granada, Spain, and began caring for the sick, poor, homeless and unwanted, founding the Order of Charity and the Order of Hospitallers of Saint John of God. His followers later formed the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, dedicated to the care of the poor, sick, and those suffering from mental disorders. Because of his devotion to the sick and poor for 15 years, including meeting his death through an act of charity (catching pneumonia after saving a drowning man), he was canonized in 1690 and became the patron of hospitals and the dying.

March 9th – Saint Frances of Rome 

Frances Ponziani was a wife, mother, mystic, organizer of charitable services and a Benedictine oblate who founded a religious community of oblates, who share a common life without religious vows. She lost a son during the Papal wars of the Western Schism, and founded a hospital during the wars to aid the wounded, which was destroyed by Neapolitan allies of Avignon. Afterwards, she founded another hospital to aid the destitute & nurse her husband who had been wounded during the conflict, and started a lay order of women attached to the Benedictines called the Oblates of Mary. After her husband died, she moved in with the Oblates, serving with them until her death. Because of her actions, she is the patron saint of all oblates, widows, and automobile drivers – because of a legend that an angel used to light the road before her with a lantern when she traveled.

March 17th – Saint Patrick

Born in England circa 385, St. Patrick didn’t make his way to Ireland until Irish pirates kidnapped him at age 16. The “snakes” that St. Patrick banished were representative of the Druids and Pagans in Ireland since they were considered evil, since there were apparently no snakes in Ireland at that time. The primary patron saint of Ireland, Patrick was never formally canonised, having lived prior to the current laws of the Catholic Church in these matters. Nevertheless, he is venerated as a Saint in the Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland, and is regarded as a Saint within the framework of the doctrine of the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches.

March 18th – Saint Cyril of Jerusalem 

Cyril’s life began a few years before Arianism (the heresy that Jesus was not divine or one in being with the Father) and he lived to see its suppression and condemnation at the end of his life. In between he was the victim of many of the power struggles that took place. About the end of 350 AD he succeeded Maximus as Bishop of Jerusalem, but was exiled on more than one occasion due to the enmity of Acacius of Caesarea, and the policies of various emperors. Cyril left important writings documenting the instruction of catechumens and the order of the Liturgy in his day. He worked to ensure that Eastern bishops came to accept the creed of the First Nicaean Council, which set the date for Easter and established the doctrine of the homoousion (God the Father & God the Son are “same in essence”). He is the one who fostered the development of the “holy city” of Jerusalem as a pilgrimage centre for all Christendom.

March 23rd – Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo 

Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo was a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the Archbishop of Lima from 1579 until his death. He first studied in the humanities and law before serving as a professor and later as the Grand Inquisitor at the behest of King Philip II. Mogrovejo was ordained to the priesthood in 1578 and was later consecrated as an archbishop in 1580 before setting off for Peru to begin his mission. To benefit his pastoral work among the Indians, he also mastered several Indian dialects, and produced a trilingual catechism in Spanish/Quechuan/Aymara in 1584, implementing the Council of Trent‘s call for preaching in indigenous languages. In 1591 he founded the first seminary in the Western Hemisphere and mandated that learning indigenous languages was a prerequisite in their formation. Pope John Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint for the Latin American episcopate in 1983.

Saints of Good Friday: (source)

• St. Veronica
  • According to Church tradition, Veronica was moved with sympathy seeing Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary and gave him her veil so that he could wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the offer, and when he returned the veil the image of his face was miraculously captured on it. The resulting relic became known as the Veil of Veronica. The story of Veronica is celebrated in the sixth Station of the Cross.
  • The most common pass with the cape in bullfighting is called a verónica, as the torero holds the cape in the same way as Veronica is usually depicted holding the cloth.
  • She is the patron saint of photographers, and laundry workers.
• St. Dismas 
  • The Penitent Thief, also known as the Good Thief, Grateful Thief or the Thief on the Cross, is one of two unnamed thieves in Luke’s account of the crucifixion of Jesus in the New Testament. The Gospel of Luke describes him asking Jesus to “remember him” when Jesus arrives at his kingdom.
    • He is one of the first Christian “death bed conversions”, and his example for others & the faith is the basis for his canonization.
  • He is given the name Dismas in the Gospel of Nicodemus.
• St. Longinus 
  • Longinus is the name given to the unnamed Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus with a lance. This act is said to have created the last of the Five Holy Wounds of Christ. In medieval and some modern Christian traditions, he is described as an instant convert to Christianity as a result of that act.
    • Tradition also identifies him as the centurion mentioned in St. Matthew’s gospel who at Christ’s death declared, “Truly, this was the Son of the God.”
  • His name first appeared in the Gospel of Nicodemus. He is one of the patron saints of soldiers.
• St. Joseph of Arimathea 
  • After the Crucifixion, when the apostles were scattered and in hiding, Joseph found the courage to go to Pontius Pilate and request the body of Jesus. He took Christ’s body from the cross, wrapped it in linen, and carried it nearby, to a cave tomb he had prepared for his own use.
  • This is why he is the patron saint of funeral directors.
• St. Nicodemus
  • Nicodemus shares with St. Joseph of Arimathea the privilege of taking Christ’s body down from the cross, preparing it for burial, and laying it in the tomb. He is mentioned in three places in the Gospel of John.
    • Most importantly, he is the focus of the famous passage John 3:16, as he is the one who meets with Jesus to discuss being “born again” into the salvation of Christianity.
      • Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Nicodemus as a metaphor concerning the need for the United States to be “born again” in order to effectively address social and economic inequality.
  • An apocryphal work under his name—the Gospel of Nicodemus—was produced in the mid-4th century, and recounts the Harrowing of Hell – the descent of Christ into Hell on the Holy Saturday to bring salvation to all those who died since the beginning of the world.

And since there’s nothing liturgically sexier than stained glass – well then, do I have a treat for you!

That’s terrific glass!

In order, it’s everyone but Saints Turibius, Dismas & Nicodemus, which is pretty good representation considering some of these folks predate the building of most churches. Tourists pay locals good money to stand in line all over Europe just to look at these normally dirty windows. Except Notre Dame,

which stood for 850 years before faulty wiring taught it a 21st Century lesson.

My original intent was to feature actors with the name Friday. But, to be honest, there weren’t that many. And I think using Dragnet’s Joe Friday to fill it out would have been cheating.

Speaking of filled out, there was an actress named Linda Friday

who has acted in over 200 very grown-up movies, usually with a couple of friends. But it’s refreshing to find someone in Hollywood willing to work with anyone regardless of race, so kudos to her. In addition, she has also been in the type of movies Balls referenced when he did his tribute to Skinemax not once but twice a few Fridays back. The most famous of those cable movies was “The Da Vinci Coed“,

which I’m shocked wasn’t already a porno. Now, the plot,

Three sexy spies are tasked with tracking down a coed who can unlock the scandalous secret to a ring that holds the power to spark people’s carnal desires.

can best be described as “typed”, but it does star Skinemax staple Julie K. Smith

as “Chesty Drawers”, so you know this is clearly part of the feminist studies curriculum at Berkeley.

For the ladies, I would have given you Bryan Friday, Hollywood stuntman.

He has appeared in over 120 different productions, from stunts in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” all the way down to acting as “Demon #1” in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” for current internet monster Joss Whedon. Most importantly, he’s got that head tilt nailed down!

Music!

You wanted the best, so you got the best! The hottest chanting monks around…GREGORIANS!

There’s no theme. It twelve hours of monks praising their lord. It’s quite soothing to listen to.

Well, that’s it for me. And don’t forget,

I’m going to let Balls’ words ring true until his return:

Be good to each other and try to stay the fuck away from stupid people. That’s not COVID-19 advice, that’s just general good sense. See you next week!