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I Am No Saint. Control Freaks are Seldom Saints. But I'll Have to Look That Up on the Internet Because I Hate Being Wrong too.

Writer's picture: susan6650susan6650

The Saints are one of my favorite NFL teams. However, this post will not be about them. Sorry to disappoint.


At church this past Easter Sunday, someone said to me, "You're a saint!"


Please get the notion that I am a saint in any way, shape, or form straight out of your head.


I'm nothing like a saint. No one who knows me well would ever call me Mother Theresa, or Simon or Jude. They most definitely would have their own special words, none beginning saint.


I lost my halo long ago. Probably when I was eleven or twelve after tormenting a particularly barky dog. And from a person born under the Year of the Dog, no less. And a under the astrological sign of Leo! Neither based in true science or truth, for crying out loud, as Dad used to say.


"Oh for crying out loud," he said, when my foot, after slipping into the sheet metal siding of our sunken-into-the-ground, above-the-ground-type-pool, buckled the metal (my foot, that is, if you lost track in that run-on sentence which I'm gleefully adding to right now).


This, the "incident" happened after Dad and Uncle Eddie painstakingly joined all the metal sheets into their proper places and locked them together. This, after they had lined it with blue plastic to keep water from seeping between the locked metal sheets.


Dad may have added more, um, words. Okay, curse words. But never the F-word.


Anyway, no halos here. No sainthood coming. Just one more person on this earth taking care of a family member. There are many people on our little island where Bob and I live and across the globe who care for their own people. It's an expanding and contracting circle of folks.


We welcome new caregivers with a hug and cry for caregivers who have lost their battles. None of us, I believe, consider ourselves special. We do what we must.


Trust me. If God came to me and asked, "Would you prefer a different outcome? A different life? A little less difficult?" I'd say, "Yes, please." He'd make a check next to my name in one of two columns: (1) Qualifies for Sainthood or (2) Does Not Qualify for Sainthood.


We get the life we get. Plain and simple. Full-stop. Period.


To fight against it is fruitless. I know. I've fought against this thing. It does no good.


Each time I cry, kick, and scream, I come back to one simple fact. I can't change this. I am not in control. I am definitely controlling so, there you go...the joke's on me.


So, we come to the pressing question and point of this entire post. (Or is it?)...


Are saints ever control freaks?


I checked the internet because, as we all know, the internet holds answers for everything.


I queried: Are saints ever control freaks

This is what popped up:

When You're Being a Control Freak looks like a promising read although I probably know most of that post already, intrinsically. When your first words are, "No," and your final words are, "Because I said so." You might be a control freak. When you say, "You're doing it wrong." You might be a control freak. "When you ask, "Will you please stop... [fill in the blank]." You might be a control freak. I also enjoying adding to any comment that start, "Do x,y, and z," with a cheery, "Or else!"


But I digress... (My dad used to say this too.)


There were many additional links about saints and controlling personalities, of course.


However, in my search that threatened to bunny-trail endlessly, something interesting came up. I found a litany showing the qualities of saints. Hmm, hmm, HMM! Juicy! What mght I find amongst this list?


Here's what I found...


"What are the characteristics of a saint?"

Answer: Saints are persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation.


I prefer my saints canonized. Don't you?


Did you see that, above the picture in the graph, there are 99 other lines of saints' names?


So, when we were kids, my sis and I only went to catechism on Saturdays. Catechism is what Catholics who have little interest in a full-blown course, or who have little money go for religious edification. It's sort of like the Catholic version of Sunday school for Protestants.


Anyway, at catechism, we didn't have to memorize all the saints' names. If anyone out there went to Catholic school--elementary through high school--I'm simply dying to know if you had to memorize all the saints. Shoot me a note, please. Cousins? I know you did. I'll laugh and laugh if part of your study was to memorize all the saints. Because if you did, then I will never again regret having going to catechism versus going to a "full-scale" Catholic school. And regret, I did. Like I was cheated out of something. But not if you guys had to memorize all the saints.


Okay. I digressed again. Sorry. So, what is a canonized saint, after all?


Answer: Saint – the title is given to someone who has been formally canonized by the Church as sharing eternal life with God, and therefore offered for public veneration and imitation. Servant of God--the title given to a candidate for sainthood whose cause is still under investigation, prior to being declared Venerable.

Saints | USCCB https://www.usccb.org › offices › public-affairs › saints


Under investigation? Huh?


And, no. I'm not making fun. I find these things curiouser and curiouser. How can you become a saint if your cause is still under investigation? Or am I reading that wrong?


I'll move along...


By the way, wouldn't this sort of research be "hell in a handbasket" (my mom's contribution to weird sayings) if we didn't have the internet? If we only had a set of all the books, A-Z, from the Encyclopedia Britannica to sift through? I mean, all these many questions.


I used to research this way. I remember enjoying so, actually. Back in the sixties and seventies, when I realized encyclopedias had those cool plastic overlays to show all the parts of the body--muscles, skeleton, organs--with arrows and names pointing to each body part, well, you couldn't get my face out of the encyclopedia after that. I loved those overlays. It thrilled me almost as much as those color images in the Bible. We had an enormous, white Bible with all these images of important events from Genesis to The Revelation of Jesus Christ--the beginning to the end.


Okay, so where did we start and why is all this about saints of any concern to anyone at all?


I can't remember. Oh! Yes! Now, I do.

No. I'm not. But you may be.


God bless you all.


Do Good to Please God 6 “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. ~Matthew

Saints - Encyclopedia of The Bible

Bible Gateway


Did you see that it's an encyclopedia! How thick the irony!



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1 commento


Jo szcz
Jo szcz
04 apr 2024

Went to parochial grade school and catechism didn't have to memorize any saint's names. And I asked a nun once what a person had to do to become a saint ... she said, first off you have to be a virgin, then you have to remain pure your whole life, and you have to do everything perfectly, just like Jesus did. Well, three strikes I guess I'm out LOL😂

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