All Saints

Today I had the opportunity to listen to a very beautiful homily at St. Louis Bertrand on the focus of today's holy day of obligation:  All Saint's Day.  You can, and should, take some time to look into the history of this day in the Catholic calendar.  My point, for the moment, is simply to relate to you some thoughts about the significance of the saints for our own struggles in realistically living out the Christian ideal.

Saints are often viewed as distant and intimidating by Catholic laypeople (and, sadly, also to some religious and priests).  The origin of this attitude is fairly easy to pinpoint:  we all feel intimidated by the prospect of living up to high expectations.  Because we have shortcomings, the saints can seem like almost a different species from ourselves by virtue of the Church's judgment that they have achieved a level of perfection in this otherwise imperfect world.  A solution to this emotional distance is often attempted by pointing out all the saints who have been great sinners in their earlier lives, but it is a bit odd to try to appreciate a good person on the basis of identification with his or her shortcomings.

This solution is acceptable so far as it goes, but strikes me as woefully incomplete.  If the example of the saints is to be helpful in a practical sense, we have to widen our vision.  The basic point of the homily I mentioned above was that the celebration of All Saints is not just about enjoying the saints themselves.  The celebration of the saints is about what God has done for them and for us through them. 

Sainthood is not some genetic advantage, but the consequence of a choice.  In fact, it is the consequence of a series of choices.  God is always present and offering Himself to us.  It is up to us to choose to receive God.  This is what the Church means when she defends the concept of faith and works.  It is not that God's grace is earned by by our works on earth in the sense that we become deserving of them.  It is that we must be active participants in our own holiness.  I have often been guilty of the flaw of desiring God to wave His hand and make me holy against my own will, but this would really be impossible.  Holiness without active choice is not possible for human beings.  A church can be a holy place by something else acting upon it--the blessing of a bishop or the fact that the Eucharist is kept there--but human beings are nothing without the capacity for self-determination. Thus, the saints show us that we may have imperfections, but we must make a choice of where our lives must go once we recognize them.

Sainthood is what we are all called to live out for ourselves, and it is not the unattainable extreme that many assume.  The Saints we celebrate today simply prove that when we strive to live lives open to God, He will be there to fill us with holiness as He promises.