Can we be saints? Yes, if we are convinced that sanctity is worth while, a treasure of great price, to buy which we are wise to let everything else go. You have seen a boy loitering along the road when he had been sent down town by his mother to make a purchase and had been warned it was urgently needed. But he stops to look in the shop windows, to have a chat with a pal, to read the advertisements on the boarding. He gets back home nearly an hour after he started, but could easily have been there and back inside of twenty minutes. And the chances are he has forgotten what it was mother wanted or brought her back the wrong thing!
He was not duly impressed with the importance of his errand. Many of us Catholics fail to become saints because our intellects are not convinced that sanctity is the only ideal worth having and the only ideal worth realizing. Aloysius Gonzaga was a marquis, but he bundled titles and fortunes and all future claims to glory into the hands of his younger brother and himself went away to be a Jesuit and a saint. Francis of Assisi took even the coat off his back, let all the money fall out of his hands, and chose poverty for his bride. Stanislaus Kostka tramped over twelve hundred miles in order to escape wealth and honors and become a saint.
Yes, the saints thought sanctity was worth while. Were they right?
Seeing clearly beneath the surface of life and realizing that sanctity is a priceless treasure, the saints of God formed an immovable determination to leave nothing undone to become holy. No person becomes proficient in any art unless he has a firm purpose to persevere. He will never become a pianist unless he faces the drudgery of daily practice; he will fail in every exam if he does not take off his coat and study.
Sanctity is not for babes and weaklings. It demands a firm will, a determination never deliberately to do or say or think what would impede one's growth in holiness, be the cost what it may. Our Lord Himself did not always succeed in persuading men to undertake the living of a holy life, although He was God, and argued and proved and appealed and reproached them with their apathy. He made use of every opportunity and yet at the end had to make the sad admission: "You will not come to Me that you may have life."
Jesus, give me light to see and grace to do. Light for my mind to see the beauty and worth of Your ideals and a firm will, not a mere wishfulness, to take hold of the means that will lead me to sanctity.
Can we be saints? Yes, but we have to understand what sanctity is. On our side there must be the dispositions outlined by Our Lord in this meditation. But, where God finds such a soul, He pours into it in everincreasing measure the streams of His own divine life, which we call sanctifying grace. In one sense holiness is a "natural" development. All life tends to expand, and, given the proper conditions, the divine life too will wax stronger each day we live.
One effect of growing in grace is a keenness of spiritual vision in the light of which the soul detects even small infidelities to God and resolves to amend. We are often at a loss to understand why the saints bewail faults that to us seem so trivial. Even such deformities are recognized as hideous when seen in the light that falls from God's face. "This fire of purity endows the soul with a terrible truthfulness, so searching, so clearsighted, so relentless, that the soul detects in itself even the most subtle movements of imperfection, of selflove, of meanness; impulses so subtle that it would be wellnigh impossible to put them into words. This truthfulness never leads the soul into scrupulosity, for it is humble, and, in the very moment of its scathing selfrecognition, it turns, in a swift loving contrition, with its whole being, to God, the only One Who can understand, the only One Who can help." (Songs in the Night, by a Poor Clare Colettine.)
What deep peace sanctity gives, even in this life, as contrasted with the lot of him who is constantly agitated by desire of money and vexed by a thousand schemes. There is only one aim before the soul resolved on growing in holiness, and whatever comes its way can at once be utilized to further this aim. To those who love God all things work together unto good.
Dare I try again, Lord? Is sanctity still possible, even for me? "And when He was set down, His disciples came unto Him, and opening His mouth, He taught them." Divine Teacher, teach me that You bid me to become perfect, even as Our Father in heaven. You never tell me to do what is impossible.