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Today's Featured Biography
St. Francis Of Assisi
 One reason why those beings who are known to us as saints are so little understood is, that their lives are usually written in one of two ways, both equally unsuited to popular appreciation. Either they are presented in a dry, bare, matter-of-fact manner, which requires all the knowledge and sympathy of the initiated to give it vital meaning; or else they are surrounded with an appanage of portents, visions, miracles, legends--spread before the reader without discrimination or explanation--which confuse the mind and soul, and absolutely repel all who do not share the faith of the subject and the biographer.
As a matter of fact, no Catholic is obliged to accept these legends and traditions literally, except in those cases where the authorities of the Church, after a scrutiny, which is always deliberate and searching, declare that a miracle was wrought. But every Catholic, by the very nature of his belief in the actual presence of the Divinity among men, must acknowledge and maintain that miracles have been wrought by that supernatural power constantly, ever since apostolic times; that they may and do occur, through the same power, at any moment to-day; and always will occur. In the ordinary gossip of the world, men hold to the maxim that if reports are current, all pointing to one particular fact, there must be truth in them. "Where there is so much smoke there is sure to be some fire." We should at least accord the same, if not a greater, degree of probability an...
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