Being a Saint
The saints struggled to live their everyday lives just like we do, then they had a church named after them! They would have been surprised! They not only understood humility, they embodied humility. They put others first in every way, especially in holiness.
They knew people whose holy life was an example to them. They knew people who helped them with support and advice in their struggle. They knew others who they considered saints. Yet they are the ones that the Church chose to recognize as saints!
Wow! That could be you!
But we don’t get there alone. We have the Communion of Saints helping us.
Every moment of our life is a moment to choose God and turn away from ourselves and towards others. Every moment of our lives is a moment to become a saint!
Let’s get going!
written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
The readings we are having this week are not coincidental. They are placed in the context of the fact that tomorrow is All Saints Day and then Friday is All Souls Day.
And Jesus makes it very clear, contrary to some people's opinion, that not everybody's going to heaven. It's hard to get there. It's difficult. And so we look at the readings. We see yesterday in the gospel how great it can grow, and how wondrous it can be to be a follower of Christ. The mustard seed turning into the great bush and the leaven in the bread.
But we also have the readings from St. Paul from Ephesians. And yesterday we have the context of "wives defer to your husbands." And then talking about that the relationship between a husband and wife being reflective of God's relationship with His Church. The great mystery; the sacrament.
And today we have Paul addressing certain issues: the relationship between a father and a son, children, and then slaves and masters. And one of the overriding reasons that this is occurring is, I talked yesterday about the relationship between a man and a wife, and the woman deferring, and the husband basically giving totally of himself to his wife. We see a similar thing of a hierarchical relationship of father/children, master/slave in the same context and the burdens placed on the master. But we have to place it more in the context of Jesus Christ because there is something going on here and it's reflected in the gospel reading. And the gospel reading here is that it is very difficult to make it to heaven. St. Paul is not writing about a static situation. He is writing about a situation that exists at the time he is writing, in the context of understanding that if you are a follower of Christ, these will no longer be the standards that will exist. How can you make it to Heaven, if you are in a situation of being a husband and wife, the loving relationship between a husband and wife, and the requirement of loving everybody, including your wife? Your wife qualifies as a neighbor. That changes the very nature of the marital relationship into the relationship that Paul is saying becomes the great foreshadowing. The sacrament of God's love. The self-giving sacrifice of love. So we don't expect, 2000 years after Paul's writing, to look at the situation that Paul is stressing and going, "Oh yeah! That is identical to what we face now." It simply is not.
And why is it not? Because of the command to love. It pervades everything in our existence. It changes who we are and it changes what societal expectations are and the nature of life its very self is transformed. Similarly, with the readings today, the relationship between a man and his son has changed. One of the biggest expectations is that the son will simply obey what the father tells him. Well, there is a reason for that. Not a good reason, but a reason for that, because most children didn't survive. And there was a difference. You know, if you know that Nathan is going to die at the age of five you don't develop a real close relationship with him. You always go, "Ooo, is he going to make it past the age of five?" That was the situation they were facing. But again, some of my favorite saints make this clear. That relationship changes by its very nature through Christ. And the saints I was referring to are the martyrs of Alexandria. (They sacrificed their lives caring for victims of a deadly plague.)
Because by our command of love, it isn't simply, "I love my son," but it is that, "I will do everything for my son, to give everything for my son, including the very jeopardizing of my life itself because I love my son and I love my neighbor. That applies similarly to what Paul was talking about with regard to husband and wife. It changes the nature of the relationship in its entirety. We see a similar change in the society, it took a long time, unfortunately, but the societal relationship, again, of loving thy neighbor. Slavery is no longer acceptable. It's no longer acceptable because, in the context of Christ, it makes no sense. It's wrong because it is violative of the law of loving thy neighbor. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. It does it; it violates it.
So when Jesus is talking, He understands the tremendous burden He is placing upon us. And He understands that the many people in the world, similar to what Paul was describing, in the ancient world that Paul was describing in his letter to the Ephesians, that world, as it existed is not sufficient to get you to Heaven. We can't do it on our own accord. Similarly, your life in the world of twenty-first century Farmers Branch, if you follow the standards of the world, you are not going to make it to heaven. You have to allow the teachings of Christ, the teachings of love, to change the very nature of who you are, to become a new person in Christ. Paul talks about putting on Christ. We become something different. And that something different is love. And by that transformation making us sacred, making us more aware of Christ, making us more aware of loving our neighbor. What Jesus is saying indirectly but which is true, is that that changes us enough.
"Many strive to enter through the narrow gate and many will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough." What do they lack? The love in the commandments of Jesus Christ, of loving God and loving neighbor. And when we celebrate All Saints tomorrow, what will we be celebrating? In a very real sense we will be celebrating people who were able to overcome societal standards of their time as a martyr, or as a great saint, doing good works: Francis, Dominic and all of those. But they were able to overcome the societal norm so they could make it through the narrow gate through the relationship defined by love.
And then on Friday we are celebrating us and all of the souls in heaven, and all of the souls in Purgatory. We have, we ourselves, who are struggling to prepare ourselves to spend all eternity in heaven; the souls in Purgatory who are suffering to overcome their shortcomings, their sin, violative of the law of Christ; and we are celebrating the saints who were able to perfect themselves in their lives to make it through the narrow gate.
That's what these monks in the basement of the Vatican have been preparing for us. It is to understand that society, that the norms, have to change. Just as they have changed over time from what we read in Paul in the letters to the Ephesians, so too, in our own lives we have to redefine ourselves to be defined by the love of Christ for the world, the love we are commanded to have for God and for neighbor.
And then, as we see in the gospel today, we will be prepared to go through the narrow gate so that when All Saints Day is celebrated, we will be one of the saints. When All Souls Day is celebrated, we will be one of the souls. But the constant of the souls is that all of them, in Heaven, and in Purgatory and all of the souls on Earth, all the All Souls at the very least have the potential for spending eternity in Heaven. And those we are not celebrated have separated themselves from God, and separated themselves from God by not loving to such a degree that they have removed themselves from the presence of love, and this is the eternity that we call Hell.
October 31, 2018 2