Of Saints and Sinners




Who/what do we worship?
While the world worships “stars” in Hollywood, television, sports, and even the news media and politics, most of it averts its eyes when faced with St. Something-or-other. Suspicion, derision, discomfort, and even outright mockery surrounds the whole idea.
Bottom line: Saints aren’t meant to be worshiped under any circumstances, any more than their celebrity counterparts.

So why do saints even exist?
Jesus was fully human and fully divine—saints are only human beings who have striven for the divine and blazed a path for the rest of us who also strive. I take courage and comfort from those who have gone before me—walked the same human path I’ve trod—fallen and failed as I have—but, in the end, left behind a legacy of faith and works as I’d like to do, however small.
Bottom line: It’s human nature to want to “look up” to someone when we feel very small and insignificant—but we need to choose wisely.

Listen to the words of a sinner-saint, Augustine of Hippo: Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” His is an interesting story of resistance to God and finally, capitulation to the One who made him and had a plan for his life.





Introducing the Gaucho Priest: Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero (1840-1914)

Here is a man who, at the age of 26, found himself with a parish in Argentina encompassing 1,675 square miles and 10,000 parishioners! He rode a mule to minister to those souls, a ministry which included manual labor building roads and buildings. At the end of his life, blind and deaf and beset by leprosy, he uttered these words as the gate of Heaven opened to him: Now I have everything ready for the journey.
His life—and the imperfect but committed lives of so many others—gives me hope that I, too, will one day have everything ready for the journey.


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