Fr. Warren's Week Reflection: Called by Baptism to Be Saints

Called By Baptism to Be Saints (John 1:29-34) St. Paul tells us in his Epistle that we are called to be a holy people. In other words, we are called to be saints. You might ask, isn't it a bit silly or ambitious or pretentious or proud? Aren't saints very special people, a minority, an upper class? What does sanctity have to do with ordinary people like you and me? Well, sanctity has everything to do with us. Sanctity is our Christian calling, simply because to be a saint, to be holy, is basically to be one with God. It means to live the two great commandments of the gospel and the law. Love God more than anything else. Love your brothers and sisters, at least as much as you love yourself. Do that, and you are a saint. Perhaps not heroic holiness, but essential sanctity. The marvel of it is the power to do this. You already have the capacity to be saints. God lives in you. His life courses through you already, like another blood stream. The Lord has told us if we love Him, He and the Father and the Spirit will come dwell with us... Father, Son and Holy Spirit at home in you. You are one with God. This is what makes you different, transforms you, gives you a fresh vision of what the human can be. The point is you not only can be holy. If God is in you, then you are holy. You are a saint. You may not like the term, but you had better get used to it. It is another word for Christian. What does this holiness, this being a saint demand of you? The first letter of John puts it succinctly. "By this, we know that we are in Jesus that those who say they abide in Jesus ought to walk the way he walked." There is the Christian vocation to greatness—simple and awesome. To live holy lives, all you have to do is to live like Jesus. I don't mean you have to imitate the raw details of His life... come to life in a feeding trough, have no place to lay your head, be betrayed by your best friend, then die on a cross. What you must mirror, at all costs, is His love. But you can't do that if you cut corners. If you are content with the minimum. If you just avoid serious sin. If you ask "how much do I have to do?" You must love your oneness with Christ and His human images, those around you. To be holy, to be saints, there is no way you and I may live Christianity part-time, with half our hearts in it. You don't always have to be thinking of Jesus, but you have to try and think like Him, reproducing not what He did, but the love with which He did it. I do not know what particular road God wants you to follow. The way of Mother Teresa, Francis of Assisi, ordained priest? These may not be for you. No matter. Lawyer, doctor, mother, father, student, teacher, plumber, bus driver, executive or store clerk, healthy or infirm. Whatever you are, you are called to live as Jesus lived. Your call was born at baptism. Your mission is to preach and live the gospel in your part of the world, and you change the little part of the world you touch, even if it's just one man, one woman, one child. You will do that by being who you are and by being Christ-like. Because of you, someone will be less lonely, sense that someone cares, will feel needed and wanted, will feel Christ's love. You don't have to do all that through natural gifts, nor with vast knowledge or super-strength, but by the startling principle of St. Paul. When I am weak, then I am strong. The unique feature of being a Christian is that your strength lies in your weakness. If you let the Lord take hold of you, to work in you, or as He said to St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." The secrets is to let Christ in, let Him take hold of you. As an old priest told me many years ago, turn your life over to God, at least then, an idiot won't be running it. Back in the 5th century, a splendid pope and preacher, Leo the Great, said in a Christmas sermon, "Christian, recognize your dignity." We could echo that call today. Recognize your dignity. God became what you are that you might become what He is... a God Man died for you that you might live for God and man. God lives in you, that you might live in Him. Recognize that dignity, and you will recognize your calling. Simply be what you are: saints. Live like saints. Christ bearers. Act like Christ bearers. All of us are called to greatness. Then let us dare to be great. For Christ's sake. Yours in Christ, Fr. Robert Warren, S.A. Spiritual Director