Sainthood for you and me!

JMJ

Happy All Saint's day everyone!  I'm very sorry about the delay in blogging and tweeting and video-ing lately, I was without power because of the hurricane for a few days but now am back online! We've all been on misery along the East Coast and I'd bet good money many of us have had this song stuck in our head for at least a week:

But with power restored, and our hearts and prayers going out to all those devastated by Sandy (especially in New Jersey and Long Island), we continue forth with our Year of Faith!  And today is especially special (and that special kind of special!) because it is the feast of all saints!

We celebrate today not only the saints that can fit on this tiny icon, or in our relatively tiny Church calender, but all the holy ones of God, recognized and unrecognized by man, from all time.  

These are our brothers and sisters in Christ: Martyrs and Mystics, Clergy and Laity, People from "every nation, race, people, and tongue" (Revelations 7:9). 

We are called too to be saints and today we are going to peer into the Mass readings and learn how we can start our path to sainthood this very day!

Saints: Hair Metal and 1 Hour Dry Cleaning?

In the first reading from Revelations, we see the saints in heaven praising God before his throne.  It's quite an amazing sight as St. John describes it: 

After this I had a vision of a great multitude,which no one could count,from every nation, race, people, and tongue.They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.They cried out in a loud voice:
"Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,and from the Lamb."
All the angels stood around the throneand around the elders and the four living creatures.They prostrated themselves before the throne,worshiped God, and exclaimed:
"Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen." Rev 7: 9-14

 I bet it sounded a lot better in heaven and less 80's hair metal than this version:

But nonetheless, still awesome to praise God in song in Heaven!  John is asked by the angel who all these people are to which John says, come on man, you're an angel, you tell me! (paraphrasing of course).  The angel obliges and replies,

""These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb." Rev 7:14

This tells us what we already know from the examples of saints we are familiar with: all saints endure hardships and are born out of times of "great distress". When life is easy and we go with the status quo, there is no saintly action required.  All peoples face hardships and saints are those who heroically step up to God's call and "Get 'er done" for God, no matter the consequences.  

Now the image of washing the robes in blood can be a bit disturbing and, frankly hard to understand sometimes.  We understand Jesus' sacrifice and His Precious Blood being the sign of the New Covenant that we celebrate in mass but this laundry business often confuses me.  That is, until I saw the theme of today's readings, a bond I never noticed that ties them together.

                           FACE-OFF!

Moving past the first reading and onto the Psalm we hear a great refrain that also confuses me:  Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

Seeing the face of the Lord is a concept that occurs several times in the Old Testament, most notably with Moses who asks God that He may see His face.  God denies his request but passes before Moses blocking him with His hand (Ex 33:22-23) We, the faithful (for the Psalmist, the Israelites) want to see God face to face.  We desire to know who our God is but we are left at this time seeing only the back of His Head, which ain't too bad because it's God's Head.  

But the Israelites still want to see God face to face.  And who can, according to this psalm?

One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain. PS: 24:4 

So those who can see God face to face don't sin, have good intentions, and no vain desires.  Makes sense, those all sound like saintly things.  For some reason, at Mass today, the "clean heart" line stuck out to me.  And then even more so during the second reading:

Beloved, we are God's children now;what we shall be has not yet been revealed.We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,for we shall see him as he is.Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
 as he is pure. 1John3:2-3

We are God's children through Christ.  God's gift of His Son allows us too to become sons and daughters of God.  This second line about us being what we will be and being like God because we shall see Him speaks to the confusion about seeing God's face.

God's Profile Picture?

We know Christ intimately, as a brother, a friend, a saviour, and a life source in the Most Blessed Sacrament.  We have seen Him as the man He was, the son of Mary and Joseph, the Carpenter, the Teacher, the Crossbearer.  But we do not "see him as he is", as God, the King of Glory, the Transfigured Christ in His Heavenly Kingdom.  We can imitate Him in His earthly life, as all the saints do but we must go beyond what we have seen to truly enter Heaven and see the face of God.

We have to have a great hope to enter Heaven.  That hope is the hope that we have done well on earth and have fulfilled our call to sainthood and be able to see God on His Throne. John says here that it is from the hope of Heaven, of seeing God and *(CRAZY VERBIAGE WARNING)* who we are to have become in reflecting His Holiness, that we must make ourselves pure as God is pure.  


                                          Closer To The Heart
The Gospel today was a familiar one to all of us: the Beatitudes. And, I find, when the Gospel is one you are extremely familiar with, it is easy to zone out and overlook what God is trying to tell you today.  But today God REALLY hit me over the head with the sixth Beatitude

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

Huh.  So the first reading says all the saints are wearing pure white robes washed in Christ's blood, the Psalm says that the clean of heart will see God's face, and the second reading tells us to be pure.  Add the Beatitudes, the New Testament's Sainthood Checklist and I think I'm being told something about the link between purity of heart and how to be a saint.

The Catechism (WHOOP WHOOP YEAR OF FAITH Y'ALL!) says that the pure of heart are those "who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God's holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith." (2518).

Purity is a conscious choice we have to make but cannot make alone. Love (charity), chastity and love of the truth are gifts given us by God that are replenished and redoubled the more pure we become.  It is a struggle though.  Purity of heart is in some ways antithetical to our human nature in our Original Sin.  Our hearts are inclined towards evil because of this sin (Genesis 6:5) and are the source of evil actions Jesus says, " For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." (Mark 7:21-22).

But that was before we were baptised; that was before we were called to be saints.  God's law is written on our hearts, they are made for Him alone and are meant to be pure and blameless before God.  If we wish to love God deeply, we cannot let anything get in the way of Him having our whole hearts.  Sin is the division of our hearts, their retreat back to a sinful past, to the false promises of vain desires and empty existences.

Purity is a lifelong quest, the quest to see God face to face and to honor Him in eternal joy in Heaven.  Today, I pray that the saints guide you and me to a closer imitation of Christ, that we may become who we are called to be: God's holy saints.  Holy Spirit, Spirit of Faith, Hope, and Love, grant us a desire and a strong will towards purity, helps us return to God contritely when we fail, and keep us always in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Amen.

Happy Feast Day all you future saints! Pray for purity, and please, show some saintly behavior this week, especially in any way you can to help the victims of the Hurricane.  Charity starts at home and ends at the heavenly throne (New catholic bumper sticker?). Anyway, see you next time.

~OneCatholicGuy