Saints.
❤️.. we sit as children beneath the tree..
.. dearest, I will tell you my story of my saints.
The first saints I ever knew beyond Mary were the Fatima children. I must have been about, very close to 9.. what amazed me most was their sense of play, and of course, Jacinta, always sympathizing for doomed souls who didn’t know what awaited them in hell.. which would drive her to little sacrifices until she died. Early on, I understood the language of sacrifices and vows, and made my own when I was about 9, in the dead of night, before a candle, beneath the image of Our Blessed Mother as I wept. Whether or not those held or if God guards them still, I won’t know in this lifetime.
I have a sense there is still some meaning drawn to the old words engraved on the inner rings of my childish heart, simply because of the spritely spirit in me I know He retains.. and because of the childlike sensitivity that still moves my heart to tears. If this is so, then surely God still listens to the dream-like wishes we made as children.. I still have so many, I’ve just realized this moment.. my favorite was to have a Friend.. o, who knew?!
I knew many saints when I was young. Agnes, Peter, Sebastian, Andrew, Simon.. the list is great. Mary, however, was my main preoccupation for so long, but then I drifted into my teenage years, then young adulthood until I walked up the doorsteps to marriage. It was in those passageways that I returned to the holy words of the saints I’d read as a child. However, the lives of the saints didn’t interest me anymore. The third-person stories of their heroic lives were lifeless to me. When I realized I wanted more, I found Gertrude, a Medieval Benedictine nun who spoke intimately to Jesus. When I read her Revelations, Jesus spoke to me, not her, and I could not get enough.
For years, I lived like a Nighttime hunter, tracking down her Prey, following His treks of Blood..
But I will never catch what He Whom I desire. Paradoxically, I will never have Him completely in this life, yet I have Him always and wholly, anytime I want. Knowing this, I stopped my holy reading, eating whole books, sometime ago — which may account for my never going back and referencing this saint or that one, finding this line or that idea. I’ve found Who I am looking for and that is enough.. He is Enough.
The lives of the saints can’t be imitated, I’ve learned. They are models, but more importantly, they are intimate friends whose existence and Story demand we know them they way they want to be known — to show us Christ Jesus. That, they decided — or not, so removed from themselves were they, that many likely never even formed the idea — was their whole purpose in life. Look not at me, but Him Whom I love.
I cowered before them, once. Sanctity is impossible in this lifetime.. to live an austere 16th Century life in this deadly 21st Century? I’ve to live through this time, that’s all, not of it.. and my Saints with their great friendship & solicitude make it much easier, simply because I know they exist, they are.. they are Real.. they are in Christ! If I abide in Christ, what is there that I cannot do with the help of my Friends?
or in the company of my Friend?
Maybe that’s why internet-writing seems seamless to me.
I live in an expansive non-world, larger than the universe — I know I am immortal, as my soul will live in Eternity.. and so my reach is limitless, though I know I reach few souls, because I abide in One greater than Heaven. Which is why it’s easy to say what I say and love the way I do.
For all of us who wish to notice and gaze back, this may be a hint of Who.. of what’s to come.
o, who knew?!
Much love, as I am able, my sweet friend.. let me thrust my puny heart into one Divine, and love with His Love, His grace poured onto you and yours as you sleep..
❤️
in Love,
your veronica
—
In Spiritu Tuo, ad gloriam Patris. 5.22.2023. St. Rita of Cascia.
…dearest, I am married, and as far as I am concerned, the vows I took with God and my husband in my covenantal marriage supercede what I uttered as a child. ..love and sacrifice, love and sacrifice..