Sometime ago I was straddling an uphill road to San Gwann when an English gentleman, owner of a green grocer shop, came out, ran up to me and told me: “I have received this gift and I would like to give it to you”. This gift was a book by Woodeene Koenig – Bricker, entitled 365 Saints: Your Daily Guide to the Wisdom and Wonder of their Lives.
In their captivating introduction for the book the authors present their views on what saints must be like. “All too often, we think of them as heavenly Goody Two-shoes who did nothing except pray, perform good deeds, and make everyone feel guilty for not living up to their example. While some of the saints did spend all (or most) of their time praying and doing good deeds (and probably making others feel guilty), the majority were real people – with all the foibles, eccentricities, and charm of real people. That’s what makes the saints so appealing – they’re ordinary people with one extraordinary difference; they’ve been so inflamed with the love of God that their entire lives are a celebration of God’s love and goodness. They were so passionately in love with God while they were living, they’re now believed to permanently with God for all eternity in heaven”. Being holy means being receptive to God’s personal unconditional love that he cherishes for each and every one us, his beloved children. Humanity has been created on God’s image to actively engage in His holy existence. The Christian faith explicitly champions human dignity’s inherent inclination to partake intensely in divine life. The Vatican II conciliar document on the Church, Lumen Gentium, underscores the universal call to holiness, when it asserts: “The followers of Christ are called by God, not because of their works, but according to His own purpose and grace. They are justified in the Lord Jesus, because in the baptism of faith they truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature. (§ 40).
Having said that, actions speak louder than words. Fully conscious of the immense potential of human action, we Christians are specifically exhorted to let Christ reveal himself through our conduct. Our behaviour needs to be Christophanic. As the letter to the Colossians rightly asserts: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3, 17). In her longstanding wit, the Church empowers and guides Christ’s believers, together with people of good will, to fold their sleeves and make God’s loving care present in the most concrete life situations. The post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, “On the vocation and mission of the lay faithful in the Church and in the World”, Christifideles laici, stresses the urgency for such a solid witness. “The vocation of the lay faithful to holiness implies that life according to the Spirit expresses itself in a particular way in their involvement in temporal affairs and in their participation in earthly activities… The unity of life of the lay faithful is of the greatest importance: indeed they must be sanctified in everyday professional and social life. Therefore, to respond to their vocation, the lay faithful must see their daily activities as an occasion to join themselves to God, fulfil his will, serve other people and lead them to communion with God in Christ” (§ 17).
Was this not also the magnanimous contribution which Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the Founder of Opus Dei, made for the strengthening up of Christ’s body, the Church, when he introduced the idea of “plac(ing) Christ at the heart of all human activities by means of work that is sanctified, and sanctifies both the doer and those for whom it is done?” For Escrivà holiness is not a feeling but fidelity to one’s call. As he correctly put it: “Put your heart aside. Duty comes first. But when fulfilling your duty, put your heart into it. It helps”.
For those of us who want to be led by God’s love but feel somehow distraught or discouraged by life’s challenges, I invite them to take to heart the wise and consoling counsel of the notorious hieromonk, Father Seraphim Rose: “Don’t worry too much about how spiritually poor you are. God sees that, but for you it is expected to trust in God and pray to Him as best you can, never to fall into despair and to struggle according to your strength. If you ever begin to think you are spiritually ‘well off’ then you can know for sure that you aren’t! True spiritual life, even on the most elementary level, is always accompanied by suffering and difficulties. Therefore you should rejoice in all your difficulties and sorrows.”
Thumbs up then for letting God make us holy amid our weaknesses. Thumbs up for encouraging one another to keep following Christ no matter what, as the lives of the saints powerfully attest. As our life experience will certainly keep showing us, holiness is wholeness!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Gwann