While on a casual ride, Emperor Constantine came to a small village. Ever since his baptism he had attended daily mass, so he requested that the local priest perform his duties. During the service, the Emperor noticed that the priest was small and had a rather unpleasant expression. He wondered why God selected such unappealing people to his service.
At exactly the same moment, the priest recited the verse, “Be ye sure that the Lord He is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves” . From this the Emperor believed that as the result of a divine impulse the priest had guessed and then answered his thoughts. Following the mass, the Emperor sought out the priest and introduced himself. But he found that the priest didn’t have a divine gift, and that his answer to Constantine’s thoughts was just a coincidence.
Though the priest therefore was not exceptional, the Emperor nonetheless elevated the priest to the office of bishop. Sometime later, the same bishop called out a man unfaithful to his wife to appear on the day of St. John the Baptist’s before the pope’s seat of judgment, but the man refused to heed the bishop’s warning. Soon thereafter the bishop died and the sinful man rejoiced, believing that the condemnation was arrogant. But when St. John’s Day arrived, the man suddenly fell to the floor, dead.