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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