Friday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
This is the will of God: your holiness. St. Paul summarizes the Chrisitan life in this short sentence: to be holy. To be filled with the life of God and to be purified of all that is not of God. In other words, to become a saint. Paul was so convicted of the centrality of Christians called to become saints that he often called his communities the saints or the holy ones. Sainthood is not just about the future, but is already begun in us through the outpouring of Christ's life in us through the Church and the Sacraments. Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it to the full. Our lives as saints have begun, the only question is if we will live and die as saints.
A Catholic author once famously wrote: "the only real sadness, the only real failure, the only real tragedy in life, is not to become a saint."
Our church, more than anything else, needs saints. God gives us all that we need to become saints within the concrete details of our life. Our lamps have been filled and lit, let us tend them so they do not go out, but instead provide light in the darkness to others.