Paschal Baylon lived in Spain during the last half of the 16th century. He was born to parents who were both day laborers (families with two working parents were NOT an invention of the 20th century). His work was to tend sheep (which went well), then goats (not so well), then cattle (complete failure).

Paschal’s family was illiterate, but even as a young child, he wanted to learn to read. He got hold of a book (Butler assures us it was a thoroughly edifying publication), and he would carry it with him to the fields while watching sheep. Paschal would stare at the letters in the book with great attention, and whenever anyone crossed his field, he would run to them and ask if they could help him to make sense of what the letters in the book represented. So in the spirit of “it takes a village to raise a child,” it took a host of strangers of good will to help young Paschal to learn how to read–and it worked! He become a voracious reader (again, Butler assures us, Paschal only read such books as would be good for his soul).

Yet Paschal did not merely find meaning in the written word. Paschal was just as avid in studying what he saw in nature–trees, clouds, grasses, sheep, bugs, dirt. One gets the sense that his eyes ran over the shapes and figures of the world around him as eagerly as he did the letters inside of books. Everything Paschal could perceive he eagerly took in as gifts. He felt so strongly blessed by the utter abundance of giftedness thanks to books and nature that he even (ever-so-politely) passed on the offer of one wealthy landowner (whose sheep he was watching at the time) who wanted to adopt him as a son and heir. Paschal simply felt that such an adoption would not help him to live his best life.

Although there is more to his life (all that stuff that gets recognized as canonical fodder), it is Paschal’s approach of appreciating whatever life placed literally right before his very eyes, of living in the moment and taking it all in as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to love, to discover–this is the stuff that his life has most to offer us here and now in the 21st century.