Bishop Robert Barron said, “A saint is a friend of God. A saint is someone of heroic virtue. A saint is someone who is in heaven. A saint is someone who has allowed Christ to live his life in Him.”
Our Blessed Lord wants nothing more than for us to one day see the Beatific Vision and spend eternity with Him in Heaven. That begins here in the temporal world, and it requires our cooperation with the graces that God gives each one of us. How responsive we are to those graces during our lifetime can and will impact our final destination when we reach our exit interview.
“And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for me.” -Galatians 2:20
In Matthew’s gospel account, the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea. Peter said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” As Peter was walking on the water he was fine as long as his focus (i.e. his faith) was on Christ. But as soon as Peter took his eyes off Our Lord, his faith diminished and started to sink.
Taking the focus off Christ gives way for temptation to set in and a higher likelihood to commit sin. The word sin is an archery term that means “to miss the mark.” Our aim and goal is that bullseye which is Christ Jesus (and Heaven). We are hard-wired to be a saint by virtue of the natural, moral law built into our hearts. Because of the fall of Adam and Eve, sometimes we miss the mark due to concupiscense (the inclination to sin). That is why we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To be forgiven of our sins and to give us the graces needed not to commit those sins again.
In the first epistle of the Apostle John, “all wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal.” (1 John 5:17) Mortal sin cuts us off from God. Salvation is lost. In order to return to the state of grace, reconciliation through one of God's ministers (i.e. a priest en persona Christi) to restore the soul to its active state. Then there is sin that is not mortal, yet still a “wrongdoing,” where we remain in God's grace of salvation, just wading in muddy waters so to speak. Our saintly choices during our life span are directly tied to how well we are able to remove ourself from mortal sins primarily, and as many non-mortal (venial) sins as we possibly can.
Father Robert Spitzer, president of the Magis Center, conveys three Cardinal Virtues to help lead us to sainthood, and we can work on them here and now in the present: prudence, temperance, and fortitude. First we need prudence. This helps us differentiate between good and evil desires. Once prudence is established, then we turn to the second rung, temperance. Temperance gives us the ability to say no to those evil desires and to say yes to the good. Once the first two rungs are established, finally it brings us fortitude–the courage to move toward the highest good (i.e. God and the Beatific Vision).
Our Blessed Lord said in Matthew 4:19, “Come after me, and I will make you to be fishers of men.” In other words, your life is about to change. Change is not always easy. It can make us uncomfortable and induce stress, but we choose to respond and accept it. Being a saint is about cooperation with the Will of God. There's no better example of someone that cooperated with God's Will more perfectly than our Blessed Mother, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38) The Triune God cannot force His Will on you to be holy because that would go against His nature and our free will. It's a life long choice and process, not a one time decision, as we see in the John's gospel where Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. God the Father cuts off branches that bears no fruit and the branches that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. (John 15:1-17) We spend our entire lives striving to bear fruit so Our Lord may prune us to sainthood.
“The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” -Leon Bloy
There are so many holy saints we can model our lives after. Just because they are in heaven with Our Blessed Lord does not mean they are separated from us. It's just the opposite. We see in Revelation 5:8 the saints in heaven receive our prayers and take them to the Lord, and also in Revelation 8:3-4 the angels do the same. During the Transfiguration Christ spoke to Moses and Elijah, who had both been departed from this world for many centuries. Before that time, King David asked the angels to bless the Lord (Ps. 103:20-21). The saints in heaven and we, the church militant on earth, are all members of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27, Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Cor. 12:12, Rom 12:4-5) that not even death can separate us.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
-St. Augustine of Hippo
by John Connor