A Psalm for Sainthood by Jeff Callaway

A Psalm for Sainthood

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

"Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels." — Psalm 50:12

Here I am again, Lord. Dirt under my nails and Texas clay on my boots. Not a cathedral in sight, just a cracked man on a cracked floor in the middle of the night asking You for something nobody in their right mind would have the nerve to ask.

Make me a Saint.

Not because I deserve it. Lord, You know better than anyone what I deserve — the years I wasted, the times I walked away, the broken altars I left behind me before I finally found my way back to Your table. This is not a request from a man who has earned anything. This is a beggar pressing his face to the door of Heaven and knocking like his life depends on it, because it does, because it always did, because I was just too proud to knock before.

Make me a Saint.

I am not asking for comfort. I am not asking for an easy road, a prosperous life, a seat at the table of the comfortable. I am asking You to take this crooked thing You made and bend it back toward Your image until the bending costs something.

Let it cost something, Lord.

I have read what You did to Teresa of Avila. You sent a seraph with a lance of gold and drove it through her heart again and again, and she wrote that she would not have wished the pain away because the pain was only the outside of the love and the love was bigger than the pain. That is the kind of love I am asking for. The kind that burns clean. The kind that does not leave you the same. Pierce something in me, God. Whatever is still closed, whatever is still mine and not Yours, drive the lance through it. I am consenting. I am afraid, and I am consenting.

I have read about the Little Flower, Therese of Lisieux, who did not perform miracles before she died, who was only a girl in a cold convent offering small things to You with two hands the way a child holds out a dandelion, and You received it like it was gold. She called it the little way. Lord, I want the little way too — the surrender of the small things, the breakfast I eat in silence for You, the phone call I don't want to make but make anyway, the humiliation I do not fight back against, the grace I extend when nothing in me wants to. Teach me her patience. Teach me to be small enough for holiness because Lord I know I have been too big, too loud, too sure of my own voice. Make me small. Make me honest. Make me Yours in the small hours of the morning when nobody is watching and it costs everything.

Make me a Saint.

I have read about Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who carried the wounds of Your Son in his hands, his feet, his side for fifty years — not as a performance, not as a spectacle, but as a participation in Your suffering that he would have gladly hidden if You had allowed it. His blood smelled like roses, Lord. His prayer reached through walls and across oceans. He was in two places at once because love does not respect geography. He sat in a confessional and read the sins men had forgotten and brought them back to mercy. He battled the devil in the dark of his cell and rose to celebrate Mass with the wounds still bleeding.

If You see fit, Lord — if it serves Your glory and not my pride, if it saves a soul and not my ego — give me something of that participation. Not the glory of it. The cost of it. The weight of it. The way it hollowed him out until only You could fill the space. I want to be hollowed out like that.

I want what Maximilian Kolbe had. Not the starvation cell. Not the needle of phenol that finally ended his body when the hunger could not. What I want is what he carried into that death block — the unshakeable certainty that love is a creative force and hatred is not, that the man who lays down his life for another has already won the only victory that matters. When the SS called for ten men to die Kolbe stepped forward for a stranger. Lord, he stepped forward. Make me the kind of man who steps forward. Make me willing to trade my comfort for another man's life. Make me that kind of Catholic. Not the kind who goes to Mass and then forgets the poor on the way home. The kind who signs his name to the check when the check is his life.

Make me a Saint.

I am asking You, Father — You who knit me together in the dark before I drew a breath, who counted every hair on this hard head, who has never stopped knowing my name even when I forgot it — I am asking You to complete in me what You began before I was born.

I am asking You, Son — Jesus, my Lord, the only politics worth having, the only justice worth fighting for, the Lamb who was slain and the Lion who will return — I am asking You to let me be what Saint Paul called it: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me." Galatians 2:20. Swallow me, Lord. Not metaphorically. Actually. Let there be less of Jeff Callaway and more of You every single day until the math resolves in Your favor and there is nothing left of me that is not You.

That is what the mystics called the transforming union. The seventh mansion. Teresa wept for joy in it. I am not there yet. I am not even close. But I am asking. I am standing at the outer wall of the castle of the soul with my hat in my hands and I am asking.

I am asking You, Holy Spirit — You who hovered over the waters in the beginning, who fell like fire on the Apostles, who spoke through prophets, who breathed into this dry pen and these dry bones the desire to write truth — light me on fire. Burn away the fear. Burn away the vanity. Burn away the part of me that wants the credit for what You are doing. Set me on fire, Lord, the way the burning bush burned and was not consumed.

Make me a Saint.

And if You ask me to be a martyr — I will not lie to You and tell You I am not afraid. I am afraid. The flesh is afraid. But the spirit that You planted in me when I converted, when I crawled back to You with nothing, when the priest raised the Host and I knew — that spirit says yes. That spirit has been saying yes in a whisper for years. Let the whisper become a shout.

Give me the virtues, Lord. Not the virtues I pick — the ones You know I need. The ones that sand down the jagged edges. Humility first. Then patience. Then charity that doesn't keep score. Then fortitude for the days the sky goes dark and You seem far away and I am standing in the silence wondering if I imagined everything.

I did not imagine everything. The silence is also You.

Give me mystical knowledge if it serves the Gospel. Give me suffering if it conforms me to Your Son. Give me consolation if it keeps me on my knees. Take it away if it makes me comfortable instead of holy. Do whatever You have planned.

But Lord — I am asking You plainly the way a son asks a Father with no performance and no pretense —

finish the work. Complete the plan. Whatever You saw when You formed me, whatever You intended when You called me, whatever saint You have been shaping me toward through every sin and every sorrow and every grace —

let me become it.

Let me become everything You meant when You made me.

And if that means the lance, then drive it in.

And if that means the starvation cell, then I will sing in it.

And if that means the dandelion held in two quiet hands, then teach me to hold it without letting go.

Make me a Saint.

I live, now not I: 

but Christ liveth in me.

Amen.

~Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

© 2026 Texas Outlaw Press

https://texasoutlawpress.org