The Perfect Role Model

One of our readers asked what happened to our patron saint finder that I used to have on my sidebar. It was from the Aquinas Bookstore. I don't know what happened to it. I don't recall taking it off. Perhaps I did. I often don't recall what I did with things. Thank goodness St. Anthony is so very reliable.

Anyhow, I tried to put that patron saint finder back on and it just isn't working. I've contacted the Aquinas bookstore, but I haven't heard back from them yet. Patron saint for patience? We don't know, we can't find the saint finder.

I think all saints are the patron saints of patience (except maybe St. Peter), hence the term "the patience of a saint."

Dear Sister, Thank you so much for your blog! I love visiting here. Someone oughta give you a book contract -- the best writers always combine wit with their wisdom as you do. I have a simple question for you. One of those "please help me find just the right patron saint" questions. I run a blog for teens called No Question Left Behind. Actually, it started out as a book but that's a long story.

Anyway, I'd like put the blog under the patronage of a special saint but can't decide on who exactly. There are so many good saints for teens and also for apologetics. Here's what the blog is all about -- it's a question and answer format (which I know you can relate too!). I collected 200 questions from teens about the Church and about everyday teen life. Then I put together a team of teens and young-20s to answer the questions from a Catholic worldview. It's so much better for teens to hear answers from their peers than from old fogeys like me. (Though I should note that we do link to your blog as you are just way too cool.) We're continuing to take questions (the email addy is in the sidebar of the blog) so the blog should have a long future ahead.

The url is: www.noquestionleftbehind.blogspot.com I'd like to ask for prayers for the teens who send us questions, our readers, and the team members who answer the questions. Once the teens and I decide on a patron, we'll use the opportunity to promote devotion to our saint through the blog.

Sorry, it took me so long to get back to you on this. A saint popped right into my mind, so I wanted to think it over and make sure I wasn't just being lazy.

In the interest of not being lazy, I'll tell you my second choice first. St. Raphael, the patron saint of young people leaving home for the first time. The archangel Raphael had to run all over the place with Tobias, guiding him and protecting him and even helping him land a wife. That really seems like a perfect patron saint for your blog, doesn't it? Raphael is also the patron saint of young love, which I know from experience is high on the list of things teens think about.

And he's an angel, which makes him a wonderful personal guardian angel.

But he's not my first choice.

I'd go with St. Augustine because he really had some spiritual lockers that needed to be cleaned out. He jazzed around all over the place studying and promoting heresies while his sainted mother Monica (St. Monica, the patron saint of mothers of teens...that ought to tell you something right there) moaned and cried and wrung her hands and prayed back home.

St. Augustine is the patron saint of beer. He was a party animal, by his own accounts.

He was what is now commonly called a "baby daddy", meaning he had a child out of wedlock. He dumped that girl and took up with another, dumped her when he became engaged, and then took up with a new girl. ( He took up with the new girl after he became engaged to an underaged girl. He had the new girl while he was waiting for the underage girl to be old enough to marry.) Thus his famous prayer: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Some prayer.

"Yet" finally arrived, though. His mother lived to see the day when he became a priest and then she dropped dead.

After all of that, St. Augustine is one of the most important saints of all time. He became a model of chastity and discipline. He founded the Augustinian Order. (Ironically, Martin Luther was an Augustinian!) He is a Doctor of the Church.

The whole point of a patron saint is finding a saint who maybe has had some of the same trials you have. I'll admit that some of them are a bit of a stretch. St. Sebastian is the patron saint of pin makers because he was shot full of arrows. I'm not making that up.

But St. Augustine...really, what didn't that guy do? Murder, I guess. Somehow he navigated his way through it all and came out a saint. Let's hope your teens do half as well.