Us, the Saints, and Following Christ

Between all four Gospel accounts, there are nearly fifty times where Jesus says, “Follow me.”  A shared quality in all the saints, from whatever period, status, age, or type of vocation, is that they heard and accepted this invitation.  Like these saints, we are given the same call and invitation to follow Christ.

The invitation is to follow Christ, to follow the Good Shepherd, to follow the one that promises rest to all who labor and are burdened.  He offers us eternal life.  An eternal life with God, the source of all holiness and goodness.  An eternal life where there are no more tears, sickness, corruption, or sin.  It is eternal life in Heaven where we will have reached the perfection Christ speaks of in the Gospel, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat 5:48 RSV).

This perfection that our Lord speaks of is what we know as the perfection of charity, the universal call to holiness given to everyone.  This perfection of charity is the living out of the greatest commandments, loving God with all we are and have, and then our neighbor.  When our goal becomes living these commands to love with the best of our efforts, we should see growing in and sustaining a relationship with God as the motivation behind that goal.

Christ gives the invitation to follow Him and provides the direction in which to do that.  Through generations, many people have heard this invitation and were given the opportunity to respond to it.  In addition to those in the Scripture, we have the lives of multiple saints whose stories we can read.  All our saints are different in many ways yet similar in the call they heard and their relationship with God that they valued over other things.

I came across a quote from Pope Benedict XVI’s homily for the Epiphany that speaks of our saints:

The Wise Men followed the star, and thus came to Jesus, to the great Light which enlightens everyone coming into this world (cf. Jn 1:9). As pilgrims of faith, the Wise Men themselves became stars shining in the firmament of history and they show us the way. The saints are God’s true constellations, which light up the nights of this world, serving as our guides. Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, told his faithful that they must shine like stars in the world (cf. 2:15).^[1]

Benedict gives a lovely image of what the saints can be for us.  We can follow the saints as the Magi followed the star that brought them to the infant Christ.  This is why the stories of the lives of the saints are so treasured.  They are stories of real people of genuine faith whose love for God transformed them into the saints we believe them to be.

Think of people who take art classes or music lessons; they desire to perform and produce something through that medium.  They may even have some talent in these areas of interest, but by seeking an instructor, they can work at improving the skills from that talent.  In a way, the saints are instructors that have been given to us.  In addition to their biographies, some have authored books explaining progress in the spiritual life.  Like any opportunity we have to grow in anything, the desire needs to be there.  For example, no one gets in shape by only thinking hard about going to the gym.  To fulfill that desire to get in shape, one has actually to go to the gym.  Likewise, no one becomes holy only by thinking hard about it; it has to be acted upon.

The saints are one of many things that point the way.  There are many we do not know about, but other saints we do.  We have great accounts of their lives, all of which are different.  We read in those stories what their relationship with God was like.  We read of some great conversions and heroic virtues.  When we encounter their stories, we are reminded that they are people like us.  Yet they persevered and were transformed by the love of God, so much so that it changed how they lived.

Reading the lives of the saints is like looking to the stars for direction.  It is not realistic to think that we can read them all, nor that by knowing how their stories went, we will advance as they did.  We look to the saints for guidance and encouragement.  When we read about the transformation that happened to them, about their growth in love for God, we are presented with the reality of that transformation potentially happening in us.  These saints are more than examples of how to live out the invitation of Christ, they are also our brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us.

It is my intention to cover a saint once in a while in hopes that there might be some light in their stories, which we can use to guide us in our following of Christ.

^[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2013/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20130106_epifania.html