The St. Blaise prayer with two candles touching your throat ends with, “And deliver you from every other illness.” Now you have to admit that’s a bit of a stretch. Something is going to take each and every one of us. When the time comes, please don’t blame me nor St. Blaise.

The throat. Pretty important part of the body, as are the many others. Your heart tells your head, “Something’s caught in my throat.” Ummm.

The professionals say, “Having the feeling that something is stuck in the throat can be an annoying experience. To get rid of that annoying feeling that something is lodged in the back of the throat…try coughing or swallowing frequently to try and clear their throat. The sensation of a lump in your throat can come and go and could be accompanied by hoarseness, a buildup of saliva at the back of the throat, inflammation, or, in some cases, difficulty swallowing.” Again, from the professionals.

The medical term, if I may impress you this morning, is “globus sensation.” This “sensation could be caused by the muscles that are involved in swallowing. These muscles don’t relax properly resulting in a feeling that there is a lump in the throat or some other sort of obstruction in the throat when there is none. [sort of obstruction in the throat when there is none?!] Stress, stomach acid coming back up the esophagus, throat infection, allergic reactions to food or insect bites can all cause the feeling of having a lump in your throat.”

Remember when I said, “your heart is talking to your head?” I think it’s really the heart talking to your throat. Something is stuck in there and waiting to come out until you, until you, until you … let it out!

A word of praise to God for this gift of life, a long-overdue apology that’s been stuck…in your throat. An unfinished task, forgiving yourself. You can create your own list.
The professional, Fr. Joe, says, “The heart has important information and does its part. It sends the faithful, sometimes fateful, message alerting the head. The head, in all its weak intelligence, then bypasses all responsibility and sends it down to the mouth, which keeps itself shut for things like this, and conveniently sends it further downward lodging and storing this important information inside the throat causing normally relaxed muscles to tighten up and remain that way, sometimes for many years. The throat panics because it doesn’t know where else to pass on this important information, so the throat finds itself stuck with this tightened muscle thing.”

This St. Blaise blessing covers more than words about your physical health. It also blesses, and challenges, us to release unspoken, but true, healing, consoling, enriching words whether to others or to ourselves.

I don’t feel something stuck in my throat this morning. But, there’s always tomorrow.