There are a fair number of hagiographical stories of people who are “simple” (ie, either mentally handicapped or just not that smart) becoming smart. This doesn’t seem to happen much nowadays; but then, every age tends to have different needs before God.
It is generally connected with someone with a great love of God being given a vocation to the priesthood, monastery, convent, etc., because you had to be able to understand Latin to join up.
There are a lot more stories about someone who was “simple” (like St. Joseph of Cupertino, the guy who levitated) continuing to be mentally disabled in most ways, but still somehow being able to pass all the tests given to keep him out; and often such people are able to explain complicated points of theology in a very simple, direct way.
(Since St. Joseph of Cupertino spent so much time staring blankly into space as a child and adult, as well as wandering around in a daze without knowing how he’d gotten to places, there’s a lot of discussion about whether he might have been autistic, had a lot of seizures, or just was a deep thinker.)
There are also a fair number of hagiographical stories where someone received a miraculous healing of eyesight, a crippled leg, a deformed face, etc., and prayed that it be taken away again, in order to avoid temptation or to enable more love of God. For example, the story of St. Brigit healing the blind man, who spent a perfect day looking at things and then asked that his sight be taken away again, so that his next sight would be Heaven.
Of course, it’s possible that many of the undocumented stories from pre-modern times are just stories. But then, there are plenty of real, true, documented things that happen, which would be dismissed as just a folklore motif if you encountered them in a storybook.
For example, it’s well-documented that a lark flew up to the altar inside church at the moment that the bishop laid hands on one Josef Ratzinger’s head, to ordain him. He wrote about it in his own autobiography, and just took it as a reassuring sign that he could be a good priest, despite all his worries before ordination. Seeing as he became pope, it’s inevitable that this will become a hagiographical story motif; people may even come up with titles for the man based on it. But it really did happen, all the same.
Most wonderful and inspiring! Thank you for joining up to share with us! I hope you will continue to participate here!