Rev 7:2-14
Psalm 24:1-6
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
What is the Church? It is the gathering of the saints. St. Paul would address the ecclesiae at Corinth, Colossi, Thessalonika, Ephesus, Rome among others as being the saints of God. To be more precise, the Church is where those who are becoming saints gather to receive the supernatural aid of the Holy Sacraments and to support, encourage, and console each other as the seasons of life pass. Christianity for all those who call themselves "Christian" is a vocation to sainthood. To say, "I'm no saint" is to repudiate your Christian identity. Say instead, "I am trying! ... by the grace of God."
We might explicate the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ from several serious directions. One of many from the Church Fathers puts it like this. Father God created humankind to be made in His royal likeness and then granted the additional, sovereign gift of personal freedom. We see this truth play out in God's created order every day: children are conceived in the likeness of their parents, and they are born with freedom.
Over time, God's sons and daughters forgot God and forgot what they were supposed to look like. To borrow the language of Origen, the greatest and most influential of the Fathers, we were coins brilliantly struck at the imperial mint bearing the image of the Great Emperor. But over time we had become dull pieces of silver bearing a faint image that was indecipherable. We could no longer remember our homeland or our name, wandering as strangers in a strange land exiled from a country we could not remember. Father God then sent His Son, our near relative, bearing His image and showing us what we were suppose to look like. It were as if our dull slug of silver were restruck, this time with a proof minting, pointing us once again to our true home and to the God Who made us.
The point of Christianity, we might say, is to form ourselves and to be formed into a greater and stronger resemblance to God, Whose visible image is Jesus Christ. The ancient Church termed this theosis, the process of becoming like God. And this is what St. Paul means by saint, someone who has committed him- or herself to the journey toward sanctification. The destiny is God Himself. Remember, Jesus is fully man and fully God. Jesus is a Person of the Triune God. Therefore, humankind participates in the Trinity, sharing in its divinity. As we say at the Mass every morning, "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we have a share in the Divinity of the One Who entered the horrible straits of our broken humanity." I believe this is some of what informs Jesus' startling words to the Pharisees, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods'?" (Psalm 82, John 10:34).
When we are young we imagine that sanctification means that we are becoming more pleasing to our parents, perhaps becoming the "teacher's pet," and are well on our way to becoming an Eagle Scout. But as we begin to read the Gospels, another and surprising picture slowly comes into focus. To become a saint is not the process of becoming a worldly ideal, but quite the opposite. To become a saint is to live, as St. Athanasius put it, contra mundum, against the world. For the serious call to a holy life leads us into the ultimate counter-culture, a rejection of the world and what the world values. Our eyes are on Heaven, and our foremost concerns become grounded in divine law. We find that we need explanation and advice, and we begin reading the lives of the saints and the books they wrote. Old habits begin to fade away, especially the ones connected to peer pressure. We no longer care about our worldly image or the approval of our culture and its adherents. Rather, we begin to need fellowship with those who have journeyed to the far country that we seek.
One of the holiest priests I have known, an old man by the time I knew him, told me that when he first realized he had received an honest call to the priesthood, his first response was to reread the Beatitudes and then try to live them. It was impossible, he told me. Nonetheless, as a Franciscan and a priest myself, I feel doubly called to read and reread the Beatitudes and the Gospels, which St. Francis established as the Rule of Life for members of His religious order. They speak powerfully into our lives. They are ultimately the rule of life for all followers of Jesus. For they are the Second Giving of the Divine Law, heard from a great prophet standing on a mount deepening the Mosaic Law: "Ye have heard it said .... I tell you now ...."
But this law does not seem to establish rules for daily life in the world as the First Law does. Rather the Second Law points us away from the world, to a society that has more in common with Heaven than earth. Least of all does it resemble the imperatives of twenty-first-century America: "Ye have heard it said, 'Get ahead! Go for the brass ring! Don't leave money on the table!' I now tell you, Blessed are the poor, and blessed are the poor in spirit (who practice intentional poverty and simplicity). Ye have heard it said, 'Stop blubbering! Dust yourself off and get back on your feet!' I tell you now, Blessed are those who mourn. Ye have heard it said, 'The world ain't fair! You can't fight city hall! Get real!' I tell you now, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness."
We need not rehearse them all. You see the point. Jesus gives us a new law for a new kind of society, one that is rooted in compassion, love, and sensitivity. There are not platitudes or maxims for daily living but rather the commitment of a lifetime, for they will require time, patience, and an empathy and concentration that leaves many a Christian exhausted at the end of a long day of ministry. It is a way of life to be sure .... not of this world, but of an interior world that is saintly. And this brings us to an important point.
We learn in St. Peter's First Letter, in the Pauline Correspondence, and implied in the Gospels that the Temple on Mt. Zion, destroyed forever shortly after Jesus predicted its demolition, is to be replaced by Himself and that the Body of Christ is to become a Mystical Body on earth, a spiritual temple made of living stones. This Temple's supreme law is the law of love given on the Mount of the Beatitudes, not abolishing the Mosaic Law but fulfilling it. The living stones are to be God's most precious and durable "brick," the people who love Him, the saints of God, as St. Paul says.
I suppose it is natural to think of the Communion of Saints or a spiritual temple as being an undifferentiated unity of like-minded people. But this is not the case. Without question, the saints reach a level of clarity, rising above the debris of this world and sharing certain truths apprehended with a crystaline sharpness. But to become a saint is the most private, individual, and personal thing in the world. What could be more differentiated than each human life? Each personality, each of God's sons and daughters living in his or her circle of freedom, creativity, and particularity?
Each person's path is holy beginning from God in His Image and proceeding toward Him. But this does not mean that every place on the path is holy; each of us knows the truth of this to a certainty. And each is bound for sainthood as surely as each person yearns for Heaven, which is complete unity and harmony with the Holy One. If we may look ahead to the coming Saturday, we will celebrate in the Missal from the Common of Those Who Are Not Virgins Nor Martyrs. This is the section where most of our lives are found. Many of these saints did not live heroically in a way that the world might notice but quietly and, in due time, steadfastly. Now in Heaven, they pray for us, and we petition them that we might have their prayers on our behalf. After all, they are our sisters and brothers in Christ.
What is their prayer exactly? They watched for God. Each day, each night, and year after year, they watched for God. And they pray this morning that we might be numbered among the watchers and the holy ones.
Amen.