Still Reflecting on Sainthood...

Death stepped into my life almost one year ago. My wife and I changed our Thanksgiving plans and headed to Wichita, Kansas, to be with my grandfather during the final days of his life. Those long, sleepless days and nearly thirty years of memories play on the screen of my mind, even today.

Yesterday was his birthday. Yesterday was All Saints’ Day. While I spent much of the day thanking God for all of the many people in my life who have played such an integral role in my spiritual formation, I focused a lot on my grandfather. There are more memories than I could possibly begin to express here. He touched us all and was a catalyst for the nascent faith in his children and granchildren, many of whom are following in his steps in formal ministry roles. All of us are following in his path of discipleship. Saints seem to have that effect on people. They are the conduits through which the power of God breaks into the world, beckoning people to follow in the steps of Jesus.

There really is no more fitting way to honor and remember the life of my grandfather than to celebrate it on the day of his birth. He was a saint. He lived a holy life that witnessed and bore witness to the fingerprint of God in the world and everything created by his artisan handiwork. His life leaves indelible traces in the narrative of my life. He was and is an integral part of my story, as well as the stories of each person with whom he came in contact. Today I remember that I have known a saint, and that his life lives on in me.

These reflections on sainthood by Thomas Merton could be echoed of my grandfather. I think are a compelling tribute to the great cloud of witnesses who stand in the grandstands of life, cheering us on in the journey of faith. May we realize these words in our lives this year.

“A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making not formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual strait-jacket. They come from his direct docility to the light of truth and to the will of God. Hence a saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love of God than the observations off someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an arbitrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so feeble that they make you think there is something the matter with religion.

“The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don’t both about the question one way or another because they are only interested in themselves. They eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no man’s sin because he does not know sin. He knows the mercy of God. He knows that his own mission on earth is to bring that mercy to all men.”

“When we are one with God’s love, we own all things in Him. They are ours to offer Him in Christ His Son. For all things belong to the sons of God and we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. Resting in His glory above all pleasure and pain, joy or sorrow, and every other good or evil, we love in all things His will rather than the things themselves, and that is the way we make creation a sacrifice in praise of God.

“This is the end for which all things were made by God.”

(New Seeds of Contemplation, 24-25)

“…If the holiness of all the saints had always been plainly evident to everybody, they would never have been polished and perfected by trial, criticism, humiliation, and opposition from the people they lived with.

“Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. You will travel in darkness in which you will no longer be concerned with yourself and no longer compare yourself with other men. Those who have gone by that way have finally found out that sanctity is in everything and that God is all around them. Having given up all desire to compete with other men, they suddenly wake up and find that the joy of God is everywhere, and they are able to exult in the virtues and goodness of others more than ever they could have done in their own. They are so dazzled by the reflection of God in the souls of the men they live with that they no longer have any power to condemn anything they see in another. Even in the greatest sinners they can see virtues and goodness that no one else can find. As for themselves, if they still consider themselves, they no longer dare to compare themselves with others. The idea has now become unthinkable. But it is no longer a source of suffering and lamentation: they have finally reached the point where they take their own insignificance for granted. They are no longer interested in their external selves.”

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.

“Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

“If, then, we want to seek some way of being holy, we must first of all renounce our own way and our own wisdom. We must ‘empty ourselves’ as He did. We must ‘deny ourselves’ and in some sense make ourselves ‘nothing’ in order that we may live not so much in ourselves as in Him. E must live by a power and a light that seem not to be there. We must live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is always truly empty and yet never fails to support us at every moment.

“That is holiness.

“None of this can be achieved by any effort of my own, by any striving of my own, by any competition with other men. It means leaving all the ways that men can follow or understand.

“I who am without love cannot become love unless Love identifies me with Himself. But if He sends His own Love, Himself, to act and love in me and in all that I do, then I shall be transformed, I shall discover who I am and shall possess my true identity by losing myself in Him.

“And that is what is called sanctity.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, 59-60, 62-63)