| Friend,
I invite you to reflect on the lives of the saints in the most recent Evangelization & Culture journal.
What strikes us first about the saints—the friends of God—is, perhaps, their diversity. There is Thomas Aquinas, the towering intellectual, and there is the Curé d'Ars, who barely made it through the seminary. There is Bernard, kneeling on the hard stones of Clairvaux in penance for sins, and there is Hildegard of Bingen, singing and throwing flowers, madly in love with God. There is Catherine of Siena, who stood up to popes, and Celestine V, who only reluctantly became pope.
What is the practical importance of this diversity? Why is this wild communion of saints spiritually enlivening? First, it means that you can find a saint who is like you—someone who struggled with the same things you struggle with, who loved the same things you love.
But it also means that you can find a saint who is unlike you—someone who bothers you. It might be just this saint who helps to fill you out, to realize in you that aspect of the holy that you especially need.
In this issue of Evangelization & Culture, you'll read essays on various aspects of sainthood: intercession and incorruptibility, the "dark saints" of the Old Testament and the "not quite" saints, the saints in art and poetry, sainthood in connection with psychology and motherhood, and more. |
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