SAINT OF THE DAY
WITH UNCLE EDDY
Navigating today’s world is tough and all of us could use a nudge in the right direction. Figuring out the right path to take at work, college, or in social situations is not always easy. Looking to the lives of the saints can give us the insights we need.
Written by Fr. John Bartunek, LC, Uncle Eddy’s Saint of the Day is a fictional series of letters written by a man who has been imprisoned for the Catholic Faith. Using the saints of the day as examples, Uncle Eddy pens a daily letter with spiritual advice to his many nieces and nephews.
St Albert the Great
Dear Alice, I do so hope you are able to take a break from your grueling work in the lab and get a chance to read this before midnight; today is the feast day of your patron saint, my dear niece, and you ought to do something special in his honor. Don’t be confused; I know that you are not named after Albert the Great, but do you know that he is patron of all students of the natural sciences? And since your biochemistry fetish still qualifies as a natural science, he is your patron. There you have it. I ...
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St John Bosco
Dear Boss, My erratic nephew, please don’t be such a wimp. If there’s one thing that obstructs God’s efforts to do good to souls more than anything else, it’s a lack of perseverance. It is no novelty to get a great idea, to start out on a great project, to ...
St Bathildis
Dear Beth, It was good to hear that you made it through the first round of interviews. I know how long you have been hoping to win the Rhodes Scholarship, and how it has been the reason behind many of the decisions about how you have spent your time during ...
St Gildas the Wise
Dear Gilda, Your latest note deeply saddened me. Whenever I hear of clergy, who have betrayed their trust and given scandal to the very souls they were called to save, my heart just about breaks. But, on the other hand, it really should come as no surprise. Our Lord himself ...
St Thomas Aquinas
Dear Quincy, News of your fiery and victorious debates against the Pagan Student Union has reached me even here in my forsaken cubicle. What a grace it is to know that you are valiantly defending Christian truth against the world’s seductive half-truths! The whole event reminds me of today’s saint, ...
St Angela Merici
Dear Angelique, Happy saint’s day, my petite niece! To my mind, it has always been a pleasing irony to see that you take after your namesake by being small of stature. And it has always been my sincere conviction that God has a great work of some kind for you ...
St Timothy and St Titus
Dear Tim, I was sorry to hear about your latest debacle – but perhaps not so sorry as you might think. To be soundly trounced in public debate can do wonders for deflating vanity and deepening humility. On that score, I trust you will share my pleasure, even if I ...
The Conversion of St Paul
Dear Paula, Here in my prison of a cubicle, I have little to do but pray for you and my other relations, and consider the wise and mysterious mercy of God. I find it especially hard to put up with my cruel and faithless guards. They never smile, they never ...
St Francis de Sales
Dear Frank, Be neither afraid nor surprised by encountering opposition to your true vocation – even from those who love you best. If following God’s will were always easy, logical, and without obstacles, why would we have needed a Savior to teach us how and give us the grace to ...
St John the Almsgiver
Dear Ruby, In my avuncular opinion, you are worrying about the wrong thing. Discerning God’s call in your life is not about tallying all the things you have to give up if you consecrate your life to his service and then sighing with regret. Not at all! Following God is ...
St Vincent of Saragossa
Dear Sarah, I only have a few precious minutes to write (another series of interrogations begins today – they think they found some new “evidence” against me, which is hardly likely, since I have done nothing they accuse of me… the farce plays on…), but I wanted to respond to ...
St Agnes
Dear Lambert, My pitiless guards (may God forgive them) just slid a recent article from “The Campus Times” under my cubicle wall, laughing all the while. It very scientifically tabulates recent statistics concerning the moral behavior of college students in America. After coldly describing widespread suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, ...
St Sebastian
Dear Basia, Have you ever considered why some saints are made “patrons” of certain things? Theologians point out that it is a practice that goes way back, and is based (theoretically, at least) on the Biblical fact that a change of name indicates a change of personal identity or social ...
