PaddlingPadre

According to legend, there was a city named Silene in Libya, next to which was a stagnant and deadly pond in which lived a dragon, who would rise up out of the pond and by his breath poison the entire country. To appease the dragon, the people of the city gave him every day two sheep. And when this failed, they gave to the dragon each day a man and a sheep. And when this failed, they even offered up to the dragon by lot their children and young people, until one day the lot fell upon the king’s daughter, and she was led out amid much weeping, dressed in bridal clothes in mourning for a wedding she would never see, to the edge of this stinking pond.

As she sat there weeping, St. George, a Roman eques, what we would call a knight, chanced to pass by and asked her why she was weeping, and she told him what had happened and begged him to flee. But George, being unafraid, pledged to help the young woman in the name of Jesus Christ. And it happened that even as they spoke, the dragon rose up from the deadly waters, and George, turning his horse, despised by the dragon and rode him down with his spear, grievously wounding the creature so that, together with the young woman, they were able to bind the dragon and lead him, meek and defeated, back to the city.

And when all the people had gathered to see this marvel, and the king too was overcome with wonder, George spoke to the crowds and begged them to be baptized so that he could slay the dragon. And giving thanks to God for this deliverance, the entire city was baptized, and St. George drew out his sword and severed the dragon’s head, and his body was cast into a nearby field.

After this, the people of Silene built a great church dedicated to Our Lady and to St. George, and in place of the stinking and deadly waters that had once been there, a fountain of living water sprung up.

As for George, he likely continued in his military service, though some say he renounced this, until in the days of the great persecution of Diocletian, when it said that he defied the emperor to his face, and thus won a martyr’s crown.

I leave it for you to fully unpack the truth that lies behind this legend, from the uselessness of pagan sacrifices to the creeping and deadly power of sin, but suffice it to say, we are not free from dragons in our own day – the dragon of Revelation is ever seeking the woman and her offspring to destroy them – but neither are we bereft of weapons. Baptism is yet as powerful as it ever was, and the ancient serpent is powerless against the name of Christ.

St. George, pray for us.