During World War II a German widow hid Jewish refugees in her
home.
As her friends discovered the situation, they became
extremely alarmed.
“You are risking your own well-being,” they told her.
I know that,” she said.
“Then why,” they demanded, “do you persist in this foolishness?”
Her answer was stark and to the point.
“I am doing it,” she said, “because the time is now and I am here.” (Source unknown)
Today we celebrate the feast of all Saints - those known and
unknown women and men, and even children - who are called holy because their
lives manifested the very holiness of God. We do this today because the time is
now, and we are here. These women and men are those who form “the great
multitude of which no one can count, from every nation, race, people and
tongue.”
In the early Christian Church the first saints were martyrs,
virgins, hermits, and monks who were declared holy by popular acclaim.
Since the 16th century, when the modern saint-making process began,
canonization was in the control of the popes and became a judicial process
complete with evidence and cross-examination.
The person had to pass through a scrutiny of investigations
and many proofs of miracles. Once proven, then an elaborate ceremony of
canonization occurred. A feast day assigned, a church and shrines were
dedicated to the saint.
The person would be declared patron saint of a country, a diocese,
or other religious institutions. Statues and images would be struck,
along with public prayers, relics venerated and possibly a Mass would be
composed in the Saint’s honor.
In the times from these early centuries until now, those
declared saints have contributed to God’s reign as artists, authors,
founders/foundresses of religious orders, monks, martyrs, missionaries and
mystics, bishops, popes, poets, peasants, and prophets, women and men religious,
kings, queens, historians, and hermits, wives, husbands, reformers, scientists,
theologians, teachers, virgins, children, widows, carpenters, shepherdesses and
a thousand more paths in which these holy ones gave themselves as self-gift.
They lived in times of turmoil and times of tranquility; they
endured persecutions, wars, church councils, crusades, the Inquisition, the
Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, the Black Death, enemy
occupation of their countries, and struggled with unjust government, church,
and social systems.
We may tend today to think of Saints as holy and pious
people, sometimes irrelevant to our experience and often shown in pictures with
halos above their heads with ecstatic gazes or surrounded by angels or holding
a symbol particular to their story.
But today – saints are men and women like us who live
ordinary lives and struggle with the ordinary and extraordinary circumstances
of life. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on
God and God’s people. And so, we may ask, who are the holy ones for us
today? And what does holiness look like in our time and place?
Are we not all called to holiness by our very Baptism?
The time is now, and we are here.
It can be said that holiness is conditioned by socio-cultural
and religious factors. In the early centuries, the martyr paradigm certainly
was a manifestation of God’s holiness. As one author remarks: "For
centuries the church has presented the human community with role models of
greatness. We call them saints when what we really often mean to say is 'icon,'
'star,' 'hero,' ones so possessed by an internal vision of divine goodness that
they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. They give
us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves."- Joan
D. Chittister in A Passion for Life
And so in our age, when there is renewed awareness of the
suffering of innocent people through human trafficking, or through the
exploitation of developing world countries, or through the tragic systematic
death of peoples by means of torture, famine, and genocide, then we can be sure
that the saints will be those who lives are spent working tirelessly to
alleviate the suffering. Because the time is now, and they are here.
In an age when Christians are often confronted to choose
between life and death for the sake of the Gospel, the saints will boldly
choose life through the cost of death. Because the time is now, and
they are here.
In an age when there is a clash between human dignity of all
and the restrictive power of a few over all, the saints will name the injustice
and call it social sin. Because the time is now, and they are here.
In an age when there is an ecclesial restriction of gifts of
the Spirit to some groups but not to others, the saints will witness to the
freedom of the Spirit to give gifts as the Spirit chooses, regardless of
restrictive laws about use of the gifts. Because the time is now, and
they are here.
In an age when discrimination, elitism, and oppression
operate in society, in governments and in churches, the saints will again
proclaim the reign of God and be "voice and heart, call and sign of the
God whose design for this world is justice and mercy for all." Because
the time is now, and they are here.
Because the nature of sainthood is an incarnational reality,
the shape and form of holiness may change from age to age and culture to
culture. But the Spirit of the Holy will continue to call people who are
here now, and those beyond our communities . . .
to witness to the freedom of the Spirit;
to run, to risk, and wonder at our daring;
to boldly choose life through the cost of death; to confront the oppressors and
marvel at our courage; and work tirelessly for the people of God as we proclaim
God’s reign.
For it is God’s caring we witness and
God’s love we share because the time is now, and we are here.
