For example, one parishioner who has a 7 month old picked a paper for herself and for her son. When she looked at the paper for her son, she found that he had received St. Peter the Apostle. For you and me, we might have just said “O how nice, that’s great that the first Pope wants to pray for him.” However for this parent, it had a deeper meaning. You see just a day or two before picking this piece of paper for her son, she had received a bib for him with St. Peter’s Basilica on it. So for this parent, St. Peter seemingly was choosing her son multiple times in just a few days. For her, it was as if St. Peter really was sent to her son, on a mission!
There was another person who could not make it to the Mission at all that night for various reasons. One of those reasons being due to a handicap. However a friend picked a Saint name on his behalf, and when that friend picked out St. Jude, the patron saint of helpless causes, there seemed to be an instant connection.
Then finally there is none other than myself, whom when I drew a Saint, all my paper said was “St. Thomas – Martyred in India. I had no idea who that was so, and thought to myself “Who is this Thomas guy?” So I went home and told my wife about this Saint and asked if she knew who it was. She promptly replied “Yes, that is St. Thomas the Apostle, aka doubting Thomas.” So of course my Saint is appropriate in an ironic way, but also in another way too. See I easily tend to doubt things myself. Not to a fault, but there are times where if I am given the choice between having faith in something, or doubting its success, I will many times go to what I call hopeful doubt. In short, I hope for the best but expect the worse.