Today, perhaps, more than ever, we need examples of holy men and women who kept pressing ahead in the midst of challenges. Fortunately, we can always look to the saints for that purpose because they faced difficulties and dilemmas just like you and I do. And they sought to meet those challenges by trusting in Christ. They did not rely on their own strength, abilities, determination, or grit. Instead, although they might have possessed those useful traits, they placed their hope and faith in God. They knew that everything was a gift from God, and they needed to learn to place more and more of their trust completely in Him in order to see them through the issues they faced.
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John Saves a Dying Man
One time, John set off for the hospital at St. Giacomo in order to visit with the ill. However, instead of going to St. Giacomo, he found that he had actually gone to the hospital of Sancto Spirito. Wondering how distracted he must have been to go to the wrong hospital, he immediately turned around and headed back the way he had come. On his return, he wound up at St. Peter's which he took as a sign to pray in the presence of the tombs of the apostles. After praying he resumed his journey only to find that he ended up once again at the hospital of Sancto Spirito.
He discerned that this was no coincidence and soon had that confirmed when an injured man was taken into the hospital being carried on a stretcher. John followed the man on the stretcher into the hospital. The doctors looked at wounded man and then moved on to other patients. The entire time John looked on with tender care.
John then asked the man if there was anything he could do to relieve him. The love that the man felt from John was too much, and the man burst out with a cry that he had not been in the presence of a priest for over five years. He added that perhaps he was receiving a gift from God in order to be forgiven his sins. John then heard the man's confession in which he repented of his sins and forgave the man that had mortally wounded him. John gave him absolution and Holy Viaticum and then began to pray for him. He was convinced that the man would go to Heaven having been relieved of the heavy burden of sin he had carried for so long.
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