Dare to be a saint.<\/em><\/p>\nSome of us may hear that and laugh. Sainthood is a noble ambition, an ideal, but is this something we can realistically expect to attain?<\/p>\n
The short answer is: yes.<\/p>\n
Because the great truth about saints, something we so easily forget, is that they were just like us.<\/p>\n
Flesh and blood, strength and weakness.\u00a0 They were people of appetites and longings, ambitions and disappointments, vanities and eccentricities. They were simple sinners just like the rest of us.<\/p>\n
That was how they began.\u00a0 But that wasn\u2019t the whole story.<\/p>\n
The simple but reassuring fact is that nobody is born a saint. It\u2019s something you have to become.<\/p>\n
Consider St. Margaret of Cortona. As a teenager, she was the mistress of a young nobleman. She lived with him for nine years, even had a son with him, hoping at some point her lover would marry her. He never did. When he was finally murdered, the shock caused Margaret to re-evaluate her life. She went on to take vows a Franciscan. Her son also joined the order.\u00a0 She was canonized in 1728.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Nobody is born a saint.\u00a0 It\u2019s something you have to become.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nSometimes those who become saints aren\u2019t the ones we expect. They may be the filthy, the rejected, the outcast, the homeless. People like Benedict Joseph Labre.<\/p>\n
He grew up the son of a prosperous shopkeeper, but felt called to give up everything and follow Christ. He spent his life wandering from church to church in Rome. He rarely bathed, never washed his clothes. Some people were repelled by him. But the purity of his devotion and his love of God moved and inspired those who saw him day after day. When he died at the young age of 35, priests of Rome preserved his filthy clothes as relics and they buried him in one of the churches he loved. \u00a0Today, he is the patron saint of the homeless.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 Nobody is born a saint. It\u2019s something you have to become. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIn the 1920s, if you had to pick a woman who was the least likely candidate for sainthood, it would probably have been an anarchist and communist from Brooklyn named Dorothy Day. She worked as a journalist and spent many nights drinking with famous writers like Hart Crane and Eugene O\u2019Neill. She had an abortion, and a brief marriage, before finally being drawn to Christ, and the gospel, and converting to Catholicism. Her conversion led her to embark on a radical ministry to the poor, one that is still changing the world. She\u2019s now a candidate for sainthood.\u00a0 Late in her life, people called her a living saint.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t call me a saint,\u201d she once said.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want to be dismissed that easily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t dismiss any of the saints. They are closer to us than we may realize. They have struggled with sin and temptation, they\u2019ve walked the journey toward holiness, sometimes stumbling, sometimes falling, but always getting back up and moving on, resolving to do better, to be better, to aim higher.<\/p>\n
They worked to be what this gospel is calling us to be.\u00a0 To be poor in spirit.\u00a0 To be meek.\u00a0 To be merciful.\u00a0 To make peace.\u00a0 This is how we begin to become what Jesus called \u201cblessed,\u201d and what the Church calls saints.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tall order. And it is nothing less than a call to greatness.\u00a0 But this feast day reminds us, whether we realize it or not: it can be ours. This kind of greatness is within our grasp.<\/p>\n
All Saints Day beckons us to something beautiful.<\/strong>\u00a0 It reminds us of our great potential\u2014the promise that lies within each of us. The promise of holiness.<\/p>\nIt is the promise that was fulfilled in the countless people we venerate this day\u2014our models, our companions, our inspirations, our guides. All the saints. They give us blessed hope.<\/p>\n
Because they assure us again and again: no one is born a saint.<\/p>\n
But every one of us, by the grace of God, can become one.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This gospel, the Beatitudes, may be one of the most familiar in all of scripture. Its litany of what it means to be \u201cblessed\u201d can be seen as the ultimate blueprint for living the Christian life. In the context of today\u2019s feast, it tells us: this is how you become a saint. But do we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hanging-with-the-saints","category-homilies"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n