The Meaning of Your "Skolop": Fulton Sheen on Life's Handicaps

In this deeply personal and insightful talk, Bishop Fulton Sheen introduces the Greek word "skolop," which he defines as a handicap, frustration, pain, or disappointment—a "stake" or "thorn in the flesh" that every person carries. Drawing from the example of St. Paul, Sheen explains that God allows these skolops in our lives not to crush us, but to teach us a profound spiritual lesson. The central theme of his address is that it is not what happens to us in life that defines us, but rather how we react to it. He argues that God speaks to us not primarily through words, but through events, and our personal "skolops" are often the very language He uses to reveal His will and guide our path.To illustrate this point, Sheen shares a series of powerful and moving stories. He recounts his own experience as a young altar boy who, after breaking a cruet in the presence of his bishop, received a startling prophecy about his future that came true decades later. He then tells the remarkable story of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, who found his life's direction in a fragment of the Ten Commandments salvaged from his burned synagogue. These stories of acceptance and obedience are contrasted with the tragic tale of Tito, the future communist dictator of Yugoslavia, whose life was set on a path of rebellion after being harshly dismissed by a priest for a similar mistake in his youth.Bishop Sheen concludes with a powerful call to embrace our personal trials as a means of sanctification. He critiques the modern ethos of "doing your own thing," explaining that true freedom and happiness are found not in self-affirmation but in conforming our will to God's. He reassures his listeners that if they were to see all the crosses of the world piled together, they would invariably choose to pick up their own familiar one. The key, he teaches, is to accept our unique "skolop" with love and to see it not as a meaningless burden, but as our personal share in the Cross of Christ, through which we find our ultimate purpose and redemption.