To be able to enter daily into the silence without worries, fears, doubts, without plans of any sort, to say no more than, "I AM HERE" and to feel it so, simply and truly — is an act of faith, an exercise in openness, attentiveness, devotion. It will shape your soul to meet the Friend of your heart.
A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things -- greater and purer than they are.
