“Be Saints!”

This chapter analyzes the relationships FOCUS missionaries develop with Catholic saints. These missionaries’ intimate relationships with saints root their Catholic identity in Catholic history while also reworking Catholic identity for the twenty-first century. Their devotional practices range from reading saints’ diaries to getting tattoos of quotes from saints to imitating a saint’s specific prayer style. Missionaries are introduced to particular saints by FOCUS and their co-missionaries. These young adults try to live their lives alongside the saints and reinterpret saints’ lives as instructions for living in the twenty-first century. Millennials communicate with saints and follow saints’ examples for how to be Catholic. Missionaries also work to inhabit a theology of sainthood that expects millennials to “be saints!” Devotionalism shapes the texture of missionaries’ Catholic identity.