Dear Pat, Do you really believe in the “communion of saints”?  Sometimes you act as if you didn’t, as if you were the only one who ever had to try and follow Christ amid the confusion of this wild world.  Well, you aren’t. And you should keep that in mind! Not only are the saints in heaven eager to assist you with their prayers, if only you’ll ask them to, but their examples are like Energy Bars for our souls.  Each saint was just like you and me, full of contradictory desires and beset by temptations of all kinds. And yet, they became super-experts in the art of living (that’s what holiness is – an A+ in the Art of Living).  Besides, the communion of saints is a dogma of our faith; to neglect it is not only foolish, but also disrespectful. Let me remind you of what it refers to: “the unity and co-operation of the members of the Church on earth with those in heaven and in purgatory.”  Through baptism we became God’s adopted children, but so did everyone else who was baptized! That means we have plenty of brothers and sisters in Christ, and heaven will be one heck of a family reunion. So even if you have to write your thesis on Plato, you have no excuse for ignoring St Plato.  The poor man suffered enough while on earth; don’t aggravate it. He gave up a top-level job in the Emperor’s treasury in Constantinople (nowadays called Istanbul) so he could retire to a monastery on Mt Olympus (the one in Greece, not in Washington). But he kept denouncing the Emperors’ scandalous behavior, and the emperors kept trying to shut him up by imprisoning him and shuffling him back and forth between various places of exile.  Maybe he didn’t write philosophical dialogues, but he certainly lived the true philosophy. I will ask him to pray for the success of your thesis. God bless. Uncle Eddy