When we are baptized, we are claimed by God and become his adopted sons and daughters. We enter into a filial sonship relationship with God. As noted above, God is the first to call us to holiness. All baptized people — laity, religious, and clergy, are called to universal holiness. As Christians and followers of Christ, life will tough and suffering will occur, but we should offer up our suffering to save the souls of others. The greatest of the saints endured suffering as well. We should never get discouraged!
Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, once said,. He calls us to take up the cross each day and follow him. There is only one ultimate failure in life: not to be a saint [italics mine].
With this understanding, the Church heeding the call of Jesus Christ calls us to live lives of holiness. The three means of holiness and the saintly life are the Sacraments, Spiritual Direction, and Spiritual Reading. First, although all the Sacraments are channels of grace, it is through Reconciliation , which reconciles our relationship with God when the relationship is severed i.
Second, spiritual direction, which can occur within or outside of Confession, overcomes the habits of sin. A spiritual director is like a coach who is there to help us to improve our spirituality. Third, spiritual reading encompasses reading the Holy Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, The Lives of the Saints, The Office of Readings, and other works written by the Saints and other Catholic authors that lead us to know God more in our spiritual life.
So as we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints, let us remember our own sanctity and the obligation we all have to become saints. We especially are grateful for your new placement where you can continue to enthuse others with your joy of our holy faith and teach as you so well do and that God prepared you for. Roger and Susan Grahf. You are commenting using your WordPress.
You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history.
Lumen gentium points out that "in the most holy Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection. For Mary The title points to Mary's unique election among all Christians and highlights that she possessed the fullness of the gift of grace from the first instant of her life.
This gift was planted in Mary as "a seed of holiness, or a spring which rises in the soul as a gift from God Himself. Since in Mary the working of the Sanctifier has never been challenged by sin, she precedes everyone on the path to holiness and "in the hierarchy of holiness. It is in uniting herself with the life and mission of her Son that she discovers the fullness of her vocation to holiness.
She is led to the realization that all she is and has is a gift from God Immaculate Conception. As her gift in return she consecrates her love undividedly to Him, existing only for God Virginity. Her life becomes abundantly fruitful through her cooperation with God Divine Maternity and after the completion of her earthly pilgrimage she continues her mission in God Assumption and Spiritual Maternity.
The person of the Blessed Virgin Mary is thus a human paradigm of what it means to possess the fullness of the gift of holiness and to return it to Him in love's full participation. Mary's self-gift resulted in her cooperation in the Incarnation and culminated in her alignment with Christ's attitude of self-emptying on Golgotha. Her complete self-emptying can only be understood through the fullness of grace she had received at the beginning of her life.
In other words: to be full of grace means to be full of God's Love and that fullness always sees her in union with her divine Son by being His disciple and a Mother in the order of grace to His mystical body, the Church.
As the chosen model of holiness the Blessed Virgin Mary is also our teacher of holiness who provides us with the example of her own life as well as with a lesson plan leading us towards the exalted goal of holiness. She was well-prepared for her educational duties through her experience in raising her own child; not only did she conceive and give birth to the Son of God, but she also accompanied Him in His human growth. Jesus Christ was attentive and receptive to His Mother's teaching.
In the concrete circumstances of everyday life, He could find in her a model of perfect love for God and for his brothers and sisters which He could follow and imitate. The answer, I believe, is prayer. Saints are men and women who know how to pray, to be close to God and communicate with him from the heart. They are people who in times of difficulty, as well as in good times, raise their minds and hearts to the Lord. They share with him their hopes and frustrations and sometimes even their loneliness, anger and fear.
Through their prayer—their attentive listening even more than the words they speak—the holy men and women we call saints are in constant contact with God. This closeness to God inspires ordinary women and men to perform extraordinary acts of charity. We seek solidarity with them all saints in interceding for those who have died and who depend on our prayers to help them achieve the ultimate closeness to God in heaven all souls.
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