St Joseph of Cupertino, Patron of Test Takers & Students
Anyone living in Silicon Valley is aware that schools in the city of Cupertino are top scoring in the state. Students there perform exceedingly well on the state’s all-important API tests and have a very high success rate with getting into good colleges & universities.
But how many know that the city’s patron saint, St. Joseph of Cupertino, is also the patron saint of students and test takers?
There are a number of articles online about his life, in which we see that he was a slow learner, had trouble focusing and struggled for that reason in many areas of his life. He was successful early on neither in school nor in attempts to find work or even acceptance with a religious order, the Franciscans. To read about him is to feel sorry for him in those early years. Frustrated and discouraged, he had a bad temper as a youngster. On top of everything else, his father died while his mother was expecting Joseph, so he was raised by a single mother – tough for both of them!
He grew in humility (doing penance), though, and this appears to have been how God best reached him, at least initially. In time, Joseph did become a Franciscan friar, grew in holiness and became deeply in awe of and in love with God. In prayer he sometimes would levitate – yes, raise off the ground – so he is also the patron saint of pilots and those who fly. (more…)