Saints alive! It seems that our notions of sanctity or holiness are often distortions. We form images of other-worldly beings who have little or nothing to do with everyone we know – even very good people! Whatever saints are, it isn’t like me – their lives are not like my life. I mess-up all the time. Why do we put them so far out of reach? Maybe because we believe that we can’t possibly do what we imagine they did to achieve the rarified air of almost godliness.
Yet St. Paul in his letters regularly addresses the members of the communities he is writing to as saints or as God’s holy ones – sometimes just before he calls them out or corrects them for their obvious shortcomings and failures to live as God would prefer. Being a saint is not being perfect. Saints are human beings and we human beings are not capable of perfection. We can try to do good, to do better next time.
In Scripture, holiness is linked to being a member of God’s people, chosen by God, called by God to live good, loving lives. Sounds like all of us! God looks at all of humanity and sees that we are very good. This despite the forces and movements within and around us that seduce us to selfishness. Even saints make mistakes.
Sanctity is not passive. It invites our response. We need to cooperate somehow, trying to live, as best we can, as God desires us to live. Our cooperation cannot be perfect, because we aren’t. We are limited to what we have come to understand is, in our time, with our formative experiences, living as God wants. We can’t do more than this.
Think of people in history (even in our lifetime) who have been designated as saints: Paul of Tarsus, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa of Calcutta… Picture the apostles before and after Jesus’ resurrection. At some point they all came to passionately dedicate their life energy to God. They were not saintly in every moment of their lives, but they wholeheartedly embraced and followed the Spirit’s lead. Over time, God became the primary focus for their lives. Responding to God’s grace made them who they were. Being a saint is not our achievement.
Léon Bloy, a nineteenth century French writer, wrote: “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” Being a saint is God’s work. What fear so infiltrates our heart that we choose to settle for mediocrity, compromise, socially acceptable niceness, instead of letting God transform us into powerful, yet flawed, instruments of the Good: saints!