Today we celebrate the feast of ALL SAINTS. Since this Blog is dedicated to saints, we especially remember our modern heavenly friends who we know are rooting for us in our own journey towards the Father.
Pope Benedict XIV said:
“To canonize a servant of God, it will suffice to have enough
evidence that he practiced the virtues he had the chance to practice in a
sublime and heroic way according to his circumstances and his station.”
Consequently, as Henri
Joly says,
“the Church has numbered in the rank of saints not only
monks, along with princes and princesses, kings and queens, emperors and
empresses, but also merchants, teachers, greengrocers, farmers, shepherds,
lawyers and doctors, bankers and clerks, beggars and servants, craftsmen,
shoemakers, carpenters and blacksmiths.”
The rather widespread notion that the saints were not like us
is simply false. They also were subject to temptation, also fell and got up
again, felt oppressed by sadness, weakened, and paralyzed by discouragement.
However,
mindful of the words of the Savior: Apart from me you can do nothing
(Jn 15:5), and those of Saint Paul: I have strength for everything in him who
strengthens me (Phil 4:13), they did not rely on themselves, but, putting all
their trust in God, after every fall, they humbled themselves; they sincerely
repented, cleansed their soul in the sacrament of penance, and then set down to
work with even greater fervor.
In this way, their falls served them as steps toward an ever greater perfection
and they became lighter and lighter. When Saint Scholastica asked her brother
Saint Benedict what was needed to achieve holiness, she received this reply:
“You must want to." St. Maximilian Kolbe
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