I wish I had remembered Jean Vianney when I was composing the message I had just posted!
If one can have a falling in love with a saint experience, I had one with the St. Jean Vianney...what an example of putting God before self, and being a true shepherd of his flock.
For those that don't know, he was a peasant who got a chance to go to school, and barely passed, and got sent to a ticky little backwater town that hadn't had a pastor since before the French Revolution, which had been several years before, and turned it around from a mostly Godless (or, much like today, where God isn't in the equation for a lot of people, although they like him) community, into a thriving holy place. He had the gift from God to help people see and face their sins and ask God's forgiveness, and he would counsel people for hours and hours every day.
He gives me hope as an example of what impact that people who are radically committed to the truth of Jesus can do...
But without the Cross, without the truth of Christ crucified, you can't have this. Pray, my friends, for more truly committed people who will be like lamps filled with Christ's true light in the midnight.