Our Special Saints for 2013

Our family is continuing the special tradition of choosing a patron saint to be our special intercessor for the new year.  A friend of mine who has a special devotion to St. Faustina first told me about this beautiful tradition a few years ago when she shared the following excerpt from Faustina's diary:

"Jesus likes to intervene in the smallest details of our life, and He often fulfills secret wishes of mine that I sometimes hide from Him, although I know that from Him nothing can be hidden.  There is a custom among [the sisters in our convent] of drawing by lot, on New Year's Day, for special patrons for ourselves for the whole year.  In the morning during meditation, there arose within me a secret desire that the Eucharistic Jesus be my special patron for this year also, as in the past.  But hiding this desire from my Beloved, I spoke to Him about everything else but that.  When the sisters gathered for breakfast, we blessed ourselves and began drawing our patrons.  When I approached the holy cards on which the names of the patrons were written, without hesitation I took one, but I didn't read the name immediately as I wanted to mortify myself for a few minutes.  Suddenly, I heard a voice in my soul:  I am your patron.  Read.  I looked at once at the inscription and read, "Patron for the Year 1935--the most Blessed Eucharist."  My heart leapt with joy, and I slipped quietly away from the sisters and went for a short visit before the Blessed Sacrament, where I poured out my heart.  (entry 360)

So, just like we've done the past few years, Paul, Joseph, Michael, Dominic and myself each wrote down 5-10 saint names and placed them in a hat...  Here are the results of the saints that God desired each of us to have:

Paul:  St. Rose of Lima
Maria:  the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Joseph:  St. Dominic of the Rosary
Michael:  St. Mary Magdalene
Dominic:  St. John the Evangelist
Nathanael:  St. Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus

This year I was blessed with a grace similar to St. Faustina's experience, which convinced me that God really does intervene even in the smallest details of our lives, like which saint we draw out of a hat.  Prior to drawing my patron for the year 2013, I had a sudden desire to draw Jesus' Sacred Heart.  For the past few weeks Jesus has been giving me the grace of a keen awareness of my sins and how much they hurt His Sacred Heart.  By "keen awareness" I don't just mean a knowledge of my sins, I mean a completely overwhelming feeling of the weight and ugliness of my sin to the point of tears...lots of tears.   I've never experienced anything quite like this before.   I call this a "grace," but it really isn't something I would wish to experience again.  It has been painful and very humbling to say the least (especially when I turn into a puddle of tears in front of people!)  During this same time period, I was also given the great grace of God sending me a Spiritual Director, a very holy and humble priest, to help guide my soul towards holiness.  The same day that I drew the Sacred Heart of Jesus as my Patron for the year, I also had my very first meeting with my new Spiritual Director. When I shared with him Who I drew for my Patron, he smiled and said he had a gift that he was planning to give me...  He left the room and returned with a beautiful picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that he recently brought back from Rome, blessed personally by Pope Benedict XVI.  My Spiritual Director said that he, too, has a special devotion to the Sacred Heart and had wanted to give me one of these special pictures as soon I asked him to be my Spiritual Director a few weeks ago.  This gift truly confirmed in my heart that Jesus truly was calling me to receive spiritual direction and calling me to draw nearer to his Sacred Heart this year.  God is so very, very good.

By the way, if any of you readers would like me to draw a saint name for you, I'd be more than happy to do so...  Just post a comment below that I will reply to, or you can send me an email if you'd prefer to correspond that way: (pmhurlbert@gmail.com).