Saints or Good People

One

Plenty of people think it doesn’t matter whether we’re holy, whether we’re saintly. It doesn’t matter if we have a prayer life, or go to Church, or follow the Church’s moral teaching. According to these folks, God doesn’t really care about any of that stuff. According to them, all that matters to God is whether you’re a good person.

Pretty much everyone we come across seems to be a good person, so why all the fuss? Why make such a big deal about becoming a saint when it’s so easy to just be a “good person”?

Two

The first response to the people who think “being a good person” is all that matters is to ask, “Have you ever actually tried being a good person?” I mean a really good person? Because if you have, if you’ve really made an effort to be fair and courageous and to think your decisions through carefully, and only to say what should be said, and to not act on cravings or impulses you know are addictive and hurtful, and to really behave as though other people are just as important as you are – if you’ve ever tried to do that then you know it’s incredibly difficult. It’s hard even to know how to be good, let alone actually being good. 

In fact, one of the best preparations for understanding who Jesus is and why we need Him as our Savior is sincerely putting “being a good person” as the number one priority of your life. Because when you make that your main goal, you’ll really see how desperately you need help, how desperately you need Him.

If you put being good as the number one priority of your life and realize that you’re going to need Christ’s continual help and Mercy throughout this process, well, then you’re following the program of the saints.

Three

Here’s another point: good people don’t ignore those who have done the most for them.

Good people are grateful. Good people try to “pay it forward”. They try to be responsible and generous as a way of showing their gratitude.

Imagine a child, who was born to loving parents, with loving siblings, a loving extended family. Then he ignored them all, never showed them any appreciation, and he didn’t even treat strangers nicely. Now imagine that this kid justified his rudeness and selfishness by saying he was too busy “being a good person!”

If you ignore God your Father, Christ your savior, Mary your Mother, and your spiritual family of the saints, the angels, and other Christians, if you are ungenerous to your family, or to other people in your community, or to the poor, do you really think anybody’s going to be fooled by you calling yourself “a good person”?

Good people respond with love to those who have loved them. And they give love to those in need of love. That’s what the saints do. That’s what you have to do.   

Four

One way to see the fallacy of thinking all that matters is being a “good person” instead of actively striving for holiness is to look at the case of children.

Take an average middle-school class. Probably, every kid in that class would qualify as a “good kid.” No monsters or sociopaths. All good kids. But just ask the teacher if it makes any difference whether the kids in the class have a strong relationship with their parents or a dysfunctional relationship with their parents or even no relationship with their parents. The teachers will tell you that it makes all the difference. They’ll tell you that it makes a difference to the way those kids understand themselves, how they relate to their peers, their teachers, and their tasks. They’ll tell you it determines whether they even see themselves as belonging in this world. They’ll tell you it affects everything. 

If your relationship with your parents makes such a difference on the natural level, why would your relationship with your Heavenly Father not make all the difference on the cosmic, supernatural level?

Five

A saint is someone who has a grounded relationship with the Heavenly Father (and, actually, with Mary Our Mother)

Sure, there are a lot of good people out there. But only the saints know why they are here and what they are about. Only the saints understand themselves, relate to others joyfully and generously, and have peace about their place and their work in this life.

We don’t want to go through life alone, trying to hold everything together, figuring it all out by ourselves. We want to be saints. We want to live in the love and confidence of the Father, to be His children, who live this life very well with the strength that only comes from Him.

That’s why it’s not enough to be a good person, because even a good person, if he or she is living like a cosmic orphan, isn’t living as fully as possible. So again, as God to bring you into as deep a relationship with Him as possible. Ask Him to make you a saint.