The story of a saint is always a love story. It is a story of a God who loves, and of the beloved who learns how to reciprocate and share that "harsh and dreadful love". It is a story that includes misunderstanding, deception, betrayal, concealment, reversal, and revelation of character. It is, if the saints are to be trusted, our story. But to be a saint is not to be a solitary lover. It is to enter into deeper community with everyone and everything that exists.
We cannot avoid the question of integrity or wholeness to which all of us proceed. We cannot exclude anyone from the process of becoming fully human, neither a woman nor a man. Personal experience is essential. God gives us the ability to experience ourselves and to assume relationships. As we develop this, we learn to overcome the tensions and the difficulties in life; and those times when there is a lack of love, we are given hope. We experience hope. The great thing about all this is the hope and the realization that it is within our reach.