How does it feel to meet a saint?

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EugeneCharles

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Hello everybody!

Have you ever met a saint or a blessed or any one who has been officially considered as a holy person by the Pope? I’ve been wondering how does it feel. Can you share your experiences?
 
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Hi, I met only once a canonized saint (Saint John Paul II) and several times a religious brother now on the process of being canonized.
I saw Pope JPII during a Mass in Vatican. He was old and visibly suffering. He had in him at the same time great dignity but also a great fragility. He looked like an old king who won great battles.
The blessed religious brother lived near my area when I was in college. He would take care of people in severe poverty and abandonment, the ones lying at the corner of the street covered in their own urine or devastated by untreated diseases or drug abuse.
The religious brother had a great devotion to the Blessed Mother, he would often invite random people to join in praying the Rosary. He was a very practical person and concerned about the poor at the point to come across sometimes as blunt. He had this urgency about doing something for the poor that made him reproach people that didn’t feel the same burning desire. At that time some people considered him crazy, but he was only crazy in love with God.
 
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I have a good friend who is family of a recently canonized Saint. In fact they were invited to the formal Canonization at the Vatican!
 
My friend was a lutheran pastor and recently died from Brain Cancer. He was indeed a living saint and I’m honored to have known him and called him my friend.
 
Whenever I visit a cemetery I consider how many non-formally canonized saints are buried in that ground.
 
I would hope all my deceased loved ones are now saints (uncanonized).

Have not had the pleasure of meeting anyone who was later canonized or even up for canonization. I attended a Mass said by Pope John Paul II, but did not get to meet him.
 
The closest I came was I got to sit next to a person at a Mass who’d had a miracle healing verified by the Vatican for the Beatification of a Blessed.

He was very nice and peaceful, but there was a language barrier and I didn’t get to talk very much with him.
 
Oh, I love this topic. I’ve been very, very blessed in this area.

I was in a small room with both Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Maria Esperanza–a mystic and healer from Venezuela.

However there are other saintly people I’ve known who share the characteristic I would like to discuss.

For almost 20 years I was the computer technician at a Carmelite monastery. This required me to go into the cloister on countless occasions. So I had numerous conversations with the superior and other holy nuns who were assigned to work with me.

I had the role probably because I knew three people the nuns trusted. The woman I was seriously dating had once lived with the nuns as she considered a vocation there. She became a long time patroness of the monastery. A friend from my parish became a priest. He was involved in activities at the monastery. The assistant pastor of my parish while I was a seminarian became their spiritual director.

Finally the retired priest at my parish became a friend of the family. He’d go to my parent’s home for dinner several times per year. He’d treat us to dinner once per year or so. My father was probably one of his closest friends. He was definitely one of the holiest people I’ve been blessed to have known fairly well.

I’ve often thought that it must have been wonderful just to be looked at by Jesus of Nazareth.

Consider how you might feel towards someone to whom you were planning to donate a kidney. You would care very much about the person in order to give some of your own life in order to help save the other’s life. That type of interaction must be quite profound.

How much more so for those who encountered Jesus of Nazareth. As Jesus looked at every person he encountered he might have been thinking that he so wanted that person to be an adopted son or daughter in his loving heavenly family. He so wanted that relationship that he was willing to suffer and die.

It must have been a startling, even life-changing experience to have just been looked-at by Jesus with so much love.

That is the characteristic that stands out in my close encounters with the most saintly people I’ve met or was in close proximity to. They made me feel special even as I considered myself blessed to be in their company. It was as if I was some celebrity or special person!

Maria Esperanza came to my county to give a talk and lead a healing service at a 3000 seat auditorium. I was in a Christian music group that played prior to Maria’s talk so I was in the back stage room with Maria and a couple dozen others prior to the event.

When Maria entered the room many people rushed to greet her and speak to her. She so patiently made her way across the room giving each person she met loving attention and respect. I did not speak to her but one of the priest-members of the music group who was standing in front of me said he had some type of non-verbal communication with her.

One could imagine how all of that attention could get old very, very quickly. Yet Maria made every person feel special.

continued…
 
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…continued

I had a similar experience with one of the young adult visionaries when I visited Medjugorje. I don’t remember the name of the young woman but she so patiently and kindly greeted every person with a gentle smile on her face. I don’t know how one could do that day after day for many years without much grace.

Those of you who have been a lector know that when you look out at the congregation you see more than a little apathy. It must take a very generous person to give to others in the face of apathy.

The priest friend of the family was amazing in his ability to give amidst the apathy. It came across during his homilies. When he would come down the center isle after mass he’d do so rather slowly looking from side to side at the people with his loving smile. He was so beloved by the people that some of them would come out into the isle to touch his hand.

When I was a young adult I was one of the handymen at the Mother of Teresa convent / soup kitchen / shelter down town. The environment was not pretty. The clientele was certainly not pretty in the worldly sense. However I can’t tell you how many times I left after helping in the soup kitchen or doing a repair and felt happier than when I had arrived. The sisters exuded a holy, peaceful joy.

continued…
 
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continued

I’ve read that Mother Teresa encouraged people to try to see Jesus in the poorest of the poor. My brief experience meeting her was consistent with that teaching, even though it was just after I broke into her convent–really.

One day Mother Teresa made a surprise visit to our local convent /soup kitchen. The superior of the convent was sick in the local hospital. Earlier that day I attended Mother’s talk at an outdoor shrine an hour away but only got a glimpse of her amidst the throng of people.

Afterwards the sisters went to the nearby convent where Mother had been staying. However we were told that Mother had left to visit a sick sister–the superior of our local convent!

So the driver of the car I was in raced back to town to try to arrive before Mother. Unfortunately the second car in our group made a wrong turn and was headed on the interstate in the wrong direction. The sisters in that car had the keys to the convent. The young sisters in the car I was in only had keys to the soup kitchen.

So when we arrived I looked around for a way to break into the convent. I noticed one sister left her bedroom window open with only the screen present. I got my father to deliver an extension ladder. I used his pocket knife to jimmy the old screen. I crawled into the bedroom, somehow without damaging my nice clothes.

While this was happening Mother’s car arrived. Apparently she wanted to make a visit in the chapel with the other sister accompanying her. The chapel was on the 2nd floor just outside the door to the cloister.

The door to the cloister had a big sign reading, Cloister, no admittance.

I closed the window screen and proceeded to exist the cloister. When I opened the door to exit the sisters were there. They could not get into the cloister but a 26 year old man was in there!

I was surprised to see them and I did not know what to say. So I closed the door in their face and went down the back stairs! I promptly found one of the young sisters from our convent and explained. They cleaned up the situation with Mother.

Shortly after we all spent a few minutes together in the kitchen. I was amazed that she was SO physically small! I was in awe. The amount of faith required for someone so physically small to have left her safe community to go into the slums of Calcutta must have been huge.

Again Mother had the saintly, gentle, loving smile. She gave patient, loving attention to each one of us.

One thing in common with most or all of them was much time spent in prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. I know my priest friend did so. I’m confident that before the Blessed Sacrament they–and we–learn to love as Jesus loved.
 
Wow @aroosi! That was a cool experience! I wish I could’ve met Pope John Paul II too. He was such a great saint.
 
@TheLittleLady If you wouldn’t mind, who’s that saint?
 
Hi @Joegrane!

Yup! You’re really blessed! Mother Teresa and Maria Esperanza were such a holy women, they’re superb! That will be the greatest day of mine if I meet a saint. Mother Teresa was indeed one of the greatest woman of the Church!
 
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When I lived in Canada in the seventies, I spent a couple of weeks holiday at various times as a working guest at Madonna House Apostolate, a Catholic lay community in Combermere, Ontario. The founder of the community was Catherine de Hueck Doherty, who died in 1985 and was declared a Servant of God some years later by Pope John Paul 11. During my visits at Madonna House I only really saw Catherine at daily Mass or when she joined the community for evening prayers or to give a talk. She would come around to meet and speak with people individually, and I had a few minutes of personal conversation with her. I can’t remember exactly what we spoke about, probably she asked me what I did and what had brought me there, something like that. To be honest, I was a bit in awe of her; I think she could be quite a formidable lady … in the good sense, of inspiring admiration and awe because of her strong personal presence.

From what I learned of Catherine, she was born into Russian nobility, worked on the front line as a nurse in World War 1, was later a refugee with her husband in Finland, eventually emigrated to Canada where she was called to give up her possessions and live among the poor in Toronto, before eventually founding Madonna House.

Even as a non-Catholic Christian, I feel very privileged to have met Catherine as a person, and as someone who as a Servant of God, will hopefully be a canonised saint in the not too distant future.
 
Often surprisingly mundane, I’d imagine, considering some of the holier people I’ve met, albeit not canonised saints. All the saints were human beings with personalities and flaws! Which is actually encouraging, it means you don’t have to be “perfect” to become a saint, so there’s hope for all of us. 🙂
 
I dont know. But Mother Teresa and princess Diana died around the same time. I was so sad the media focused on Diana and told my young son when the news came out about Mother Teresa, you are looking at a Saint.
 
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