I often tell my students that a particular saint is one of my top three favorite saints. I will usually go on to joke that there are nine saints in my top three, just like there are three persons in the One God, since Trinitarian math can be applied to saints as well. I am not being serious of course, but it does highlight how hard it is to narrow down the saints to a top three. I usually mention Sts. Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, Thomas More, Joan of Arc, Athanasius, and Ignatius of Antioch before I remember St. Joseph, which in turn reminds of me of Peter and then St. John Paul II, oh and speaking of Popes, I love Pope St. Leo the Great, and speaking of JPII what about all the modern saints I am just starting to know and love. You get the idea.
We are blessed with a multitude of men and women who have run this race before us, as St. Paul says, “since we have so great a cloud of witnesses,” let us not grow weary. He was saying that at the very beginning of life of the Church, whereas we have the benefit of over two thousand years of saints, ordinary men and women, showing us how to live lives of extraordinary virtue. The saints set an example that we are all meant to follow. Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, makes it clear that all people are called to holiness, saying, “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father himself is perfect.” (LG #11)You, my friend, are called to by holy, to be a saint.
The saints are not simply this great cloud of witnesses, they are not distant far -off figures we seek to emulate, and they certainly are not characters in some dramatic story we read but are not a part of ourselves. No, they are real people who lived real lives that share the same call and are caught up in the same story of salvation history that we live out each day. Because they are real people, we can get to know them. We can read what they have written, read about them, pray the prayers they prayed (or even composed), sometimes even visit their incorrupt bodies.
There are saints from all vocations, of all ages, and who lived through all periods of history. Pope John Paul grew in virtue as his beloved Polish homeland was occupied first by the Nazis and then by communist Russia. St. Catherine of Sienna mixed acts of charity and zealous proclamations of truth in the midst of a plague-ridden nation and scandal ridden Church. St. Kateri Tekakwitha became Catholic at a time when most of her native, Mohawk, people were openly hostile to Christianity. Recently married saints, like Louis and Zelie Martin, have been canonized together demonstrating the virtue that can be achieved in married life. In the last few years there have been several young, modern saints added to the ever-growing cloud of witnesses. We even have a new “patron saint of the internet,” in young Blessed Carlo Acutis, a fifteen year-old who died as recently as 2006. Truly, there is a saint for everyone!
I first started to get to know St. Francis de Sales when I learned that he was the patron saint of writers. His writing has been influential in my spiritual life, but the witness of his life has also given me an example of how to preach the truth when surrounded by those who reject the faith. It is easy, especially as a woman, to be drawn to St. Joan of Arc based on the heroic image of her on horseback, leading the charge against the enemies of France. However, as you get to know her, it becomes clear, that brave as she was, her chief virtues were actually those of humility and obedience. Humility and obedience are virtues we can grow in no matter our occupation, vocation, or age, even if we never ride gloriously into battle.
The witness of the saints in not meant be a source of admiration simply, but rather one of exhortation. We are made of the same stuff as them and, relying on the same grace they did, we too are called to live lives of extraordinary holiness. Let today be the day that we say yes to that call. Seek to live a life of extraordinary virtue that you too may be one of those who bears witness for generations to come.
Prose for the sake of Poetry 