The feast of all saints is called the feast of All Hallowed or all holy people. The word hallowed comes from the word holy, and the word holy means “to separate”. The ancestry of the word can be traced back to an ancient word which means “to cut”. To be holy, then, is to be cut above the norm, superior, extraordinary. The holy one dwells on a different level from the rest of us. What frightens us does not frighten the holy one. What troubles us does not trouble him/her.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is one of the most influential American Catholic authors of the twentieth century. Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking the streets of New York with his friend, Robert Lax. Lax was Jewish, and he asked Merton what he wanted to be, now that he was Catholic. “I don’t know,” Merton replied, adding simply that he wanted to be a good Catholic. Lax stopped him in his tracks. “What you should say,” he told him, “is that you want to be a saint!”
Merton was dumbfounded. “How do you expect me to become saint?” Merton asked him. Lax said: “All that is necessary to be saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it.” Thomas Merton knew his friend was right.
The words of Robert Lax speak so simply and profoundly to our calling as Catholic Christians. You should want to be a Saint. And to be one, all you need is to want to be one. Of course, if you only want to be an average Christian that is probably all you will ever be. Everyone can do just enough to get by. It is not hard. But the message of Christ is an invitation to be something more. It is an invitation to be all that you can be. Be a Saint.
If anyone has any doubts how to become a saint, gospel according to Matthew today is a helpful how-to guide. We know it better as ‘The Beatitudes’. “Blessed are…” With those two words Jesus begins a beautiful instruction in how to live the life of a saint.
Pope Benedict, in his remarkable book “Jesus of Nazareth” says, that the beatitudes is a portrait of what all of us should aspire to. Saints knew their role in the beatitudes. Saints are people who knew they were spiritually poor. They knew that they could not solve their problems alone. Saints knew that they are sinners and have proved that any sinner can be a saint. In fact, only a sinner can be a saint.
What does it take to become a saint? As Robert Lax said: “All that is necessary to become a saint is to want to become one.” And God will do the rest. Do you want to be one?
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