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Who wants to be a saint?

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Part 1:   Teresa of Avila: a saint who is so like us      All believers are invited to become saints, but the idea seems scary to people who are quite content going to church on Sundays, period. Whatever we ordinary mortals have learned from our colonized past we seem to think saints are people who were brought up with eyes cast downward and mumbling prayers non-stop.  We like to equate sanctity with sinlessness, forgetting the forgiveness part of being Christian.  A saying in Pilipino, “hindi makabasag-pinggan”—a quality of one so pious that even breaking a dish would constitute a mortal sin—aptly describes our perception of saints, thus when the homilist asks “Who among you wants to be a saint?” nobody raises a hand.             One saint the laypeople can easily relate to is St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church.  The word “human” suits her to a T.  She was born in 1515, in Avila, Spain, at a time when women were raised to become perfect homemakers, but she grew (u