Monday, June 12, 2006

Xavier Castle, Sanguissa



























If you want to raise a kid to baptize 200,000 pagans, all you have to do is have a place like this for him to play as a child.



















So, Francis Xavier certainly went whole hog on the "God is real" side of Pascal's wager. He gave up a lot.

The best thing about going to the places the saints frequented is the realization that they were just like us. We have plasterized them too much. But when you can reach out and touch a wall that the saint must have touched thousands of times, or look out over a vista that was probably remarkably similar to the one he looked at, you realize what truly, truly ridiculous schleps we are because we are not what the saints were. They weren't special. They had just made up their minds and then acted on it.