The Sinner’s Dividend

An immune system is not built in clean air but in dirt; the child whose parents scrub his world spotless grows up with defenses that have never been tested, so the first real infection, the one a grubbier child would shrug off in a day, is the one that can crash him. The saint's reputation is that overprotected child. It has met no pathogen and made no antibodies, so the scandal a sinner's name would metabolize without a fever can put the saint in the ground. The sinner has been sick before. His reputation has seen the worst the body can do and lived, and that is not weakness recovered from but immunity earned.