Saints in the Making All Saints Day . . . what a day! A day of joy, of hope, of victory! Our imaginations are filled with images of “a great multitude,” those countless women and men of every nation, people and language who have lived a life of heroic virtue and now live in the presence of the Lamb. Though today’s vision primarily moves us to retrospection, imagining those who have gone before us “marked with the sign of faith,” the scriptures today also propel us forward, to imagining how these saints are made and where we might look to find them among us. “These are the ones who have survived the great time of distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.” What is the secret of the saints? Their union with Jesus--everything is for him, everything with him, everything from him! These scriptures are enlivened when read alongside daily news reports which all too frequently recount the sufferings and open persecutions of our brothers and sisters in the faith. And we can only imagine how many individuals or groups suffer in silence, hidden from the view of photographers, reporters and news agencies. These are all “saints in the making,” perhaps even “a great multitude,” who today are living saintly lives, some of them at the cost of their blood. Yet, the call to become saints is not limited to these extraordinary individuals. You and I are called to be saints; we, too, are saints in the making. The secret of our movement toward that goal is the secret of the saints—union with Jesus. To what degree can I say everything about me and my life is for him, with him and from him? We ask the intercession of the saints today to give us the desire to live and walk more and more each day in union with Jesus, the Lamb of God. |