Who could understand a hardship better than someone who has already lived through it? The saints were no strangers to suffering: they, too, faced moments of sadness, loneliness, guilt, and anxiety, and found in God the strength to keep moving forward.
The Instagram account Un Católico Bien reminded followers that, in difficult times, there is nothing like being heard “by a friend who has lived through the same thing you are going through today.”
“The saints are those friends who have felt the way you feel, and they are there to listen to you and intercede for you,” the account said.
If you are going through a difficult moment, perhaps you can relate to one of these four saints:
- Sadness: St. John of the Cross
His own fellow religious imprisoned him. In a cell without light, he wrote Dark Night of the Soul, one of the most beautiful poems ever written. Darkness did not defeat him. It transformed him.
- Being unable to forgive yourself: St. Peter
He denied Jesus three times on the night when Jesus needed him most. He went out and wept alone. Yet afterward, Jesus said to him: “Feed my sheep.” He did not cast him aside. He chose him again.
- Loneliness: St. Teresa of Calcutta
She spent 50 years feeling alone, even from God. Her letters, published after her death, reveal decades of interior darkness. Yet she continued serving nonetheless. She said: “God has not called me to be successful. He has called me to be faithful.”
- Anxiety: St. Ignatius of Loyola
At age 30, a cannonball ended his military career. He had to relearn who he was from the ground up. From that crisis came discernment: the art of distinguishing what brings peace from what brings fear. He did not remain in anxiety; he turned it into a method.