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     Happy Feast of all Saints! What does it take to be a Saint? Besides the affirmation of the Church, if you are shooting for your own feast day and all that, it takes holiness. Holiness is not something we earn, but rather something we are given by surrendering our lives to God in service, prayer and love of neighbor. The real saintmaker is the Holy Spirit, and one of the things I learned from my favorite theologian, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, is that God makes us saints by making us more human. When we look at the lives of the saints, which is something that we do not do enough of these days, we see that they can be serious, silly, cranky, and even absent minded. This is because they have their feet firmly planted on earth and their souls firmly planted in heaven.

     For human beings, spiritual perfection is not being flawless, but rather making use of all that God has given us to become the truest persons we can be. Sin is not part of that equation. Sin makes us less human. We cannot imitate Christ in his divinity, but by the examples of the Saints, we know that we can imitate him in his humanity.

      This is the month to really come to know the Saints of the Church. Their lives are an important part of our heritage. I would recommend the Four Volume Butler’s Lives of the Saints, the older edition. The new edition published by Liturgical Press press omits all the good stuff and is pretty lame.  I would also recommend the two Books of Modern Saints published by Tan Books. They are great editions to more contemporary saints. We need all the examples of holiness we can get our hands on.

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