{"id":15963,"date":"2012-02-14T00:09:39","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T03:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=15963"},"modified":"2012-02-14T00:09:39","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T03:09:39","slug":"us-marines-honor-patron-saint-of-artillery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/14\/us-marines-honor-patron-saint-of-artillery\/","title":{"rendered":"US Marines Honor Patron Saint of Artillery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/08\/soldier-awarded-order-of-saint-martin-medal\/\">Quartermasters have Saint Martin<\/a>, but Marine artillery has Saint Barbara, whom they honored in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dvidshub.net\/news\/83054\/honoring-patron-saint-artillerymen-celebrate-st-barbaras-day-afghanistan\">ceremony in Afghanistan<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Marines&#8230;smiled as all in attendance lifted their cups in a toast to honor the patron saint of artillery, Saint Barbara.<\/p>\n<p>According to legend, the tyrant Dioscorus, a pagan, kept his daughter Barbara secluded in a tower to shelter her from the world. In her solitude she gave herself to prayer and became a Christian. Her father, <!--more-->infuriated by her conversion&#8230;eventually acted as her executioner for her beheading. As punishment for her death, God struck Dioscorus with lightning and consumed him in flame.<\/p>\n<p>Due to her connection with lightning, Barbara is often called upon to protect against thunder, lightning or accidents involving explosions or gunpowder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As to the ceremony itself, it seems to bear a resemblance to some fighter pilot events:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The celebration consisted of skits representing artillery life and the presentation of the artillery punch, a mixture of different beverages, to the guest of honor, Maj. Gen. Glenn Walters, the commanding officer&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By &#8220;a mixture of different beverages&#8221; they appear to mean a grog.\u00a0 One of the accompanying photos shows a warrant officer pouring Gatorade into a large bowl.<\/p>\n<p>It appears the veneration of the patron saint of explosions might be international.\u00a0 According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Saint_Barbara\">ever-reliable Wikipedia<\/a>, Saint Barbara is celebrated by dozens of Western military artillery and ordnance units.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Quartermasters have Saint Martin, but Marine artillery has Saint Barbara, whom they honored in a ceremony in Afghanistan: Marines&#8230;smiled as all in attendance lifted their cups in a toast to honor the patron saint of artillery, Saint Barbara. According to legend, the tyrant Dioscorus, a pagan, kept his daughter Barbara secluded in a tower to shelter her from the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[58,2865,2866,2868,2867,149,2,2849,76,10,2864,40],"class_list":["post-15963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-artillery","tag-dioscorus","tag-glenn-walters","tag-grog","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-order-of-saint-martin","tag-pagan","tag-religion","tag-saint-barbara","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}