You were born to be a saint. I was born to be a saint. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born to be a saint. Each person now in prison for murder was born to be a saint. Are these strange thoughts? God creates human life—each human life—to know him, to love him, to serve him, and to be happy with him in this world and the next. That means God creates each person to be a saint. That is our goal and destiny.
The Catholic catechism begins, “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength.” (CCC 1)
Our pastor often speaks of this process as being a “saint in the making.” I was created by God to be a saint, but, bluntly, I’m not there yet. I am a “saint in the making.” Probably, so are you.
Back when I was studying to become a teacher I remember reading some very interesting research. Several classes of children were matched to be equal in intellectual ability. Teachers were not told exactly what the level of ability was. Some teachers were told that their students were a little behind in achievement, but they had great ability. They just needed a teacher to see their potential and push them to achieve it. Other teachers were told they should not expect much of their students. They had limited abilities.
Guess what happened? Even though the students were of the same abilities, the students who had teachers who believed they had great potential made great gains in learning in the course of the school year. The students who had teachers who believed they had little potential made little gain in learning in the course of the school year.
“That which is perceived as real is real in its effect.” If we think of ourselves as capable of becoming good students–or saints–we are more likely to achieve it.
Until I heard the term “saint in the making” I would never have thought of myself as called to be a saint. I am no Mother Teresa. But our Catholic catechism BEGINS with the end in mind for each of us: WE ARE ALL CALLED TO BE SAINTS. That is why God created each of us.
In today’s scripture readings we have glimpses of people who made it to sainthood: St. Paul, St. Martha, and St. Mary of Bethany. (Mary of Bethany’s feast day is subsumed into the feast day of Mary Magdalene because when those days were decided it was believed that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene were the same person.)
In these glimpses we see pictures of Paul, Mary, and Martha when they were in the early stages of becoming saints—where we are.
Saint Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, recalls how he had been a very zealous Jew. In his zeal for Judaism he had persecuted the early Christians. Then Paul says, “But when he, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me; rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus. Then, after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas…”
When I speak to clients or fellow “saints in the making” of how hard it is to change-for-the-good, I often point to this scripture. Jesus literally knocked Paul off his horse, blinded him, and then had a Christian heal him of his blindness (See Acts 9). Yet that did not create an immediate, profound conversion in Paul. It took Paul three years of study and being with other Christians before he was brave enough to speak directly to Peter.
The strong Paul we see in his letters did not emerge until about 14 years after his conversion. Paul was a saint in the making. As I read of Paul’s adventures in the Acts of the Apostles, I suspect he had to learn a lot of things the hard way as he was thrown out of synagogues and cities, was stoned or imprisoned. The making of SAINT Paul was a rough road.
We see glimpses of the early stages of sainthood in two more ordinary people it is in today’s Gospel: the sisters Martha and Mary. Martha, generous hostess and doubtless great cook, was feeding Jesus and his disciples. Not yet a saint, she wanted her sister Mary to help her. Not yet a saint, she complained to Jesus. Not yet a saint, she heard Jesus gently correct her. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
Martha must have taken the correction well, because Jesus remained good friends with Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus throughout the rest of his life.
Sunday was Respect Life Sunday in the United States. Our bishop, John Stowe, spoke at our parish’s Respect Life Dinner. He spoke of the importance of seeing that ALL human life matters. ALL human life is created in the image of God. God made ALL human life to be within the wonderful communion which is God’s life of love within the Trinity. This is not just the innocent human life we so often focus on in the United States because of our nation’s great sin of legalized abortion. It is not just the fragile human life of the sick and the dying. It is equally the human life of the refugee, the victim (or perpetrator) of war, the poor, the addicted, the criminal.
Bishop John told a story of a man in his parish in El Paso, Texas, who was a faithful daily mass attendee and sacristan. Bishop John did not know until after the man died that he had flown many bomber missions while a pilot for the US in World War II. Even though he had flown those missions in obedient service to our nation, he lived the rest of his life in reparation, for he realized he had taken human life.
That man was a saint in the making. You are a saint in the making. I am a saint in the making. Let us pray today that God will guide us along the way of sainthood. Let us see ourselves as people with potential for learning how to be a saint. God calls us to himself to teach us how.
To see ourselves as saints in the making is not an act of pride, but one of humility. I know how far I am today from sainthood. But God calls me to himself. If I humbly let myself be formed by his call, in time he will form me into the saint he wants me to be. It probably will look like Martha or Mary, not like Paul or Mother Teresa. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that God calls and I answer.
Today’s Psalm is a wonderful prayer for remembering that God created us in goodness to grow from wherever we are now to becoming a saint. Every sinner has a future. Every saint has a past.
Prayer:
“Lord, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize, with all my ways you are familiar. Truly you have formed me in my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are your works. My soul also you knew full well; nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret, when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.”
Link to Today’s Readings: Galatians 1:13-24, from Psalm 139, Luke 10:38-42.
