witness of Fr Raymond Nogar OP

I am a Roman Catholic
and I believe in the community of saints,
 both in heaven and on earth.
 I believe that the happy spirits in heaven
can and sometimes do assist by their intercessory power, 
the spirits in this vale of tears.
 I have heard that 
St. Christopher is good on the highways, 
that St. Jude is terrific with impossible cases, 
and that St. Anthony is the one you turn to
when lost articles fail to show up.

But I will tell you something. 
I do not think that St. Anthony finds things for you, 
like lost golf balls for instance. 
You know who finds lost golf balls?  
Impoverished golfers
who haven't the cash to buy new ones every day,
 and caddies on their days off, 
so that they can wash them up and sell them.
 Why do they find them,  when others don't ? 
I'll tell you why.
 Because they look and look and  look
until  they look in the right place
where the ball was all the time.



Well,  then,  where does St. Anthony come in? 
All I can see is that
somehow through an appeal of the spirit,
 like the encouragement of a gesture from a lover,  
there is motive generated,
 a motive which urges a man to look and look and look
 until he looks in the right place, 
where the ball was all the time.

Now to say that the saints are thereby unnecessary, 
that St. Anthony is just superstitious baggage
 in the business of human affairs, 
is to make the claim
that the gesture of the lover is irrelevant.








      from - "Evolution and the Cosmic Order" - 1965














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