The Universal Call to Holiness
What if I said that you, right now, are being called by God to become a Saint? Saint Paul, writing about God’s plan for the human person, says this in his letter to the Ephesians, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (1:4). Paul is referring to all believers! Every one of us, by virtue of our baptisms, by virtue of our being faithful members of the body of Christ, are called to holiness!
What does it mean to be holy? What does holiness mean? Why does Christ call us Christians to be holy? One of the biggest misperceptions among Christians is that holiness is a luxury reserved for the elect few.1 As if it was something that, even among Christians, is unattainable without a special favor from God.
The divine plan is that every one of us be conformed to the image of Christ. It is for this reason that Paul tells his disciple Timothy that God saved us, and called us to a holy calling. As mentioned in earlier lesson segments, salvation and justification are Gifts of Grace that God gives by His own Divine initiative. This is why Paul goes on to write, “[He] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.”2 We were chosen to be believers in Christ, to be Christians, that we might be holy!
A Personal God
In the person of Christ, God made himself living, close, and personal to us. God became tangible, real, and relatable to each and every person. The purpose of this is so that everyone who encounters Christ might be drawn in the grace of the Holy Spirit into Christ’s fullness of grace and truth. Jesus Christ is the law of life for all men.
Holiness is simply the fullness of the expression of human life as God meant it to be. This is because it is the fullness of expression of the way Christ himself lived. In other words, holiness simply means full conformity to the pattern of Christ’s life, full union of our intellect and will to his, full submission to everything that he wills for us.
How do we achieve this? By constant meditation on his life, by constant prayer that we may be close to him, by constant desire to fulfill all that he asks of us, by continual reading of his word, and by active participation in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. Through all this, the Christian person becomes more and more conformed into the person of Christ himself.
Set Apart for Christ
Having been bought by the blood of Christ, Christians are set apart for a life lived entirely in Him. This life we call a life of holiness. It is for this reason that Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:7 that, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”
The Second Vatican Council understood this very clearly. In its dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Council exhorts all of the faithful to embrace this universal call to holiness: “The forms and tasks of life are many but holiness is one — that sanctity which is cultivated by all who act under God’s Spirit and… follow Christ, poor, humble and cross-bearing, that they may deserve to be partakers of his glory.”3
Now, the Council is not coming up with some novel way to live out the Christian life. In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord says it plainly, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).
Walking the Path of Holiness
To begin the life of holiness, God begins within us first, before we even think about being perfect, or even just being good. God is there with His grace. Therefore, in the letter to the Hebrews, the sacred author exhorts us to boldness: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (4:16). Grace is that confidence. Grace unites us to his throne. Grace connects us to this mercy. Grace enables us to move forward gradually to the perfection of holiness, to sainthood
How do we respond to this call in concrete terms? The answer is both simple and manifold: as Our Lady said in the Gospel, “Do whatever he tells you.”4 In other words, live out in full fidelity all that is required of us by holy mother Church in love: the commandments of the Lord, the precepts of the Church, and the Christian spiritual life.
Ours is a task of living out the grace that we have first received from our loving Father in Heaven. And our Father in Heaven cannot be outdone in generosity.5 He continues to pour forth his grace into us, to guide us towards him every step of the way. And insofar as we humble ourselves like children to receive all that he gives us, he continues to bestow upon us so much more. This is what compels the Apostle James to write in his epistle, “But He gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’” (4:6).
The simplest way to begin to live out this call is to frequent the Sacraments of Holy Communion and Reconciliation. God is an understanding, unconditionally loving, forgiving, and generous Father! He knows the reality of sin and our weakness! Because of this, He establishes restoration in grace within the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Our Father is always waiting to pick us up any and every time we fall! Pope Benedict XVI said, “Holiness does not consist in never having erred or sinned. Holiness increases the capacity for conversion, for repentance, for willingness to start again and, especially, for reconciliation and forgiveness!”6
If we desire Heaven, then we need to be as God himself is. Peter, the first pope, understood this well. He writes of this as follows, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”7
Christ the Love of Our Life
In the light of all this, I exhort you: let not a single week go by where we do not encounter Christ, the love of our life, the Risen Lord, the king of kings, in the celebration of the Holy Liturgy of the Mass. This serves at the very least as a foundational benchmark for what should build up into a full life of holiness. But ultimately, our life should revolve around consistent daily encounter with Christ who is the source and summit of our entire being.
This holiness is the measure of the Christian Life. It is holiness that allows us to stand before The God who is himself all-holy and to be judged favorably by him. Why? It proves that we are his children. As His children, we are His “spitting image”. And this is cause for us to celebrate. This is a great calling, but it is also infinitely beautiful, and it is majestically simple.
The Christian Life demands nothing but our entire beings; no more, no less, and nothing else. We do all this for the sake of our own salvation. The great doctor of moral theology, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, speaks in a sobering manner about salvation. He says, “for there is no error like it [neglecting eternal salvation] in its consequences, for all errors but this, have their remedies. If a person lose his property, he may be able to recover it in some other way; if he lose a place, he may be able to regain it; even if he should lose this life and yet be saved, there is a remedy in all these cases. But for him who is lost, there is no further help.”8
The author of the letter to the Hebrews is unmistakable in this: “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (12:14). To that end then, brothers and sisters, that we might “see the Lord” — by the grace of God Almighty, let us be holy as God himself is holy.
This call to Salvation is urgent. We were made for God, and to God we must return. Our time here on earth is temporary. The beautiful hope of the Christian life lies in the fact that the life we live here in the valley of tears pales in comparison to the life that we will behold and live in Heaven. St. Paul himself pondered on this reality. He writes that, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”9 Such is our hope.
In the next segment, we will explore the truths of what the Church calls “the four last things.,” I invite all of us to hold on to this hope: Christ has died for us so that death becomes a doorway into heavenly happiness with God.
1 Pope Benedict XVI corrected this misperception in his Angelus Address of November 1, 2007.
2 2 Timothy 1:9.
3 Lumen Gentium 41.
4 Cf. John 2:5.
5 Cf. 2 Corinthians 9.
6 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church: General Audiences 15 March 2006–14 February 2007 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 141. See also the original Address online.
7 1 Peter 1:15-16.
8 Orby Shipley (edit.), Preparation for Death (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1869), 89-90.
9 Romans 8:18.