McGrath Institute Blog

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. 

St. Joseph is my favorite saint. He is my “best friend” among the saints, if the saints are our “friends.” I love him better than all the rest, and it’s OK, because, as St. Bernadette used to say, “there is no jealousy in Heaven.” But I cringe when someone asks me to write about him. I love St. Joseph so very much because his life is thoroughly “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). He hides himself. We know him as someone who does not speak, who does not represent himself, who does not tell his own story, who gives up giving an account of himself. In this way, his life is a whole burnt offering, speaking to us only by not speaking.

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. 

Saint André Bessette was a Congregation of Holy Cross brother with a deep veneration to St. Joseph, whose intercession André attributed to the many physical healings he witnessed. André’s post as door-keeper at Notre Dame College in Montreal, Canada evolved when people began to experience physical healings after meeting with him. Eventually, André saved up $200 from his work as a barber to build a shrine to St. Joseph across the street from Notre Dame College, where he met and prayed with pilgrims seeking healing. While there is little in common between André’s ministry in Quebec and mine for Echo, the McGrath Institute’s two-year graduate service program, I am regularly inspired by André’s presence to the other, and his confidence in directing others to Christ. 

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. 

Back when I was in high school in Cincinnati, I loved asking philosophical and theological questions. The environment at St. Xavier, the Catholic, Jesuit high school I attended prompted many of those questions. And no one received more of those questions than my sophomore year religion teacher, Mr. Yeazell. 

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. In honor of International Women's Day, we are highlighting female saints this week.

Messages. We’re surrounded by them. Phones are ever-messaging, ever-announcing, ever-calling out to us, as is our environment, saturating our senses with advertisements, music, screens, and images. Messages consume our attention and punctuate our consciousness. Their demand for our engagement can be overwhelming; not responding to every tug at our attention becomes a psychological survival mechanism. When we do respond, we often polish and curate what we say from a safe distance. 

Editorial Note: This post is a part of our saint devotion series, in which one of our staff or faculty members explores their relationship with a particular saint. In honor of International Women's Day, we are highlighting female saints this week.

Saints are often most well known for a luminously singular event in the popular imagination—a radiant moment of faith, hope, or charity. For St. Gianna Beretta Molla this moment is surely her insistence that the life of her unborn child be protected and preserved, even at the cost of her own.