You won’t forget this down-home wisdom on God’s presence, from the Cowboy Priest

God is probably not too accustomed to being compared to this!

After a beatification process which lasted about half a century, José Brochero, “the gaucho priest” (let’s define “gaucho” as “Argentinian cowboy”), was proclaimed a saint in 2016 by an Argentinian pope who is likely one of this cowboy’s greatest fans.

Brochero lived his whole life in his native Córdoba, where he died blind and leprous, on January 26, 1914. Thus, the so-called “gaucho priest” holds the title of the first “real” Argentinian saint.

Here are four of his reflections about discovering the presence of God in our lives.

The grace of God is like the rain. It gets everyone wet.

God is like lice. He’s everywhere, but he prefers the poor.

The change of seasons, the richness of the plant and animal world, and all of the great and sublime things that we witness in the universe — all of it preaches that God loved man from all eternity, and that he turned upon us his gaze of love and predilection.

To cry as a man, the way I can cry.
To suffer persecutions like a man, as any of us can suffer them.
To experience hunger, thirst, sadness.
To experience the disdain of vanity, the indifference of pride, the mockery of the impious …
To drink the bile of calumny.
To drink the cup of gossip to the dregs.
To suffer personally …
Everything that man had to suffer, so that man might experience the richness of his mercy and the sweetness of his love.
He came, finally, to be with us, the Son of God made man, to perfectly assimilate man, so that man could be made God and could participate in his infinite love.