Throughout the liturgical year, the Church observes feast days for the various saints individually. We celebrate today the Solemnity of All Saints, a Holy Day of "Obligation," rejoicing in the Lord with a festival in honor of the entire multitude of the faithful who now live with Him and in Him in heaven, including the canonized saints and those whose names are known only to God.
In our previous post, Santo Subito: Answering the Call to be a Saint, we discuss the universal call to holiness, how we are all called to be a saint. Many people resist this call, believing it to be a great burden, a cumbersome obligation that they are not at all comfortable with. Sure, they would like to go to heaven -- and they expect that they will go to heaven -- but they are rather hesitant to fully embrace the holy life now or even aspire to it; they fully expect to receive God's grace of salvation at the end, even if they are not all that enamored of seeking and accepting His grace now. They believe that the road to sainthood will be too arduous and difficult and deprive them of their freedom.
But the call to sainthood is neither a burden nor a cumbersome obligation. Rather, it is a call to set down one's burdens and to embrace authentic freedom. The call to sainthood is nothing other than a call to be true to the person that you were made to be, one who loves God and others in truth.
This Year of Faith provides a wonderful opportunity to rediscover the saints while seeking to be one ourselves by conforming our lives every more closely to the Lord. This might include learning more about those saints whose names we took in Baptism and/or Confirmation, those saints whose feast day we celebrate on a particular day, those saints for whom we already have a certain affection, and those saints who we know little or nothing about.
Here at Adoramus Te, the blog of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, we invite you to provide a personal witness, sharing your thoughts and reflections on the saints. For example: Which saints have had a special impact on you and how? What do you know of the saint whose name someone else gave you at Baptism, if baptized as a baby? Whose name did you take at Baptism, if baptized as an adult, and at Confirmation, and why? If you had the chance to do it again, would you take another saint's name? What saints' names did you pick for your children (or whose name would you pick if you were to have them), and why? Do you call upon certain saints for various things in your life? Do you have religious artwork in your home or prayer cards depicting saints? Tell us of any pilgrimages you have made to the tombs of saints and how it might have impacted you.
Where might one go to learn more about particular saints and sainthood in general?
Many books on the lives of the saints have been published and are available in libraries and bookstores. There are also many sources available on the Internet:
Litany of the Saints at the funeral for Blessed Pope John Paul II
In our previous post, Santo Subito: Answering the Call to be a Saint, we discuss the universal call to holiness, how we are all called to be a saint. Many people resist this call, believing it to be a great burden, a cumbersome obligation that they are not at all comfortable with. Sure, they would like to go to heaven -- and they expect that they will go to heaven -- but they are rather hesitant to fully embrace the holy life now or even aspire to it; they fully expect to receive God's grace of salvation at the end, even if they are not all that enamored of seeking and accepting His grace now. They believe that the road to sainthood will be too arduous and difficult and deprive them of their freedom.
But the call to sainthood is neither a burden nor a cumbersome obligation. Rather, it is a call to set down one's burdens and to embrace authentic freedom. The call to sainthood is nothing other than a call to be true to the person that you were made to be, one who loves God and others in truth.
Sometimes, people think that holiness is a privileged condition reserved for the few elect. Actually, becoming holy is every Christian's task, indeed, we could say, every person's! The Apostle writes that God has always blessed us and has chosen us in Christ "that we should be holy and blameless before him...in love" (Eph 1:3-5). All human beings are therefore called to holiness, which ultimately consists in living as children of God, in that "likeness" with him in accordance with which they were created. All human beings are children of God and all must become what they are by means of the demanding process of freedom. God invites everyone to belong to his holy people. (Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, 1 November 2007)The call to holiness is a call to stop wandering in the desert and finally accept God's invitation to enter into the Promised Land. Yes, it will be difficult (love always is), but it is what were made for, that is the meaning of life: to love and be loved in truth -- a love that is so full that we enter into communion with God and others, and so dynamic and fruitful that life is made ever new in Him.
This Year of Faith provides a wonderful opportunity to rediscover the saints while seeking to be one ourselves by conforming our lives every more closely to the Lord. This might include learning more about those saints whose names we took in Baptism and/or Confirmation, those saints whose feast day we celebrate on a particular day, those saints for whom we already have a certain affection, and those saints who we know little or nothing about.
Here at Adoramus Te, the blog of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, we invite you to provide a personal witness, sharing your thoughts and reflections on the saints. For example: Which saints have had a special impact on you and how? What do you know of the saint whose name someone else gave you at Baptism, if baptized as a baby? Whose name did you take at Baptism, if baptized as an adult, and at Confirmation, and why? If you had the chance to do it again, would you take another saint's name? What saints' names did you pick for your children (or whose name would you pick if you were to have them), and why? Do you call upon certain saints for various things in your life? Do you have religious artwork in your home or prayer cards depicting saints? Tell us of any pilgrimages you have made to the tombs of saints and how it might have impacted you.
Where might one go to learn more about particular saints and sainthood in general?
Many books on the lives of the saints have been published and are available in libraries and bookstores. There are also many sources available on the Internet:
Catholic Community Forum
Catholic Culture (you'll need to know the saint's feastday or do a name search to get the information)
Catholic Information Network
Catholic Online
Magnificat
New Advent
Wednesday Audiences of Pope Benedict, Catechesis on the Saints
Litany of the Saints at the funeral for Blessed Pope John Paul II
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