Faith & Life Inspirational Message

Two saints!  The Roman Catholic Church has a ton of saints.  Of course, that is a statement by a Quaker, a tradition that typically does not talk about saints.  As I grew up in the Quaker environment, the only time I heard “saint language” was about some of the writers in the Bible.  I did hear people talk about St. John or St. Paul.  As a kid, if asked about saints, I would have assumed saints are “Bible guys.”  Since I never gave it any thought, I never thought about women saints.         My own Quaker tradition has held the radical equality of men and women since the beginning of our seventeenth century.  That part of Quakerism rubbed off on me and I have been very happy about that.  I have always seen women as my equal.  In fact, I would usually assume women were, by and large, better saint candidates than men---myself included!           I am glad that my...

Unless you are Roman Catholic, you probably never heard of Monica.   For sure, I never had heard of her until I took a church history class.   As far as I know, she never wrote anything.   She was not a leader.   She would be aghast to discover that she had become a saint!   Paradoxically, she is a model and a teacher.             Monica was born in North Africa in the early part of the fourth century.   If you are not familiar with the map of this, the northern part of the African continent, i.e. Egypt, Tunisa, Algeria, etc., was part of the Roman Empire.   South of this is the Sahara Desert and, then, south of the Desert---sub-Saharan Africa---is the Africa most of us think about.   Monica was born of Christian parents.   We know virtually nothing else about her.             She married Patriti us, a non-Christian with cle...