Do You Have Trouble Sleeping?

Then today's saint is an intercessor for you. St. Peter of Alcantara got my attention last year on 
this date when I read about him in Butler's Lives of the Saints. He took mortification seriously and spent many hours awake during the night. Those of us with sleep issues would do well to seek his help in our own "night watchings" although I can't say I'm ready to practice his mortifications:

He had no other bed than a skin laid on the floor, on which he knelt a part of the night and slept sitting, leaning his head against a wall. His [night] watchings were the most difficult and remarkable of all the austerities which he practiced, and in consequence of them he has been regarded in after-ages as the patron saint of night-watchmen.

Once when a friend of St. Peter lamented over the wickedness of the world, something we can all certainly relate to these days, he replied:

The remedy is simple. You and I must first be what we ought to be: then we shall have cured what concerns ourselves. Let each one do the same, and all will be well. The trouble is that we all talk of reforming others without ever reforming ourselves. 

This reminded me of G.K. Chesterton's response to the question, "What's Wrong with the World," which he answered with an entire book. "What's wrong with the world? I am!"

Yes, indeed, each of us is what's wrong with the world which is why we so desperately need the sacrament of Confession. If I work on my own sins, faults, and failures, the world (at least my own little corner of it) can't help but improve. 

St. Peter was a contemporary of St. Teresa of Avila and helped her with the reform of the Carmelites. "Her success," according to Butler, "was in good measure due to his encouragement and advice, and to the use which he made of his influence with the bishop of Avila and others. St. Teresa credited him with doing more for her reform than anyone else.

Need a friend in the middle of the night when you can't sleep? Call on St. Peter of Alcantra. There's room against the wall to share with him. And St. Teresa testifies what powerful help he gave her after his death:

Since his departure our Lord has been pleased to let me enjoy more of him than I did when he was alive; he has given me advice and counsel in many things, and I have frequently seen him in great glory....Our Lord told me once that men should ask nothing in the name of St. Peter of Alcantara wherein He would not hear them. I have recommended many things to him that he might beg them of our Lord, and I have always found them granted.

St. Peter of Alcantara, pray for us.