The Eccentricities of Saints, by Dr. Donald DeMarco

The saint, though properly admired and praised, tends to elude us because of his or her remoteness.  We often fail to imitate what we regard as unreachable.  But those who were saints did not, prior to their canonization, find that goal to be unreachable.  Are we any different, we pre-saints?  Let us remove their halos, for a bit of dusting, and bring the saints down to earth a little so that we are in a better position to imitate them.  We should regard them as kindred spirits.

It was the primary intention of Phyllis McGinley, in her informative and entertaining book, Saint Watching, “to rescue them from their pious niches; to celebrate their eccentricities and persistent mortality”.  I suppose we can say that each one of us is a little bit odd.  But that certainly does not disqualify us from sainthood.  To be sure, individuals do not become saints because of their eccentricities; they are eccentric because they are saints. ….

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