The meaning of sainthood: To be fully alive in Jesus
Christ
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Some years ago a friend told me that
she secretly thought of the saints as boring. They smile at us sweetly from
holy cards. Their lives can seem implausible compared to people more famous for
their vices. And who would really want to be a saint, anyway? As
Billy Joel once said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the
saints. The sinners are much more fun.”
But when we come to understand holiness rightly, we see that
it’s anything but boring. Sanctity isn’t a matter of sentimental posturing or
being nice. Sanctity is about being passionately in love with Jesus Christ.
The saints are men and women who glowed white-hot with the
Holy Spirit. They lived fully what Father Richard John Neuhaus once called “the
high adventure of Christian discipleship.” And that’s truly what the heart of
sainthood is: not a life of legalistic drudgery, but a high adventure.
Think about the women and men we venerate as saintly: Mother
Teresa, Francis Xavier, King Louis IX of France, Gianna Beretta Molla, Pier
Giorgio Frassati, Catherine of Siena. They lived some of the most compelling
lives in history. Their roads were hard. They endured great sacrifices and
self-denial. But those sacrifices led to greater love and joy than many in the
world have ever known.
If we think about sainthood like that, it
can seem like the saints are a special class of people. Sainthood is for people
like them, we think, not everyday people like us. And how do you live like a
saint if you’re just an ordinary worker, a father or a mother? The good news is
that the saints were ordinary people like us. Their “secret” was not something
they possessed, but Someone who possessed them....
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