January, 2005 Calendar In This Issue: Sainthood Defined… Columbarium Sale Extended Religion, Politics and Theology (Part 2) An Invitation from the Healing Prayer Group Via Media Lenten Series Women's Annual Retreat Y2005 Prisoners of Time Our New and Improved Kitchen

(Reprint from the novel The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold)

Umegat rubbed his neck and pulled on his queue. "Do you understand what it means to be a saint?"

Cazaril cleared his throat uncomfortably. "You must be very virtuous, I suppose." "No, in fact. One need not be good. Or even nice." Umegat looked wry of a sudden. "Grant you, once one experiences...what one experiences, one's tastes change. Material ambition seems immaterial. Greed, pride, vanity, wrath, just grow too dull to bother with." "Lust?"

Umegat brightened. "Lust, I'm happy to say, seems largely unaffected. Or perhaps I might grant, love. For the cruelty and selfishness that make lust vile become tedious. But personally, I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god." Umegat emptied his cup. "The gods love their great souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn't virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer….Umegat inverted his clay cup upon the cloth. "Men's will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom.

"No, don't waste the wine!" Carazril protested, as Umegat reached for the jug. "I've seen it demonstrated before."

Umegat grinned, and desisted. "But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act. Or" - Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug - "sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world." He filled his cup. "A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He - or she - freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible." He lifted his cup to his lips…and drank.

Copyright © 2005 St. Augustine by-the-Sea