A Saint With No Schwag

Hello everyone and welcome to another post honoring one of my favorite saints: St. Jane Frances de Chantal! Her feast day is August 12th and since this will be my first August 12th as a Catholic (haha) and St. Jane Frances is my patron saint, I'm celebrating blog style!

Although I was introduced to St. Therese WAY before being Catholic was on my radar (about 15 years before) and I have a special love for her, I decided to find a lesser known saint as my patron. There is something neat about having a patron saint that not everyone has picked. Maybe it's because I can beg more of their attention? lol

But there is a downside. Saints that aren't one of the "in crowd" get less books written about them, there's less information available about their lives, fewer paintings/pictures, and practically NO schwag. And if I'm being honest, schwag is one of my favorite Catholic things.

My St. Jane Frances rosary, one of the only things I've tracked down

So as much as I adore St. Jane Frances de Chantal, there's not a lot out there. But being a creative person, that hasn't stopped me. lol I started playing with a drawing app on my phone and decided to sketch out something to make a St. Jane Frances peg doll:

Listen, I never said I could draw. LOL The finished product is simple but now I have a St. Jane Frances de Chantal peg doll so there's that. lol

I was chatting with Tiffany about chaplets that are dedicated to particular saints. My main question being: what the heck do you do when one of your favorites doesn't have a specific chaplet or even a novena. Is it okay to create your own?

You probably don't know this about me, but I LOVE missions. As in, there's an out of print book that costs a ton on the secondary market? I WILL track that book down and I WILL NOT pay that much for it. You say that my patron saint doesn't have a specific chaplet all their own? I BEG TO DIFFER I WILL FIND IT. Well, in this case, maybe not BUT I'm starting to think it's possible to put something together. There might not be a ton of information about St. Jane Frances de Chantal but she did have a love for the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart so I think that's going to be my jumping off point.

I think I've lost the point of this post...hmmm...

At any rate, even those saints that don't come with ready made "schwag" can be celebrated and we can create ways to remember them and honor them. It's been an interesting challenge and I look forward to creating more ways to spotlight St. Jane Frances de Chantal. :D