I have little doubt that the Church’s hierarchy made Asterius a saint because, when he became important enough as a clergy that people listened to him, he told them all the right things–things like how Peter was ordained by Jesus Christ to be in charge of the entirety of Christendom (East and West), that all Christians should obey the Church in Rome, that Church-identified saints and their relics should be honored, and that virtue is good and sin is bad. Asterius was, in every respect, mainstream and orthodox.

But what is much more remarkable and, really, quite lovely is how Butler describes Asterius’s initial decision to leave off being a lawyer and become, instead, a much poorer and more circumscribed member of the clergy:

[T]he love of God ceased not to raise an interior voice in his soul, which seemed continually to exhort him to devote himself wholly to the spiritual service of his neighbour.

And so, Asterius at length found himself saying Yes to the love of God.

It was that simple and that basic: the “call” is a call within, a call of love, a call to love one’s neighbor.

Oh, it scarcely matters if one serves one’s fellow human as a priest or as a janitor or as a fry cook or, even, as a lawyer. The question really is whether one’s “job” either assists the flow of that love or dams it, and the challenge…the Call…is ever to say No to Love’s obstacles while saying Yes to Love.