Holiness is For Everyone

Catholic Liturgy for the Solemnity of All Saints, Nov. 1, 2019. Gospel of St. Matthew 5:1—12. Theme: Holiness is For Everyone

Today’s gospel of the Beatitudes is one of the most familiar passages in all of the Bible. Its description of what it means to be “blessed” or “happy” in God’s sight has often been called the “blueprint for Christian living”. In other words, it’s describing for us how to become a saint, which means, how to become more and more, day-by-day, like Jesus in our attitudes and behavior.

But I often wonder if we truly have an accurate grasp of who the saints were as people? Is our understanding of saints and sainthood realistic and reachable? We have such a tendency as Catholics to put saints on a pedestal to be admired from a safe distance.  We surround ourselves with saints memorialized in stained glass windows and set reminders of them up as wooden statues decked with flowers and candles to honor them.  And in our private devotions we often collect them illustrated on holy cards to be tucked away in our prayer-books and Bibles.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stained glass windows, statues and holy cards. But to limit our interaction and devotion to the saints to those ways alone turns them into something safe and comfortable, conveniently excusing us from having to become like them!  And if you know anything at all about the authentic lives of the saints, they were the farthest thing from safe and comfortable that you can get!

Like Jesus when he lived on earth, the saints challenged the complacent and comfortable lives of those who thought of themselves as devout religious people. When you read the testimonies of those who lived with the saints, you discover that life with them was not all sunshine and roses as you might imagine it to be. This is because their burning love for God and neighbor, the seriousness with which they took the teachings of Scripture and the Church, and their dedication to justice for the poor and needy consumed them. And they expected these things to consume everyone who called themselves Christian as well!

The Church has made All Saints Day a holy day of obligation because we need this yearly reminder. We need to open our ears and our hearts to truly hear what this solemnity says to us. It’s a reminder that each and every one of us, by virtue of our baptism, are called to become saints.  Now we might hear this and laugh or shake our heads and dismiss this call to holiness as an unrealistic though noble ambition. We may even be tempted to dismiss it all together as an ideal that cannot be reached. But if we do so, we would be wrong. Very wrong. 

Because the great truth about saints, something we so easily forget, is that they were just like us in every way. The saints were not both divine and human like Jesus.  The saints were not immaculate conceptions free from sin like Our Lady.  They were flesh and blood human beings like you and me.  They had their strengths and oh yes, they also had their weaknesses.

Among them we will easily find people of selfish desires and passionate longings. Men and women who had worldly ambitions, personal vanities and even some pretty bizarre eccentricities. They were sinners and strugglers just like the rest of us.  At least that was how they began, but that wasn’t their whole story. It wasn’t how they ended up.

They wrestled with sin and temptation. They struggled toward holiness, sometimes stumbling, sometimes falling, but always getting back up and moving on, resolving to do better, to aim higher, to never give up.  They kept their focus on Christ and realized that he asks of us only what we can give but to do so with sincere hearts.  The bottom line is that the saints strove to just do they best they could to love God and neighbor with what they had and in the reality of who they were.

So, don’t dismiss any of the saints or the call to holiness as being beyond our experiences of life, beyond our reach. They are closer to us than we may think. They assure us again and again that no one is born a saint, but that every single one of us, by the grace of God, can indeed become one.