All Saints

Thursday, October 27th, 2022

All Saints

In the Catholic calendar, November is the month for celebrating saints. On November 1st, we celebrate all the saints, and on November 14th, we recognize all the saints in the Carmelite family.

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Human beings need heroes, role models to look up to and say, “I want to be like him or like her. They did it, so I guess it’s possible for me to do it too!” Sadly, many of our heroes don’t last very long. It seems like every day we get bombarded with new opportunities for disillusionment.

Deacon Lex Ferrauiola

As mature and compassionate people, we try to understand and forgive the weaknesses of our public figures. But it hurts and can tempt us to lose faith in others and in our own potential for goodness. It’s a lot easier for us to be discouraged by living, wayward role models than to be encouraged and inspired by those role models we call saints. We tend to see ourselves more prone to human frailty, like those flesh and blood public figures we read about in the news and see on TV, than to the holiness displayed by some distant saint from a faraway time and place. Maybe that’s because we’ve made the saints untouchable. Some of that is due to remoteness — let’s face it, they’re dead. But some of it may be because we’ve mythologized the saints and made them into something that we ourselves can never be, perfect. But if we look closely, we just might notice how much like us the saints really were. And once we notice that we just might realize how much like them we are called to be.

But what is a saint? For openers, they were real live flesh and blood human beings like you and me. They had hopes and dreams, fears and self-doubts, good days and bad days, like we do. They made mistakes; they may even have been selfish and petty, possibly even unkind, at times. They were people with all the human imperfections, troubles, and joys that we ourselves experience. They would understand our struggles because they themselves have been through them.

We need to take the saints down from the pedestals that we’ve put them on and bring them into our everyday lives. That way, they can become touchable to us. We can look at them and say, “I want to be like him or like her. They did it so I know that I can do it too!”

I have always found Saint Peter to be most encouraging. He was a man after my own heart. He was emotional, impulsive, and often indecisive. He shouted his undying loyalty to Jesus barely twelve hours before he pretended that he never knew him. But Peter, unlike Judas, kept scraping himself up off the floor each time that he failed. He felt shame and remorse but would recommit himself anew to Jesus from his heart. However, his human nature kept getting in his way. After being forgiven repeatedly and given the responsibility of being the rock of Jesus’ church, Peter continued to make mistakes.

As legend has it, Peter was making a quick getaway from Rome while Nero was executing his parishioners. He happened to run into his conscience — in the form of Jesus — on the Appian Way.  Jesus asked him a question, “Quo Vadis? Where are you going, Peter?” And Peter, remorseful, once more recommitted himself. He turned around, returned to Rome and to martyrdom. Yet, Saint Peter was one of Jesus’ very best friends; and today, twenty centuries later, he is one of our greatest saints. But he was far from perfect — right up to the end.

God is calling you and me to be saints. The word ‘saint’ comes from the Latin word ‘sanctus’ which means ‘holy’. And ‘holy’ with an really means ‘wholly’ with a wh. God wants us to be whole, to eventually get it all together. But God wants us to realize that this will probably never happen during our lifetime on earth; that we, like the greatest of saints, are human and will continue to have good days and bad days.

Instead, God asks us to commit and recommit ourselves to the process of BECOMING whole: to live our lives with a fundamental option for goodness, compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love; to keep renewing and recommitting ourselves to that option each time we fall. God asks us to look at the saints and to say, “I can do it too!”

God is calling us all to be saints.

With love, Deacon Lex

deaconlex@nullgmail.com

Lex Ferrauiola is a husband, father, grandfather and a Catholic deacon serving as a pastoral minister and hospital chaplain within the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. His newest book, All Shall Be Well: Finding God Among the Pots and the Pans is available now.

$12.00 available at Amazon.com and through local booksellers (ISBN-13 979-8767368921)

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