Saint

If I were just to make use of the sufferings that God has already allowed me in my life, then I would be not only a Saint – but the greatest Saint.

Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Raphael)

I really really want to be a Saint.

This is not because I want to show off about something.  This is not because I want to show off or prove myself.  This is not because I think that I am somehow better than others or more holy or more deserving.  I am in fact, less holy and deserving of being a Saint than anyone else on the planet.  I want to be a Saint because that is my life’s purpose.

God created me – and every other soul on this planet – to know, love and obey Him in this life and to be with Him forever in Heaven.  And the ONLY way that I can achieve that is if I become a Saint.

The definition of a Saint is a soul who has gone to Heaven after they die.  It is for this reason that even if someone if very very holy and leads a very good and holy life, we cannot call them a Saint.  Because a person who is still alive on this Earth cannot be a Saint as a Saint can only be someone who has died.

While the Catholic Church canonises Saints, which is just a fancy way of saying, undergoes research into their lives and waits for certifiable miracles to prove that the person is in Heaven, those Saints are not the only saints in Heaven.  Heaven is littered will millions or even billions of souls whose names we will probably never know and certainly never remember.  But those souls spend their eternity praying for my salvation – and for yours too.

Saint Josemaria wrote in “The Way” at 815, “Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing.”

God demands of me a struggle for perfection.  He asks me to turn to Him and to focus on my end goal – eternity with Him as a Saint in Heaven.

And it occurs to me today that I cannot achieve that goal by waiting for the perfect sacrifice.  I cannot place an order with God asking for the one thing that I am willing to endure to offer up as a sacrifice for my sins.  Instead, I must accept – humbly – each small thing that causes me pain so that I am able to offer up THAT suffering, however it may present itself in my life, so that God can make use of it as some sort of atonement for my multitude of sins…

And I have been thinking about this today as I have been reflecting on my own small sufferings in this lifetime.  And it seems to me, that if I were just to make use of the sufferings that God has already allowed me in my life, then I would be not only a Saint – but the greatest Saint.  Instead, I spend my time trying to get new sufferings that would somehow be easier for me to handle.  And this means that I have spent my Earthly life wasting all these precious opportunities and this is such a terrible waste.  A terrible terrible waste…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.