On Wednesday of this week, the Church celebrates the Feast of all Saints – men and women, girls and boys who have taken God’s love to heart and have lived out its vast possibilities.
These people in every way are like us and maybe a little bit more. They have this outstanding quality: they have responded to the awakening of God. They saw God alive, alert, beckoning them. They saw people in need, and they took an important step. They became responsible for what they saw. That is the essence of holiness.
Saints come in all sorts of packages:
Stephen Biko was a South African Freedom Fighter who died in prison after a severe beating (1977).
Lioba was the cousin of Boniface. They lived in the 8th century. Eventually, she travelled from England to live and catechize in Germany, even after Boniface died.
Stanislaus Kostka was a boy when the walked from Poland to Rome to seek admission to the Jesuits (16th Century). He died shortly after he began his studies.
Sergius was Russian Orthodox (14th Century). It is said of him that “his transparent holiness illuminates an entire age.” (Blessed Among Us)
Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker reformer (19th Century). The mother of eleven, she went to visit Newgate prison one day. What she saw prompted her into prison reform.
Saints are not necessarily Roman Catholic. They are believers in God who have sipped from the cup that Jesus held to His lips on the cross, and they became His uniquely. They thirsted for God and God quenched their thirst.
I count my grandfather, Casimer, among the saints. As a young Polish conscript, he deserted from the Russian army, fled across the Atlantic and found himself a boarder in my grandmother Tillie’s rooming house in Lackawanna, NY. She was by that time a widow with a small son. Casimer and Tillie married and moved out to a farm in Eden, NY where my mother was born. Grandpa Casimer lived until I was a novice. He died on our Congregational founding day, October 15. St. Casimer has watched over me all these years.
How about you? Who are the saints of your family, your neighborhood? Who lived /lives with eyes open to the needs of the people?
Are you a saint in process? Don’t hesitate to want to be one. Some new yearning for God may already be in you.
Enjoy this holy day as you explore it in new ways.
Know that the God who calls you
Will stir up courage within you,
Will accompany you in your waking,
Will sustain you in your seeing. (Jan Richardson)
~ Sister Joan Sobala
