Preached November 1, Feast of All Saints:

“The goal of life is to be a Saint,” I told Christopher.  “Yes, the goal of life is to be a Saint.”

            Christopher and I were meeting last year at our kitchen table, talking about our Catholic Faith.  Chris is the Godson of Pam and me, and he had honored me a few months before by asking me to be his confirmation sponsor.  Here we were talking about our faith and the topic of sainthood, and saintliness, came up.

            “So what do you think it means to be a saint?” I asked him.

            “Um…To be good?” he replied.  “To be holy?”

            “Very good,” I said.  “To be good.  And to be holy.  What do you think it means to be holy,” I asked.

            “I dunno.”  Chris scratched his head.  “Maybe to be perfect.  To not sin?”

            Well when I was 13 years old that’s probably what I would have said too.  A saint is holy, and perfect, and without sin, or so I thought.

            “I don’t think so.  Mary is the only saint we believe was without sin.” I continued.

            “Here’s what I think,” I went on.  “I think holy means this – holy means to be different.”

            Chris looked puzzled.  “Whaddya mean?” he asked.

            “If you read the lives of the saints,” I told him, “one thing that stands out is that virtually every one was a sinner, some great sinners, but that each one repented of their sins to follow Jesus Christ.  Yes, every one, without exception, was very close to Jesus Christ, had great FAITH in Jesus Christ.   But the other thing that stands out is that every one was not afraid to be different.  To go against the crowd.  To not conform to the ways of the world around them.  To be a light in the darkness.”

            And I went on to talk about a couple saints’ lives – St. Peter and Blessed Mother Teresa, I think.  I explained how their faith gave them courage to step out of the lives they were leading and live lives that were radically different from the lives they were living before, and radically different from the world around them.  And how their faith and courage led them to perform heroic good works.

            It was a good discussion, especially for a 13-year-old in Junior High, a young man struggling with issues of conformity, “fitting it” with the crowd, being accepted by his peers.  I hoped to give him the idea that it was OK, in fact that our Faith demands, that we be a little bit different.

            This conversation came to mind as I was thinking about today’s Feast and preparing for today’s homily.  And it was a good reminder to me - I personally needed to be reminded of those words I told Chris – first of all that our life’s goal should be to be a Saint, and nothing else.  It’s so easy to let all the false gods and the enticements of the world lead us to forget that.  “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”  Jesus said.

             And also to be reminded that to be a Saint we must be holy, and ever striving to be more holy, which means we must stay ever so close to Our Lord, always growing in our faith, and by His grace to have the courage to be different.  To stand up and stand apart from the world, from the world’s evil, even when to do so may cause times of great distress, even when to do so means that the world may reject us, as it rejected Him. The difficult life of our patroness, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, is a perfect example of this.

            And finally, to be reminded that with God’s grace we may have the strength to do God’s will, to follow the example of the Saints to perform our own heroic good works.  Not by any merits of our own, and certainly not to bring glory to ourselves, but by the Grace and strength of the Holy Spirit living in us and acting through us, to bring glory and praise to His Father, who is Lord forever and ever.  Amen.