In the end, when it is all said and done, when Christ returns and judges the living and dead, the Church will only consist of saints. “There is only one sadness,” it has been noted, “that is for us not to be saints.”1 To disbelieve this is to place yourself in in danger of not being included in the white-robed multitude we heard about in our first reading.
How you live today and tomorrow matters. As for the past? Repentance is available. Your priorities are revealed by how you spend your time, not by giving the correct answer in Church by saying what you’re expected to say: “I put God first.” Is this really true? Something to ponder.
How often do you pray? By this I mean, how often do you dedicate time to prayer, to cultivating your relationship with God, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit? A lie from the bowels of hell, one I sometimes even hear repeated by people who profess to be Christians, is that you cannot have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Having an ever-deepening personal relationship with Christ is the entire point of the Christian life. Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, which is the bestselling book of all-time after the Bible, start-to-finish, it is a dialogue with our Risen Lord. Taking a cue from our Responsorial, do you long to see the Lord’s face, to hear His voice, to be in His presence?
As G.K. Chesterton urged, “Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” Love, specifically agape, or self-sacrificing love, is the essence of holiness, of sanctity. It is the beating heart of the life of the Blessed Trinity. How this looks in reality is set forth beautifully in the Beatitudes from our Gospel tonight.
This amounts to being humble, empathetic/sympathetic, meek, merciful, desiring righteousness, committed to seeking peace. Teaching children the Golden Rule (i.e., “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you”2), they typically respond with something like, “If you’re nice to others, they will be nice to you.” But it doesn’t take a lot of experience to realize that this is often not how it works. What’s tough about being a Christian, is you must persist even when kindness isn’t reciprocated.
There is a reason why at the end of this teaching Jesus immediately speaks about persecution. To paraphrase the late theologian, Father Herbert McCabe: “if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.”3 Far from being pessimistic, this is hopeful.
Hope is not optimism! Nick Cave pointed out that “Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth.”4 Failure to recognize this is to place yourself in danger of despair.
Optimism means wishing for what you want to happen. Hope means surrendering yourself to God, abandoning yourself to Divine providence, recognizing God’s ways are not our ways and that His will is holy and perfect.5 As in all things that truly matter, Jesus, while in the garden, shows us the way, saying to the Father: “not as I will, but as you will.”6 “Surrender don’t come natural to me,” sang Rich Mullins, “I’d rather fight You for something I don’t really want than take what You give that I need.”7
This is hard because we live in a society that is literally hellbent on control. Because, culturally, being self-determining is the supreme value, surrendering control, strikes most people as crazy. This view is not merely unchristian, it is anti-Christian. It is anti-Christian because being fully committed to your own will is the surest way to evade sainthood.
Something easy to miss in our reading from Revelation is the revelator asking an elder, “Who are these wearing white robes?” To which the elder replies: “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress.”8 It is always the time of great distress until Christ returns.
Our reading from 1 John says we are to become “like” Christ.9 Likeness, it bears noting, is not identity. You will never be Christ! To be children of God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is the greatest gift imaginable. This pales in comparison to what we can become.
Becoming a saint cannot happen accidentally. It requires an intention born of deep desire. Holiness must be your deepest desire. Fourth among the Luminous Mysteries of Our Lady’s Holy Rosary is the Lord’s Transfiguration. The fruit of this mystery is the desire for holiness. We need to pray for this desire because it doesn’t come naturally. Rather, it is supernatural.
Cooperation with the grace given to you in baptism and confirmation as well as each time you make a good confession and receive Holy Communion is vital. While amazing, grace is not magic. Using Holy Communion as an example, it is like good nutrition. What makes certain foods “junk” foods is a lack nutritional value. To be healthy requires you to eat healthy foods. To eat in a healthy way requires intention and effort, not to mention self-denial. Cooperating with God’s grace requires intention and effort.
Finally, make some heavenly friends. Get to know some saints. Ask them to intercede for you. Wear a blessed medal featuring that saint(s). Read their words, study their lives. You don’t have to leap back 2000 years. The Church exists to make saints. There are holy men and women from every age of the Church. The darkest times produce the greatest saints.
Let us heed what Saint Paul wrote in the passage chosen by the Church for the scripture reading for Evening Prayer on this Solemnity:
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us purify ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, and in the fear of God strive to fulfill our consecration perfectly10
1 Alan Morris, OP. “Leon Bloy: A Man for the Modern World,” in Dominica Journal 33 no 2, 119.↩
2 Matthew 7:12.↩
3 Terry Eagleton. "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching."London Review of Books, October 2006.↩
4 Stephen Colbert Show. 15 August 2024. “Nick Cave On Singing With Johnny Cash And The Joyful, Uplifting Vibe Of His New Album, ‘Wild God’” Timestamp: 21:07-21:52.↩
5 Isaiah 55:8.↩
6 Matthew 26:39.↩
7 Rich Mullins. Song "Hold Me Jesus."↩
8 Revelation 7:13-14.↩
9 1 John 3:2.↩
10 2 Corinthians 7:1.↩
