Faith, doubt, and returning

Any of these can be asked. There is no order of precedence and no wrong choice, so pick whoever the story fits.

• St. AdalbertBishop of Prague twice, martyr of the Baltic once, and Poland bought his body back with its weight in gold.
• St. Albert the GreatThe medieval mind that studied everything, Aquinas’s teacher and the scientists’ patron.
• St. AmandMissionary to the rough taverns of Flanders, and the patron of brewers, winemakers, and everyone behind the bar.
• St. AndrewThe first called. He heard, and went to get his brother.
• St. Andrew Kim Taegon and CompanionsA Church founded by laypeople reading books, then defended with ten thousand lives.
• St. AnsgarApostle of the North: everything he built collapsed twice, and the harvest came 150 years after he died.
• St. AthanasiusExiled five times for one truth: Athanasius against the world, and the world came around.
• St. Augustine of HippoMonica’s answer: the restless genius who arrived late and wrote the book on it.
• St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions120 canonized across three centuries, led by a soldier converted by his prisoner.
• St. BarnabasSon of encouragement: he vouched for Paul when everyone was afraid, and for Mark when Paul would not.
• St. BartholomewCan anything good come out of Nazareth? The honest sceptic who got the compliment of the Gospels.
• St. Benedict Joseph LabreRejected by every monastery, he made the road his cell: the homeless pilgrim of Rome.
• St. Benedict of NursiaWrote the rule that shaped western monasticism, and is asked to pray for protection against evil.
• St. Brendan the NavigatorThe abbot who sailed west into legend: patron of everyone on the water and everyone setting out.
• St. Catherine LabouréSaw the design of the Miraculous Medal, then kept the secret for forty six years while tending old men.
• St. Charles de FoucauldFrom dissolute officer to hermit of the Sahara: apostle of the hidden life.
• St. Clare of AssisiFrancis’s first follower, who fought the papacy for the right to own nothing and won on her deathbed.
• St. ColumbaHe copied a book without leave, and the ruling, to every cow its calf, sent him into the exile that converted Scotland.
• St. CyprianHe argued that the Church could take back those who broke, and was beheaded saying thanks be to God.
• St. Cyril of JerusalemHe walked catechumens through Lent to the font, sixteen centuries before anyone said RCIA.
• St. David of WalesBe joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things: Wales’s patron, in his own last words.
• St. Edward the ConfessorThe last Anglo-Saxon king, remembered not for conquest but for peace, alms, and an abbey.
• St. Elizabeth Ann SetonWidowed in quarantine, converted at full cost, and the first American born saint.
• St. Elizabeth of the TrinityHeaven is in the soul: the young Carmelite who taught busy people where God actually lives.
• St. Faustina KowalskaA Polish nun with a fourth-grade education whose diary became the Divine Mercy devotion.
• St. Gaspar del BufaloHe refused Napoleon’s oath, then took the mission nobody wanted: preaching in bandit country.
• St. GenesiusThe actor who began a parody of baptism and stopped mid-scene, converted on his own stage.
• St. GilesHe took the arrow meant for the deer: the old patron of everyone afraid to confess.
• St. Giuseppe CottolengoA dying woman was turned away by every hospital, so he built the Little House that turns nobody away.
• St. Gregory of NarekArmenia’s prayer poet: his book is kept under pillows, and Rome made him a Doctor across a divide.
• St. HelenaSet aside by an emperor for politics, mother of the next one, and the Church’s great seeker of the Cross.
• St. Hilary of PoitiersA pagan philosopher who read his way to God, then defended the Trinity from exile, courteously.
• St. Hildegard of BingenAbbess, composer, physician, visionary: the twelfth century’s widest mind belonged to a nun.
• St. Ignatius of LoyolaA vain soldier rebuilt by a cannonball, who wrote the manual for finding what God wants from you.
• St. IrenaeusHe heard Polycarp, who heard John. The chain from the apostles runs through him, and he wrote it down.
• St. John BerchmansMy penance is community life: the saint of the perfectly kept ordinary.
• St. John DamasceneFrom the caliph’s Damascus, he wrote the defence of holy images the Church still uses.
• St. John EudesHe preached the Hearts of Jesus and Mary before anyone else, and built refuge for women the world had used.
• St. John Gabriel PerboyreBetrayed for silver, he refused to trample the crucifix.
• St. John Henry NewmanHeart speaks to heart: the Oxford convert who paid full price for following the argument.
• St. John of the CrossImprisoned by his own brothers, he wrote the poetry of the dark night in the cell.
• St. John the BaptistThe forerunner: he must increase, I must decrease.
• St. John VianneyThe failing seminary student who became the confessor all of France travelled to see.
• St. John XXIIIThe caretaker pope who opened the windows, and told parents to give their children a caress from him.
• St. Juan DiegoThe man Our Lady of Guadalupe chose, whose tilma has hung in Mexico City ever since.
• St. Justin MartyrHe shopped every philosophy in the empire, found the true one, and kept the philosopher’s cloak.
• St. Kateri TekakwithaThe Lily of the Mohawks: scarred at four, exiled for her faith, first Native American saint.
• St. LazarusJesus wept at the tomb of this man, his friend. Four days dead, and called out by name.
• St. Manuel González GarcíaHe walked into an abandoned church, saw the neglected tabernacle, and gave his life to keeping company.
• St. Margaret ClitherowThe butcher’s wife of the Shambles who hid priests, and refused to plead, to spare her children.
• St. Margaret Mary AlacoqueThe nun of the Sacred Heart: disbelieved at home, vindicated across the world.
• St. Margaret of CortonaNine years a nobleman’s mistress, a son, a murder, and then the Franciscans’ Third Light.
• St. Maria GorettiMurdered at eleven, and the second half of her story belongs to the man she forgave.
• St. Mariam BaouardyThe little Arab: a Galilee orphan who survived the unthinkable and built the Carmel of Bethlehem.
• St. Marie-Alphonsine GhattasA Jerusalem daughter who saw Our Lady of the Rosary, and founded the Rosary Sisters of Palestine.
• St. Mary MagdaleneThe first witness of the resurrection, and the patron of second chances.
• St. Mary of BethanyShe chose the better part: the patron of sitting still with God.
• St. Mary of EgyptSeventeen years she later named sin, forty seven alone in the desert: the patron of total turnarounds.
• St. MonicaPrayed seventeen years for a son who had left the faith.
• St. OlafViking raider, hard king, Norway’s eternal patron: sainthood found him faster than gentleness did.
• St. Oscar RomeroChosen as the safe candidate, he became the voice of the voiceless, and was shot at the altar.
• St. PancrasMartyred at fourteen, and for a thousand years oaths were sworn over his tomb.
• St. PantaleonThe emperor’s physician who treated the poor free: he lapsed once, came back, and paid the full price.
• St. Paschal BaylonA shepherd who became the kitchen brother, and the formal patron of every Eucharistic congress on earth.
• St. PatrickTaken as a slave, went back freely, and is asked to pray for people facing fear.
• St. PaulThe persecutor knocked off his feet. Half the New Testament is his letters.
• St. Paul Miki and CompanionsTwenty six crucified above Nagasaki, then the Church went underground for 250 years and survived.
• St. Paul of the CrossFounder of the Passionists, and a man who prayed fifty years for a thing he never saw answered.
• St. Peter Julian EymardThe apostle of adoration: he built a life around simply staying in the Presence.
• St. PhilipShow us the Father: the apostle who asked the question everyone eventually asks.
• St. Philip NeriThe Apostle of Rome, who made cheerfulness a discipline and jokes a cure for pride.
• St. Pio of PietrelcinaA confessor who heard confessions for fifty years, and bore the stigmata.
• St. PolycarpEighty six years I have served him: a disciple of John, faithful to the end of the living link.
• St. Rafael Arnáiz BarónThe young Trappist diabetes kept expelling. He kept coming back, and died at twenty six.
• St. Robert BellarmineThe Church’s chief controversialist, who pawned his own furniture for the poor and wrote on dying well.
• St. Rose Philippine DuchesneShe begged thirty years for the mission, arrived at forty nine, failed at the language, and knelt.
• St. Simon StockThe Carmelite of the brown scapular: the little habit millions wear.
• St. Simon the ZealotThe political radical seated at the same table as the tax collector.
• St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Jewish philosopher and Catholic Carmelite, killed at Auschwitz, a daughter of Israel to the end.
• St. Teresa of ÁvilaA Carmelite reformer who prayed dry for twenty years, asked for by headache sufferers and anyone whose prayer feels like nothing.
• St. Teresa of CalcuttaFifty years serving the dying, and fifty years of interior darkness, serving anyway.
• St. Théophane VénardHe wrote letters from a cage that read like spring, and Thérèse kept his picture until she died.
• St. Thérèse of LisieuxWrote that small ordinary things done with love are the whole of it.
• St. Thomas the ApostleUnless I see: the doubter whose demand produced the highest confession in the Gospels.
• Sts. Elizabeth and ZechariahJohn the Baptist’s parents: her greeting became half the Hail Mary, and his silence ended in a canticle.
• Sts. Francisco and Jacinta MartoThe shepherd children of Fatima, asked by Our Lady of the Rosary for exactly this prayer.
• Sts. Priscilla and AquilaTentmakers, hosts, teachers: the New Testament’s model marriage worked as a team.