Saint Hogarth is not catalogued in the Acta Sanctorum. He is an apocryphal holy man. Records of him are scarce, most confabulated with local magicmen by the townships he passed through. The mythological mutterings that underlie every old village he sojourned in do also paint him in their high fabled style. But he was a man, of small stature with a dirty beard and a horsehair shirt, that preached the apostles’ lessons, most of which today are considered apocryphal as well. Some memory of the man lingers in the land, certain windings in the desert where the Silk Road once lived.

He is the saint of sinless whispers. There isn’t much to it. Sin finds whispers by and by, both the venal and the damning. But where souls cry out, and broken mouths crumble, he is there to pass the voices to and fro.

Prayers always find God. That is His dominion. But some breaths are spent searching for tenderness not beholden to the divine ear. It is a complicated secret that is baffled from heaven to better linger on the Earth. Hogarth’s bones lie in it. Yet his soul is not bound to pages that preserve his words. He is a secret himself, carrying on his duties, to carry your truths where they cannot be mutated or turned against you. The saint is merely the mechanism of the miracle.