How to Make a Saint
by Donavon L Riley
Only God can carve a saint from the rough timber of human life. It is His work alone, done in the deep hollows where we dare not go. He does it through the grind and press of the cross, through the long days of humiliation, and the nights of silent struggle. It is not a clean or simple thing. A saint is made in the furnace of suffering borne for Christ’s sake, where the heart is battered by doubt, tugged toward the world’s glittering promises, and harried by the sharp claws of the devil and his black-winged angels.
The work of God is relentless, like wind shaping stone. He cuts away our comfort and pride, leaving us raw and trembling. Saints are not fashioned in quiet pews but in the wilderness, on the long roads of exile, and at the foot of the cross where the ground is soaked in blood and tears. Doubt becomes the forge, and the fire burns hotter than we think we can bear. God hammers the soul like iron, shaping it for endurance, not for ease; for glory eternal, not the applause of men. The blows are not arbitrary; they come with purpose. He breaks what must be broken and burns away what cannot enter His kingdom.
No force in this world—no failed priest, no errant bishop, no false pope or politician—can halt the hand of God. He moves through their corruption and beyond it, turning even the poison of their failures into the medicine of His work. The world would like to believe it can stop Him, that its lies and idols can silence the truth. But when God moves, even the stones cry out. The broken are lifted. The forgotten are seen. The iron will of heaven reshapes what seemed beyond redemption.
A saint is not someone who rises unscathed but someone who falls and rises again, a soul marked by struggle and sacrifice, someone whose very being has become an altar. Only God can do this. And He does it not to make us safe, but to make us holy. Not to grant us peace in the world, but to grant us peace with Him, the kind that shatters and remakes, leaving us new, unrecognizable, yet finally whole.