Why Saints Matter

I’ve written here, and given talks, about the meaning of the saints in our lives.  My dear friend Maria Scaperlanda wrote a lovely post yesterday on this subject.  She came up with several thoughts on the question what difference the saints make for her.  She writes

• I need saints because they intercede with God on my behalf. Theirs is the sort of passionate pleading akin to the mother I met years ago in Austin whose son was on death row in Huntsville. When the Governor of Texas refused to see her in person to hear her plead for a stay of his execution, the determined mother set up a tent to live in across the street from the Governor’s mansion, and she invited the local press, the local bishop, and anyone else who would listen and join her in prayer and in peaceful demonstration.  Who doesn’t need this sort of passionate intercession?

• I need saints because they connect me to others—across time and geography—and that constantly reminds me that my faith is little “c” catholic. And I am not alone in my quest and desire to live for God. No matter how much I screw that up, there are saints whose lives are worthy of being a spicy HBO movie—and they get just how hard that desire can be.

• I need saints like Archbishop Romero and Father Stanley Rother (whose 52^nd anniversary of ordination was this week!) because being holy –and at the very least, learning to live holy lives –is possible for everyone, no matter how ordinary. Romero and Rother, who died a year apart, became martyrs for the faith. But they did so by desiring to respond in and through their faithto every person, every circumstance, every moment in their ordinary lives.

You can read the entirety of Maria’s post here.  And I encourage you to follow her blog, Day by Day.  I always find something there that challenges me, makes me think, and sometimes just makes me smile.

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