We have been asked to write on lay people who became Saints. As we researched our last book, Visionaries, Mystics and Stigmatists, we found ourselves writing on many saints and blesseds, brothers and sisters who came from a life very much like our own; they never entered the religious life but instead served the Lord right where he had planted them, within their families.

St. Frances of Rome is one such saint and visionary. True saints are remembered long past their life here on earth; they are an everlasting remembrance of how very much God loves us, and when we accept that love, how very much he can change our lives. Till today, if you visit Rome, you can pray before her tomb, seeking her intercession - powerful in life and powerful in death. If you were to visit the church on her Feast Day, you would be among the countless faithful who still pray hopefully, petitioning her to intervene for them with the Lord, their families having passed down the good news of miracles through her intercession. St. Frances of Rome's story is one of joy and sorrow, of faith and of hope at a dire time in the world and in the Church.

I do not know about you, but I am tired of reading over and over again how, throughout the last 20 centuries, the world has influenced the Church instead of the Church influencing the world. It's time for a change, I say! The more we read about these great saints who have brought us messages from our celestial family of what joy is awaiting us in heaven, and from the Church suffering what agony our brothers and sisters are enduring in purgatory, it gives us reason to pause in our busy, worldly filled days and meditate on what is really important. Will we pay for every soul who does not choose everlasting life with Jesus in paradise and instead chooses the temporary rewards of life on earth, because we did not tell him about the treasures of our most precious Roman Catholic Church? Will we share in the punishment of those who have sinned grievously against the Lord because we said and did nothing?