Saint 4 U: Kateri Tekawitha

Did you know that are hundreds of friends waiting to hear from you? But you can't text, Facebook or tweet to them. We don't think they even have cell phones or Ipads. To talk to them, you gotta pray 'cause they are saints and they are up in heaven with God.

But what exactly is a saint? There's a couple of rules:

1. A saint is someone who loved God with all their heart and tried to live as much like Jesus as they could. We know it's hard. But that's what makes a saint a saint.

2. A saint is dead. No two ways about it. Good live person--not a saint. Good dead person--maybe a saint. But, they are not ZOMBIES. Get that thought out of your noggin.

3. The Catholic church has to research the saint's life to make sure the saint was real and nice. Sometime it takes hundreds of years to finish the research. Think of it like going to school all year for 50 years and you have to write a 1000 page report. Yikes.

4. Lastly, there needs to be 2 miracles that need to happen as a result of praying to the would-be saint. You can't pray to a saint asking them to change your tests score from a D to an A. A miracle is something that cannot be explained like a kid was dying because of a car wreck. One hour he was dying in the best hospital and the next he's okay.

One saint is was a teen named Kateri Tekawitha. That's a mouthful. Don't spit on your mom when you say it.  She lived almost 500 hundred years ago and was an Indian or as people call them now, a Native American. She got sick one time and because of that, she was scarred on her face. There were no hospitals back then so she was lucky she didn't die.

It was a time when there were not a lot of Christians. Most tribes didn't like Christians and plus Kateri had all those nasty scars on her face. But Kateri didn't care. She prayed a lot and tried to live like Jesus. Lots of Native Americans became Christian because they saw what a great chick Kateri was.

When she died, all the scars on her face disappeared and she was once again pretty.
So you see, saints don't necessarily have to do ginorous things to get noticed. Kateri didn't fight any big wars or fly or even travel all over. She just did what she thought Jesus wanted her to do.

We can all do that, can't we?

Kateri's feast day is 7/14. That's the day that we all tell Kateri "GREAT JOB" is on July 14th. But you can pray to her any day!