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Holiness for All

Written by

Mark Shea

in

At age 16, I thought that aspiring to holiness was out of the question. If you really wanted to be holy, I thought, you had to be a priest, nun, or brother. And you had to spend your days doing "religious stuff" like praying, preaching, teaching catechism, or serving the poor.

But I had developed an interest in the opposite sex and was headed toward a career in music. So I was disqualified. The best I could hope for was to avoid breaking the Ten Commandments, get to confession when I failed, not miss Mass on Sunday, and toss a few bucks in the collection each week. That way, I could at least make it to heaven after a stay in Purgatory. But true sanctity, that was out of my reach.

If holiness were about marital status or what you do for a living, I would have been right. But the Second Vatican Council made very clear that my assumptions were wrong. Holiness is not about what you do but with how much love you do it. Holiness is really the perfection of faith, hope, and sharing in God's very nature, which is love (I Jn 4:8). We are talking about a special kind of love here, the love that gives freely of itself to another, that even lays down its own priorities, interests, and very life, for another.

Reaching for the Impossible

So is holiness difficult to attain? No. It is impossible. At least on our own steam. But that's the thrill of it all. God invites us into an intimate relationship with Him through Jesus. He takes up residence within us and makes it possible to love with His love. Grace is the love of God that comes into our hearts as a free, undeserved gift and enables us to be like God.

So that means spending all our time in chapel? No it means doing daily, ordinary things with extraordinary love. The Virgin Mary, our greatest example of holiness, was a housewife and a mother. Jesus and His foster father, St. Joseph, apparently spent most of their lives doing manual labor. But when Mary did the wash, she did it for love. When Joseph made a table, he did it for love. When hardship and danger threatened, they met it with faith, hope, and love.

Become Who You Were Destined to Be!

So holiness is for every baptized person, regardless of personality type, career, age, race, or marital status. In baptism, we are all reborn with the spiritual muscles necessary to get us across the finish line. Yet these muscles must be nourished and exercised if they are ever to develop and carry us the full distance. God provides the necessary nourishment in the Word of God and the Eucharist. And He sends us ample opportunities to exercise.

But here's the rub: many of us don't want to exert ourselves. It can be uncomfortable. We stretch a bit to finish school, to excel at sports, to win the heart of the love of our lives. But when it comes to the things of the Spirit, we often settle with being couch potatoes.

Leon Bloy, a French Catholic writer, once said "the only tragedy in life is not to become a saint." Holiness is about realizing our deepest, greatest potential, becoming who we were truly destined to be. What a shame it would be to miss it.

Comments

  1. Guest Avatar
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    At age 16, I thought that aspiring to holiness was out of the question. If you really wanted to be holy, I thought, you had to be a priest, nun, or brother. And you had to spend your days doing “religious stuff” like praying, preaching, teaching catechism, or serving the poor.

    But I had developed an interest in the opposite sex and was headed toward a career in music

    I think one major barrier to holiness for many young Catholics is when they take the option of religious life off the table. Jesus calls us to an unconditional giving of ourselves. When we start by saying I want to be a Catholic but we put limits on what God can ask of us then we have not really said “Yes” to Jesus.

    Having an interest in the opposite sex does not exclude the celibate life. It just means it would be a sacrifice. Having musical talent does not either. It didn’t for John Michael Talbot. Holiness is not so much about how much love you do something with but it is about who you do it for. That starts with giving God the right to say what you will do.

    It gets more personal than that. God even wants to change your thinking and your most personal behaviour. If you are closed to God maybe calling you to be a priest how open will you be when God, through His church, binds your conscience to think a certain way? If interest in the opposie sex trumps the need to discern religious life then why would your hormones not interfer with your holiness in other ways?

    This is such a common thing when you ask Catholics if they have ever considered the religious life. It’s like that discernment is not for all Catholics. It is for some special class of super Catholics. There is no such distinction in the body of Christ. We are all called to discern. He doesn’t call the qualified but he qualifies the called.

  2. Guest Avatar
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    ‘Et tu, Brute?’

    What of you, Randy? While ‘injecting’ the rest of us with vocational ‘truth serum’ . . . are you still in discernment? You sound as if you have a search you are still on. Looking at all that vocational ‘material’ God sends your way?

    I would have made a miserable priest. That wasn’t for me. If I missed the call, it was to be a ‘comedian Brother’ in some contemplative community. My physical actions would have made my fellows weep with both embarrassment and fun. But, as if to have something to mitigate being a nut, they would find me on my face in chapel at 2AM, before the Sacrament and offering myself to whatever He would have of my being. The comedic contemplative, the mystical ‘Mary-onette’ for God . . .

    Let us pray to the Vinemaster to have too many workers in His vineyards, for a change . . . (If I’d been called and heard, I’d be the one wearing a basket on my head . . .) In all that, we can pray for you – yours? – too.

    I remain your obedient servant, but God’s first,

    Pristinus Sapienter

    (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or …yahoo.com)

  3. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    I don’t pretend to perfectly live up to everything God has taught me. That does not mean I should not share it. I am a bit off the hook on this one because I became Catholic after I was married. That meant there was no issue of the religious life. There is still the issue of being willing to do anything God might ask of me. For that I need many prayers.

  4. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    BUT – your Matrimonial state is a religious life . . .

    We are as ‘called’ to Matrimony as others are to Holy Orders. Christ instituted both Sacraments to make such ‘religiosity’ plain. ‘You da man’ and ‘she da woman’ in a grace-bonded unity that Christ compares to Himself-Groom and His Church-Bride – can’t get much more religious than that.

    About God’s will – as Saint Paul noted that we all come up short on holiness, aka perfection, he also meant that we all need to work on submitting our wills to God’s will. We ALL need prayers about that. About that, you (and I) are as common as those grains of sand accounting Abraham’s children.

    We all are sinners – we all are weak about holiness and fail at perfection – we all resist God’s will, however and wherever – yet, in His love, we are called to religious life, that He may save us for Himself.

    I remain your obedient servant, but God’s first,

    Pristinus Sapienter

    (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or …yahoo.com)

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