As I exited the chapel after celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints’ Day, I was surprised by a student who said that he didn’t find anything really interesting about saints.
When I asked him why, he said, “I can’t seem to connect with them!”
That was just the word I needed to help him somehow appreciate who saints are. In a world that values the idea of ‘connecting’ so much, I realized that he was simply expressing that he could not find anything personally enriching about saints. They seemed to him so distant and the ideals they presented seemed so archaic.
He was added that there are just too many of them and he got confused with which one to turn to or set as his inspiration.
Saints, to begin with, are not superheroes that are mysteriously vested with some special power from God. Although it is true that only God can make a saint, He definitely doesn’t make one by just giving him ‘powers,’ ‘chakras’ or ‘auras’.
When we celebrate All Saints’ Day, the Church is teaching us that holiness is something everyone can aspire for. In other words, God calls us to become holy and wants us to be holy with only one important ingredient on our part: that we desire to be holy.
Connecting with the saints actually begins with this personal realization: God wants me to become a saint. But do I want to become one and am I ready to place all the means He gives for me to become holy?
The student was quite surprised with this idea. He was delightfully enlightened because his perception of a saint now originated not with someone else but started off with himself and God.
If there are so many saints, it only serves as a reminder that he too can become one, and that the lives that these holy men and women had lived serve as a guide for him to follow.
Although there are many saints, they had one simple goal: to identify themselves with God’s will in order to go to Heaven and bring many others with them. One could somehow compare the lives of the saints to different ingredients with which God would enrich the flavor of the Church’s perennial teachings and mission throughout history. It was up to every person to acquire a taste for a specific ingredient and try to acquire the same flavor –and if possible strive to enrich it further– in their lives.
That saints differ in their expressions, thoughts and ‘specialties’ is only a natural consequence of being children of their own historical periods. However, they all had one goal and their lives that were constantly connected to God had left a transforming legacy that not even architects, engineers, doctors, scientists, and other human occupations could surpass nor equal.
If we were to attempt to adapt their common spiritual heritage to our times, we could say that they had three familiar-sounding UPs.
First, the saints UPLOADED! Today, uploading is the craze of sending up into the Internet photos, compositions, music, and what have you. We do this for reasons of work, personal projection, friendship, and many other noble human causes.
Even before the advent of the Internet, saints were accustomed to uploading everything to God. They were lifting up their work, sufferings, trials, and even things that you cannot virtually upload in the Internet: an emotion, a soulful inspiration, etc. They didn’t want anything in their life disconnected from God.
Second, they UPDATED! People give so much importance to updating today. But the saints applied it to acquiring a new internal version of themselves by removing the bugs of their vices, and patching their daily engagements with prayer, the Sacraments and the heroic practice of human and moral virtues. So at the end of the day, they were always a new version.
Third, they UPGRADED! To upgrade is synonymous to buying a new gadget that is faster, has bulkier storage and longer battery life.
Saints also upgraded, but unlike updating that is more related to their inner workings and struggles, upgrading meant externally tweaking their lifestyle in order to remove things that hindered their self-giving to God and others, or to even add new things that would further polish their spiritual wares for God.
After hearing these three UPs in the saints, the student was more than happy to add: “Now I understand why they were also so UPWARD in everything they did?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“That they were able to bring everyone and everything upwards to Heaven!”
I couldn’t help smile and thank God who has ‘began a good work in all of us,’ and pray that ‘one day He would bring it to it’s completion.’
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