All Saints’ Day

One

Universal Call to Holiness

Jesus has given us a very heavy, really overwhelming task. It’s the task of holiness, of being saints, and He assigned us that task when He said, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

And the Church doubles down on that obligation. This is from the Second Vatican Council document on the Church, “All the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called to that perfect holiness whereby the Father Himself is perfect.” (Lumen Gentium 11).

Got that? All the faithful. Everybody. In any condition or state of life. That means you. You are obliged to become perfectly holy. You, as a disciple of Jesus, are obliged to become a saint, one who shares in the life of God, truly living as His sons and daughters, purified from all vice and living in the fullness of virtue and excellence!

Two

The Humility of Striving to Be a Saint

Sometimes there can be a false humility that characterizes the Christian life. People say, “Oh, I could never be a saint. I’m no Mother Teresa or St. Francis. That’s just not me.” But that is not humility, it’s not a virtue, it’s actually two vices. It’s the vice of sloth, of laziness, it’s an unwillingness to work for what matters. And it’s an insult to God’s power. It’s a way of saying, “I don’t believe in your power and your love and your grace. You’re not powerful enough to make me a saint. You don’t have it in you, God!”

Far from being humility, the refusal to strive for holiness is the arrogance of setting limits to what God can do for us. Striving for sainthood isn’t pride. It’s actually the humility of accepting God’s will for you. And nothing helps you grow in humility like pursuing a goal that’s so far away, you know you can’t get there without God’s grace.

Three

Holiness is the Measure of the success of Human Life – and the Measure of the Failure of Human Life

If we were made to be saints, that means only the saints have really reached what it means to be human. The rest of us are living kinds of fake, artificial, less-than-fully human lives. The saints are living normal, healthy, human lives. In fact, they’re the standard for humanity. They’re not extremes, they are supposed to be the norm, the measure of what it means to be a normal, healthy, happy human being.

That’s why reading the lives and writings of the saints gives us the right perspective on what it means to be human. Don’t find out what normal is from Netflix or Hulu or the news, and certainly not from social media. Find out what’s normal from the saints. Because they’re the ones doing it right.

So the saints are the standards of a successful life. But that also means that failing to be a saint is the standard of a life that hasn’t ultimately been successful.

The French writer Leon Bloy put it perfectly, “Life offers only one tragedy: that of not being a saint.” 

There can be lots of painful, sorrowful moments but the only real tragedy, the only thing that devastates the meaning of a person’s life, is that they didn’t attain the goal of life. They didn’t become a saint.

Four

The saints are the ones who make the difference

One way to think about being a saint is to remember that it’s the saints who make a difference in this world. When we learn history or even Church history, we make the mistake of thinking that history is made by Kings or Popes, or by political movements. Those aren’t, ultimately, the major forces of history. God is the major force in history and God works primarily through His saints. It is not dictators or presidents or the ultra-wealthy and not even the majority rule that decide their and our path. 

Cardinal Ratzinger put it beautifully in Called to Communion, “The fortuitous majorities that may form here or there in the Church (and the world) do not decide their and our path: they, the saints, are the true, the normative majority by which we orient ourselves.”

So do you want your life to make a difference? Do you want to set the course of history? Do you want your life to matter? Then be a saint.

Five

You can’t make yourself a saint

We won’t become saints if we don’t want to be. We won’t become saints if we don’t try to be. But we also won’t become saints by our own efforts. Obviously. We’re so far from perfection, it’s going to take a miracle of God to make us saints.

But with God all things are possible. So, pray for that miracle. Say, “Dear God, please give me the grace to grow in holiness, to grow closer to you. Please cleanse me of all sin, of all my twisted urges and impulses. Please fill me completely with your love. Dear God, please make me a saint.”

And He will. Because He’s commanded it, and He doesn’t issue commands He won’t help us fulfill.