Dear Peggy,<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think you need to torture yourself so much.\u00a0 You had two excellent options for the summer: a plush internship downtown, or a rigorous camp head-counselorship in the boondocks.\u00a0 You chose the latter, for the right reasons, and you just need to stick with that, no matter what your dad says, no matter what anyone says.\u00a0 Don\u2019t fret; you didn\u2019t choose out of selfish motives or on a whim, so God will bless you.\u00a0 Consider this an opportunity to grow in intimacy with him, to learn to stabilize your volatile emotions (linked to your tendency to vanity, I think) by grounding them not in the changing opinion of other people, but in the steady, loving wisdom of God.\u00a0 That\u2019s what today\u2019s saint did, and it served her well.<\/p>\n
Germaine was the daughter of poor parents who lived in southern France.\u00a0 She had poor health as a child, which led to a deformity in her hand.\u00a0 She also lost her mother when she was only an infant.\u00a0 Her father remarried, but the stepmother didn\u2019t like her too much.\u00a0 And when brothers and sisters started arriving, Germaine was relegated to little more than servant status.<\/p>\n
She was kind of exiled without being exiled.\u00a0 She had to sleep in the barn, or in a cupboard under the stairs, and when she was nine her parents hired her out as a shepherdess, difficult and rugged work for anyone, let alone a nine-year old girl with a crippled hand.<\/p>\n
But she made a little Rosary for herself out of knotted string, and accompanied her work with prayer.\u00a0 When she could, she would gather the little children of the town in the fields and teach them catechism.\u00a0 She would never allow herself to miss Mass.\u00a0 Even if she were already in the fields and the bell for Mass rang, she would leave her shepherd\u2019s crook there in the ground and charge her guardian angel to take care of the flock while she went to be fed by the divine Shepherd\u2026 She never lost a sheep.<\/p>\n
Thus she passed her childhood, persecuted by her stepmother, mocked by the neighbors, but basking in the unswerving love of God.<\/p>\n
As she grew older, people began to change their opinion of her a bit, especially one time after she was accused of stealing bread, chased out of the house and forced to open her apron \u2013 though it was winter, when she opened up her apron, instead of finding stolen bread, her stepmother beheld a miraculous armful of fresh flowers.<\/p>\n
Germaine died in her sleep at the young age of 22.\u00a0 Forty years later her body was accidentally exhumed during a restoration of the Church \u2013 it was incorrupt.\u00a0 It was reburied, and after another century it was exhumed (still incorrupt) by anti-Catholic revolutionaries, who tried to destroy it by reburying it with no coffin, covered with water and quick-lime. \u00a0But even that couldn\u2019t destroy her mortal remains.<\/p>\n
Germaine knew how to live under God\u2019s gaze, caring less for the opinions of others than for the approval of her loving Lord.\u00a0 I suggest you take advantage of your present situation to exercise the same virtue.\u00a0 In the end, it\u2019s the only road to emotional stability and interior peace.<\/p>\n
Your loving uncle,<\/p>\n
Eddy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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