A Friar's Tale - John Collins

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that Archbishop Goodier had actually included such a wanderer—a little tramp—in his book on saints. Before that moment I don’t think I had ever imagined that such a person could achieve so much; I guess I had considered men like him to be too damaged to be capable of rising to real spiritual heights. That realization felt shameful, because it showed me that, like the people who ignored such men, I too perceived them as being somehow less than others—almost, but not quite fully human. I had allowed their sad and disturbing exteriors to obscure the fact that they were made in the image of God, that they were the ones for whom Christ died. I felt ashamed, but also excited. Listening intently, I began to see in a way that may have been new to me at the time that God’s grace really can enter wherever God wants it to enter, can transform even the unlikeliest of human lives. I must say that it was a rather thrilling realization.

      The vagabond saint about whom I was hearing became utterly fascinating to me, so fascinating that I forgot to eat, which I can assure you was not a common occurrence for me at that time. As I pushed my carrots around my plate, I began to visualize him on his wanderings, and in my imagination his face began to take on the features of the men I had seen as a boy, the ones who had disturbed me so.

      Yearning for a life of holiness, yet rejected by one religious order after another, this saintly hobo (for when I was a boy, that is what we called such men) traveled on foot throughout France, Italy, and Spain, making his way from one shrine to another. Denied a monastery, he made the world his monastery. Denied physical possessions, he still engaged in constant acts of charity, giving to others the very food he needed to survive. Denied friends, he devoted himself to the one Friend who would never desert him, and spent countless hours in Eucharistic devotion. Denied a home, he died on the streets of Rome. Denied in this life almost everything the world values, he received everything of real value in the next.

      He was a perplexing kind of saint, and there is a very real possibility that if he had lived in our times he would have been considered mentally ill.

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