Luceat!

Jesus Christ is alive and well! He still lives among us today and still works in lives of His creation. “From age to age you gather a people to yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.” We hear these words during the Eucharist Prayer at Mass, revealing to us the Father’s heart and his deep desire for souls to give their lives totally to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, His son and our Savior.

That is right, God is calling us to be saints. But this idea of sainthood has become obscure in our minds and we are not sure what it means or even what it looks like to be a saint.

We must first state that what is perceived about the Catholic Church’s view of saints is greatly misunderstood by our modern world. Catholics do not worship saints, they worship Christ. Saints are simply men and women who have handed their lives over to His Lordship and followed Him. Another misconception about saints is that they are not sinners or do not have struggles. The truth is, some saints have committed adultery, murdered, lied, cheated, and even stole. Most likely between all the saints canonized we can find among them almost every sin that could be committed. This misconception comes from us concentrating too much on sin and not enough on how people respond after sinning. A saint can be simply stated as a sinner who keeps on trying.

The truth is that we are all called to be saints. What is a saint? We have already spent some time on the misconceptions of saints, so lets start to define what a saint is or more properly who a saint is. The word saint is describing not so much what one does but who one is. What a saint does is only a response to the look of love he or she has received from Jesus. This helps us see that a saint is one that has an encounter with Jesus Christ! Then from this encounter there begins a relationship, a hopeful heart that is able to stand up in a world that he or she use to find no peace in before. This relationship fosters into the Relationship of relationships. And from here all other things flow. Why have the saints walked on water, healed people, levitated, built hospitals, evangelized foreign countries, been great parents, preach great homilies, spent all night in prayer, etc…There is nothing but the constant love of Jesus Christ that compels them to do such things and without that love their would be little to no encouragement for anyway to live as the saints have lived.

The fact is that the saints have shaped the culture we live in today and sadly we are starting to forget that. We have forgotten the stories of the greatest men and women who have ever lived and forgotten who they lived for. These stories we must rediscover and tell again in an age that is desperately searching for heroes. And more importantly we must become these men and women in our own age. Matthew Kelly, a Catholic author and speaker, puts it this way, “It seems that in every place and in every time the shortage is always of men and women willing to lead humanity along the right path with the example of their own lives. In each moment of history, authentic lives are so rare.”

Let us say with Saint Paul, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all..” (NIV 2 Cor 5:14) May these words be engraved upon our hearts. In the weeks to come, I hope to take us through a tour of the saints. We will talk about those who have walked with Jesus from our own age to the age when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. We will discover that saints come in all shapes and sizes and that the formula to be a saint is not some obscure method but a relationship with Jesus Christ. We live in an age that desperately needs people to come and know the Messiah!

Now in closing, John Paul the Great ties this all together in a message he gave to young people on August 6, 2004. “Dear young people, the Church needs genuine witnesses for the new evangelization: men and women whose lives have been transformed by meeting Jesus (and can) communicate this experience to others. The Church needs saints. All are called to holiness, and holy people alone can renew humanity. Many have gone before us along this path of Gospel heroism, and I urge you to turn often to them to pray for their intercession.”