By Issac Memmer, Special to The Message
Home parish: St. John the Evangelist Parish, Daylight
Education: Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, Missouri; Class of 2031
Saint: King David
Editor’s note: This year, Diocesan seminarians focused their annual seminarian profiles on a saint or someone on the road to sainthood who gives them hope in honor of the Jubilee Year of Hope.
For the Jubilee Year of Hope, the seminarians were asked to talk about a saint who gives us hope. King David is not a canonized saint in the Roman Church but is revered as a saint in the Eastern Church. He was called by God to be the King of Israel and is still called “great” well over 2,000 years later. He slayed the giant, spared King Saul when he could have justly killed him in self-defense, and brought the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. Despite these moral and personal successes, he was a flawed man. He impregnated the wife of a friend and then had him sent to the front lines to be sure he died in order to cover up the affair. After the prophet, Nathan, addressed these sins to him, David repented. Because of his sin, God did not allow David to build the temple.
Sometimes, we get disheartened after realizing our sin. We look at ourselves and ask, “How can God still use me?” God promises that, like a good clay worker, if a bowl falls apart while the potter is making it, he will reform that clay into something new. That is exactly what God did with King David. He remained king and succeeded in living a good life. He did not build the temple, but he wrote psalms which are a major part of the Hebrew and Christian scripture. The temple was built by his son and the temple is no longer standing but the psalms are still prayed by literally billions of people to this day. King David is a message of hope to me and can be a message of hope for all of us by seeing God’s justice and mercy to anyone who asks.