Meet the saints who wandered before they found their halos
Ever feel like your faith is just too little?
Like just making it through the week is hard enough, let alone moving mountains?
If that’s where you are today, take heart. Many of the greatest saints knew that feeling. Some wandered. Some stumbled or rebelled. Some chased their own plans for years before allowing God’s love to find its way into their hearts.
Here are the stories of three saints who remind us that the strongest kind of faith can spring forth from doubts and struggles. If only we let grace in.
St. Augustine of Hippo: The detour specialist
Augustine lived for himself. For pleasure, ambition, and recognition.
Brilliant but restless, he chased a prestigious career, relationships, and fame to fill the aching void he felt in his soul. Again and again, he kept rejecting his mother’s pleas to turn to Christ, leaping from one philosophy to the other in his search for truth and meaning.
He reveled in his single life and the freedom it afforded, fathering a son with his long-time lover and drifting deeper and deeper into a life of empty indulgence. But after years of fruitless wandering, the thrill wore off.
No matter what he achieved, peace eluded him. Discouragement and emptiness began to envelope him. Nothing brought him joy anymore. His heart, as he later wrote, was “restless” from chasing everything but God.
One afternoon, weighed down by his sins and his inability to change his ways, Augustine retreated to a garden. There, he threw himself under a fig tree and wept. As he began to cry out to God in despair and sorrow, he heard a child’s voice playfully chanting, “Take up and read; take up and read.”
Taking this unusual ditty to be a divine command, he jumped up, found a copy of the Bible, and opened it to a random page. His gaze fell upon Romans 13:13–14, a call to give up the life of sin and put on Christ.
In that moment, the years-long battle within him ended. God’s peace flooded his soul, and Augustine yielded completely. He rose from the garden a changed man, turning his back on his old life and finally stepping onto the path that would make him one of the greatest teachers in the history of the Faith.
📌Takeaway: Feel like you’ve taken a detour or pursued ambitions that crowded God out? Think again. God’s grace can meet you anywhere. Like the father in the Prodigal Son, He is waiting for you.
St Teresa of Avila: The nun with wild horses
Born in 16th-Century Spain, Teresa struggled for 20 years to truly pray!
When Teresa was a child, she loved God deeply. But as she grew into a lively Spanish noblewoman, the beauties and pleasures of the world became far more interesting than things like prayer.
Still, at 20, she entered the local Carmelite convent. To her, it simply seemed like the right thing to do. It was a comfortable convent with few rules. Life was easy. Visitors came through the doors many times a day, and Teresa spent long hours entertaining them with lively conversation.
She prayed, of course, whenever she could manage to.
But her mind wandered constantly. These distractions, she would later write, were like “wild horses that no one can stop.” Deep, quiet prayer and a genuine relationship with Christ was incredibly hard for her. She just couldn’t focus long enough! This went on for nearly two decades!
Then a long illness did what nothing else could. She was forced into solitude.
She began reading St. Augustine. And one day as she paused before a statue of the suffering Christ, her heart broke. She was pierced to the core as she saw with sudden clarity her half-hearted devotion to God. This moment of honest reckoning led her to write “Too late did I love You!”
From then on, Teresa gave herself fully to God. She sought quiet, listened for his voice, and allowed Him to shape her life. She went on to reform the Carmelite order, bringing back a life of simplicity and deep communion with God. Her writings on prayer, even the struggle with distractions, are filled with wisdom and have made her a beloved teacher and Doctor of the Church.
📌Takeaway: Don’t lose hope if your faith is slow to grow. Look to St. Teresa. Keep at it and ask God to help you. He who helped the wandering heart of St. Teresa turn to Him, will help you too.
St. Ignatius of Loyola: God’s super soldier
Born into a noble family, Ignatius left home as a young teen with just one goal in mind: To attain glory on the battlefield. Ambitious, confident, cultured, and skilled, he was famed for escaping even the most dangerous battles unscathed.
But his life of chivalry ended abruptly at Pamplona, when a cannonball struck him — shattering both his leg and his military dreams.
Several agonizing surgeries later, Ignatius was still bedridden. And desperately bored. Craving adventure, he requested for books about knights, hoping to immerse himself in chivalrous tales. But these were not around. Instead, his hosts handed him The Life of Christ and a book on saints.
He read them reluctantly at first. And then, slowly but surely, his heart changed.
He began to see that the glory of serving God far outshone any victory on the battlefield. And so Ignatius, the once-suave soldier lay down his sword— ready to serve Christ and His Church.
The road ahead, however, was far from smooth. Not long after his conversion, Ignatius wrestled with severe depression and thoughts of ending his life. Living in a cave, cut off from everyone else, he kept turning to God in his despair, day after painful day.
Finally, nearly a year later, after battling himself, he emerged a changed, humbled man. He was now ready for his life’s true mission: founding the Society of Jesus and drawing countless souls closer to God.
📌Takeaway: The strongest and bravest face setbacks, too. But in God’s Hands, even broken shards can become masterpieces. If you’re in a season of self-doubt or setbacks, consider this: The Father has a greater adventure waiting for you—one worth giving your whole life to.
Not perfect, but faithful
The saints weren’t born flawless. They wandered, struggled, resisted. Until grace found them and remade them. No matter how far we’ve strayed or how winding our journey, His grace is the same today as it was then.
So take heart if you’re feeling lost or low-on-faith today. Your story is still being written. And in the hands of God, it can become a masterpiece.
In faith,
