ALL SAINTS
It’s tempting to put saints, literally, on pedestals. Just look around the church. We see saints in stained glass, in wood and plaster. We put them on shelves and decorate them with flowers and halos. We collect them on holy cards and venerate them in icons.
But, to merely think of saints that way reduces them to something decorative – and risks making today’s feast unnecessary. And today is necessary. It is a call, a challenge to every one of us. Or, to look at it another way, today’s feast is really a dare – it dares us to be more than we are.
Sainthood is a noble ambition, an ideal. But is it something we can realistically expect to attain? The short answer is yes, because the truth about saints, something we so easily forget, is that they were just like us; flesh and blood, strength and weakness, appetites and longings, ambitions and disappointments, vanities and eccentricities. They were sinners just like the rest of us.
That’s at least how they began. But that isn’t the whole story. The simple fact is that nobody is born a saint. It’s something that you have to become.
For instance, if you had to pick someone who was the least likely candidate for sainthood, it would might be Dorothy Day, an anarchist and communist from Brooklyn.
Back in the 1920’s, Dorothy Day worked as a journalist and spent many nights drinking with famous writers. She had an abortion and a brief marriage, before finally being drawn to Catholicism.
Her conversion led her to embark on a radical ministry to the poor; one that is still changing the world. She is now a candidate for sainthood. Late in her life, people started calling her a living saint. Don’t call me a saint, she one said, I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.
Don’t dismiss the saints; they’re closer to us than we realize. They have struggled with sin and temptation, they’ve walked the journey toward holiness – sometimes stumbling, sometimes falling, but always getting back up and moving on, resolving to do better and to aim higher.
They worked at being what today’s gospel calls us to be; poor in spirit, meek, and merciful. This is how we become what Jesus calls blessed and what we call saints.
All Saints Day reminds us of our potential to do great things. It is the promise that was fulfilled in the countless people we honor today. They give us hope, because they assure us again and again that not one of us is born a saint, but by the grace of God, we can become one.