Celebrating the saintly people in our lives

This weekend we celebrate all those unnamed individuals who silently lived the honorable Christian life and in the truest sense of the word now reside as saints.

Think of that special family member who in his or her lifetime seemed to stand a shoulder above the rest of us in her spirit of love for God and neighbor. A mother. An uncle. An aging grandmother. In every family they are there.

But perhaps we’re overcome by humanity’s dark side. Everyday the nightly news brings into our living rooms the unspeakable. Two parents in Philly horribly abuse a little girl who finally succumbs to accumulated wounds. And the neighbors are always aghast, shocked and horrified that all this took place under their very noses.

Shakespeare was right when he wrote in “King Lear” that “man is false of spirit, bloody of hand, a fox in stealth, a wolf in greediness, a lion in prey.”

Yet today’s feast says there is more. And it is the church’s contention that the vast majority of us never make the front pages of newspapers or call attention to our very goodness. And today that same Body of Christ says they, too are saints.

Shakespeare somewhat recognized that reality when he wrote in “Hamlet,” “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.”

But the same individuals I describe as wholesome and the saints among us would be the first to deny the reality. Aware of their imperfections, they shake their heads and humbly defer to their weakened state.

Perhaps Peter Kreeft adds a balance to the distinctions we make. For he writes that “saints are not the opposite of sinners. There are no opposites of sinners in this world. There are only saved sinners and unsaved sinners. Thus holy does not mean ‘sinless’ but ‘set-apart,’ called out of the world to the destiny of eternal ecstasy with God.

“What is a saint? First of all, one who knows he is a sinner.…”

And so, it is appropriate this weekend to appreciate the hope of the feast day. All the unheralded struggles we make are noted in the Book of Life and we deserve to rid ourselves of false-humility.

Or, as Mother Teresa once wrote, “If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise or disgrace, because you know what you are.”

So, go forth, saints of God, and dare to make a difference in this world of ours.