[Jesus said] True greatness is in loving God and in humility. - Diary of St. Faustina, 424
He levitated. He bilocated. He won miracles through prayer, even raising the dead. And he's the first black saint from the Americas.
But all those extraordinary biographical details aren't the most important aspects of his life.
Saint Martin de Porres (1579-1639), a Dominican Friar from Peru whose feast we celebrate on Nov. 3, matters most because he humbly loved God and his neighbor as Jesus did.
That's the secret behind the extraordinary signs and wonders of the saints: love. Relationships of love with other people, both human and divine, open the floodgates of God's providential action, allow His grace to come into the world and transfigure it, bringing light into darkness, healing into hurts, and making brethren out of strangers.
"If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light," said Pope Benedict XVI.
Light from Light; love from Love; sanctity from the All-Holy God. Saints matter because they put God in His rightful place in their lives and hearts. When you live life that way, everything changes.
Let us ask St. Martin de Porres' intercession that we might love God as God, casting aside all idols that get in the way. Let us ask his prayers for all our needs and intentions, trusting in the power of the intercession of the Body of Christ to obtain everything from the Father.
You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. - Mic 6:8
