Family ties and religious obligations may affect one another, but they are not necessarily opposed. Saint Scholastica’s relationship with her brother Saint Benedict, is a good example.

Devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes runs deep in the hearts of the faithful as a sign of God’s care and healing. The mediation of Mary, his mother, is a real consolation to those who suffer any ill.

Saint Apollonia is the patron saint of dentists because her teeth were knocked out by an angry mob. Hardly the way we would wish a dentist to extract our teeth, but Saint Apollonia certainly evidenced great courage in her defiance of those who were attacking Christians.

Simple, humble persons can sometimes be powerful in their effect on and work with the people of God. Saint Giles Mary of Saint Joseph was such a man. Giles Mary was loved on the streets of Naples for his goodness born of prayer.

Often missionaries face the difficulties of language and culture. Saints Cyril and Methodius were no exceptions. But they faced the difficulties by writing the foreign language in a new alphabet and translating the liturgy for the local people.

Saint Claude de la Colombière met Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and eventually became her confessor. Together they advanced devotion to the Sacred Heart at a time when God’s mercy needed emphasis. God raises the right people at the right time to keep his Church on the right path.