The farm home of my paternal grandparents just half an hour from both our Oamaru then later our Timaru home was a great place to stay for a night or two at a weekend or a week or two in the school holidays. There are many moments from those days that provided food for my nascent faith, examples for another time, but today I’ll share one.
On the bookshelf in my room at Grandma and Grandad’s were some great children’s books and as I reflect today I remember a couple of collections of Lives of the Saints written especially for children. Some FFF readers will recall the Six O’Clock Saints series.
I loved reading these stories, full of adventures with God in remote parts of the world. I’m sure I was encouraged by their outrageous piety. Clearly they were God’s chosen ones. The stories told of how God chatted with them often sometimes from a distant cloud or echo of thunder, more intimately in their daily routines, and even in their night-time dreams.
These saints were simply too good to be true.
Then came the time when the simply childish goodness and purity of these plaster saints no longer matched the complexities and confusions of my own life.
It helped to learn that some of these saints had probably never existed anyway. I think I was happy to hear that since I could never be expected to live like someone who had never lived..
About that time I began to read more recent, well-researched, honest and open biographies of these holy people and learnt that many were rather dysfunctional, disordered and sometimes simply bad-tempered characters with many of the same flaws and foibles that are mine.
So I began to question: what is it to be a saint?
While the word saint refers to those who are fully in relationship with God, those named as saints by the church are those who are in heaven AND whose earthly lives revealed an inner life of intimacy with Jesus Christ.
Many people do great things for God. The world has many good people who keep the precepts of religion and are kind. But to be a saint on earth is to follow Jesus, even to and through the cross.
A saint understands that our ultimate desire is not to be magically relieved of every difficult situation and problematic person but to live every moment and every encounter in relationship with Jesus Christ.
This is the life of a saint, knowing our sinfulness, eating and drinking with sinners who are oriented in the depth of their hearts towards Jesus, knowing that while we stumble and fall on our journey towards him, He is running towards us reaching down to us, lifting us up, and holding us in embrace.
It’s a great life.
“The only real sadness,
the only real failure,
the only great tragedy in life,
is not to become a saint.”
Léon Bloy
Image above:
Communion of Saints Tapestries
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
Los Angeles
I like the comfort of the sentence He is running towards us etc Gives me great hope
I’m rather skeptical, maybe heretical re ‘saints’ Who on earth could ever know who deserved the canniozation label??
I do remember the books especially Levi hanging out of the tree, a great myth,story.
Blessings
We are all saints in training because if we are not what will our destiny be. One friend I took Holy Communion to through her cancer often said I’m not good enough and we talked about not being good enough now. But we will be because we are going to heaven. Well I’m doing my best not to go to hell. So yes I’m training to be a saint in heaven.
Like Anne I too live with a focus of earning my place in Heaven. To do this I do my best every day to remain focused on Jesus and journeying with Him to fulfil this goal with his loving and constant assistance. He strengthens me to pick up the crosses I encounter and to carry these to the best of my ability, especially on those many occasions when I stumble and fall under their weight. I am comforted by Jesus’s constancy in the loving support he always provides. I enjoy sharing the joys and sorrows , even when I do not recognize the blessings inherent at the time of suffering but which become apparent on occasion with hindsight. I love to recite the Unity prayer which allows me to remain focused on and connected to Jesus each day on my call to live a Holy Life. What a gift it is to journey with Him.
Isn’t it part of the Christian mystery that we can’t earn our way to heaven or if we miss we get some consolation with 2nd prize Purgatory?
If we can earn our way then what was the point of the death and resurrection of Jesus?
Through our baptism we are part of the body and life of Christ our earthly journey is to be with Him and in Him in unity with the Father and Holy Spirit – we can’t cope with the immeasurable unearthly generosity of God – that is my failing I pray to be delivered into greater awareness and faith. Creators of stainglass art would say the a saint is someone who the light shines through
‘Outrageous piety’ is a very heartening term for would-be saints!
I thought it would become easier to “grow closer to God” or have a noticeable increase in
faith as I become older! However, I am finding challenges each day that stretch me to the limit! I probably expect too much! Encouragement received in these Reflections gives me Hope! Ann