I Stole Baby Jesus

A new girlette has swapped outerwear with the Infant of Prague (statue of Baby Jesus):
her yellow school hat for his red bejeweled cloak.

I sort of stole this IoP statue from the thrift store.

(No, okay––I stole it.)

I could have put it on my monthly store credit––I have enough, and the IoP was only $1.99.
I was devious in reaction to a new policy that we workers have to show our bags to a manager when we leave work, to make sure we aren't stealing stuff.

I don't doubt workers steal stuff, but given what we're paid, I don't care. And it's not like the store gets diamonds. Well, not usually.
(I didn't tell the girlette, but those gems on the cloak are glass.)

Furthermore, the store sells $ statues and rosaries and other Catholic trinkets ("sacramentals") that people donate to be given away, for free.
I could have asked the woman in charge of that ministry, and she'd have given me the statue.

So, I was a sneak. I am not denying that.

But here's another thing:
In medieval times it was believed that if someone stole a holy relic, say the bones of a saint, it was because the saint allowed it.
Article: "When Monks Went Undercover to Steal Relics":

"Because relics were infused with the living presence of a saint, capable of working miracles, they were perfectly able to stop a thief.
Any relic that didn’t wish to be moved could simply become too heavy to lift, or cause all the doors of the church to spontaneously lock.
By this logic, if a relic was stolen, it wanted to be.."*

So, I am a thief, but I am a holy thief!
The IoP must have wanted to come play dress-up with the other dolls, as it is used to doing:
The original statue is dressed by the Carmelite Sisters of Prague.

Epiphany

I used to have about 40 teeny, tiny gold-plastic Infants of Prague, from a store in Chicago.
bink keeps one of these (still!) in her little tin of lip balm, in her pocket.

On Epiphany 1995 (Epiphany, Jan. 6, is when the Magi arrived to see Baby Jesus), bink was waiting in a bus stop shelter, on her way to the hospital to see our friend Jim, who was dying of AIDS.
A big car swerved and careened into the bus shelter--(it was later determined the driver had had a heart attack).

bink just had time to take ONE step back, as the car wrenched the shelter's bench out of the ground.
Safety glass showered around her, like diamonds, and the bench came to rest inches in front of her.

She was not even scratched.

Well, I don't believe in miracles, I believe in viruses.
Jim died the next month, one month before his fortieth birthday.

But I do have a special love for the IoP. I'm sure it would keep us safe if it could.

________________
*
bink has written and illustrated a graphic novel about a relic thief, a young woman who encounters zombies. It's a fun mash-up of medieval theology and modern fears.
(Do you have any artwork from that to share, bink?)

___________

P.S. I had symptoms from the Covid vaccine no. 2 for about 24 hours, starting a few hours after I got the shot.
My body felt like my laptop when I've used it for hours on a hot summer day--like it was working hard and overheating.

I slept most of the time, drank lots of water & grapefruit juice, and took ipuprofen.