Much in the vein of Pope Saint John Paul II, in this exhortation, Pope Francis sought to show that holiness isn't as rare as we are prone to think. It also serves as a good guide on recognizing holiness. Primarily, the Holy Father sought to exhort us to appropriately strive for holiness, while warning us of the pitfalls of making it a DIY, or self-improvement project, which he identifies as neo-Pelagianism.
Holiness is our baptismal vocation. To be holy is to be like Christ. To be like Christ is to love perfectly. Any other vocation, like vocations to priesthood, religious life, marriage, intentionally living a single life, etc., are but means to the end of becoming like Christ. Hence, this should be a consideration even when choosing a career path.
We can only attain genuine holiness through God's grace. As we read in Gaudete et exsultate:
The Church has repeatedly taught that we are justified not by our own works or efforts, but by the grace of the Lord, who always takes the initiative (sec. 52)Holiness, of course, is more than God's work in you. While it is certainly that, it is also letting God work in you, cooperating with God's work through the circumstances you face every day, perhaps especially the difficult ones. In other words, God requires your cooperation God, your acceptance of his holy will.
Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Fra Angelico, 1434-1435- Courtesy of Google Art Project via Wikipedia
Each of us needs to recognize we have a destiny. Your destiny is the purpose for which God made you, redeemed you, and for which he seeks to sanctify you. Recognizing this makes you a pilgrim on the way. This puts you on a pilgrimage with everyone else who undertakes this journey. Journeying together as pilgrims makes us companions. When taken quite literally from Latin, a companion is someone with whom you share bread. In other words, it is not a solo endeavor. Plus, we need food for the journey- pan de cada dia.
A few sections further on in his exhortation on holiness in our time, Francis insisted:
Only on the basis of God’s gift, freely accepted and humbly received, can we cooperate by our own efforts in our progressive transformation. We must first belong to God, offering ourselves to him who was there first, and entrusting to him our abilities, our efforts, our struggle against evil and our creativity, so that his free gift may grow and develop within us: “I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). For that matter, the Church has always taught that charity alone makes growth in the life of grace possible, for “if I do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2)The three-day annual festival of All Saints/All Souls, which starts with All Hallows Eve, is a deeply eccelesial time. In other words, a time when the Church, understood in her fullness- the Church on earth (i.e., "Church militant"- that is still striving), the Church in purgatory (i.e., "Church penitent"), the Church in heaven ("Church triumphant," but the triumph is not fully realized yet, since the resurrection hasn't happened). In the end, the Church is made up only of saints, of those who our reading from Revelation tells us "are the ones who have survived the time of great distress" (Rev 7:14).
Another aspect of All Saints that is important to note is that the Saints, Blessed, Venerables, and even the Servants of God, like Luigi Giussani and Cora Evans, are known to us. In keeping with the spirit of Pope Francis' exhortation, especially sections 6-9, entitled "The Saints 'Next Door,'" All Saints is when we acknowledge all those holy women and men whose names and life stories we do not know. As many saints as we venerate, I dare say the number of these unknonw and forgotten saints are greater in number.
