What Saint or Holy Figure Has Inspired You the Most?

What saint or holy figure has inspired you the most?


FaithfulNews : What saint or holy figure has inspired you the most? - Ottawa Citizen


Now this is a tall order! After all, we are talking about, in my case, a 2,000-year religious tradition. Today, Christianity girdles the globe, and encompasses some one-third of the human family.

With that kind of scope, how is anyone to narrow down our inspiration to one "saint?"

I have tried a number of strategies, from reviewing biblical texts, to hauling out my biographical dictionary of the saints.

I have considered the greats of days gone long by: Augustine of Hippo, Jerome and Athanasius. I have revisited the mystics: Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Hildegard. I've thumbed through some of my favourite writes: L'Engle, Lewis and Tolkien. I have reread accounts of the three Christians who A.N. Wilson believes breathed new life into Christianity in Western Europe after a disastrous post-Enlightenment relationship between the church and western secularism: Bonhoeffer, Weil and de Chardin. I've debated choosing among great theologians: Barth, Brown and Niebuhr.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/interfaith-dialogues/30143-what-saint-holy-figure-has-inspired.html
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=30143

In the end, I choose Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council, and, by doing so, opened the long-closed windows not of the Roman Church alone, but of all Christianity, so that the wind of the Spirit might blow through the household of God.

John XXIII made the first rapprochement with Protestants since the Reformation 500 years earlier, and charted a new course for positive relations with Judaism in a post-Shoa world.

And who better to undertake the latter? As Metropolitan of Istanbul during the Second World War, John, then Angelo Roncalli, was instrumental in collaborating with Turkish Muslims to rescue Romanian Jews from the Nazis.

Fred Buechner says that saints are the handkerchiefs God occasionally drops in God's courtship of the human

 
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For ME..its the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji..that inspires me 24/7..365.25 days...sleeping and awake...working and lazing...
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=30143
The Lives of the Ten Gurus...as physical beings who led the most amazing lives....
The Saibzadahs..Ajit Singh Jhujaar Singh on horseback..with sword in hand...leading a group of FIVE into battle against thousands of well armed adult professional soldiers of the Biggest Empire...the Fateh Singh and Zorawar Singh aged five and seven ..standing TALL in the wall being bricked up alive....inspire ME..all the time..when i am sad..when i am happy..when i am gloomy..when i am flushing and gushing...when i am teaching..when i am lazing....How far behind I am ...far behind these greatest souls ever to visit this earth..and if..ever i can be like them....

"Sab tu wada Sat Guru Nanak...."

All the genuine saints of the world, whether Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus etc are worthy of respect.

But Guru Nanak was unique. He looked at the creation in completely different way. I do not think that anybody else could talk so intuitively about the infiniteness and unfathomablility in such simple and eloquent terms. His Japji is an unrivaled masterpiece which can be interpreted for people at the lowest level of intelligence and people with an IQ of a genius can delve deeper and deeper and come up with fresh and valid insights into Guru Nanak's philosophy. And this was centuries before the era of Einstein, Darwin, and Stephen Hawkins. None of the discoveries made so far contradict His thinking.