Today the Church celebrates All Saints’ Day. Our mind immediately goes to outstanding Church figures over the centuries such as St Peter and St Paul, St Augustine, St Dominic, St Francis of Assisi, St Ignatius Loyola, St John Bosco, Maximilian Kolbe, Pope John XXIII, Pope John-Paul II and Dun Ġorġ.

The danger in celebrating this feast day is that we, even unconsciously, consider sainthood to be limited to a few preeminent members of the Church. In fact, all baptised people are called to holiness, and all are graced with a degree of sanctity known fully to God alone.

The term ‘holy’ is reserved first and foremost to God. According to most scholars, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew root kadosh (Maltese: qaddis) means ‘separate’. God is the ‘wholly other’. No lesser reality may approach Him unless invited to do so. What human beings perceive is not so much the holiness of God but His glory. In Isaiah 6, God is adored as thrice-holy by the heavenly court.

In the New Testament, the term ‘holy’ is applied to God the Father (for example, in John 17:11), to Jesus (such as in Mark 1:24 and John 6:69) and to the Spirit (Acts 1:8 and throughout). Yet the term ‘holy’ ap­plied to God in the New Testament is not as frequent as we would expect.

Perhaps surprisingly for us, in the New Testament the term ‘holy’ is, instead, applied very frequently to the Church and its members. The Church is a ‘holy people’ (1 Peter 2:9). Christians are those who have been sanctified (Acts 20:32 thus in the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles, those baptised are called “the saints”.

Evidently the source of the sanctification of Christians is God Himself (1 Thessalonians 5:23). On the part of the baptised person, faith (Romans 3:22), baptism (1 Corinthians 6:11) and union with Christ are required, as are avoiding sin and leading an upright, moral life. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Christians makes them God’s holy temple (1 Cor. 3:16-17). Likewise, the Church as a whole is called to be holy and unstained (Ephesians 5:27).

After Vatican II, there has been a move to recognise more lay men and women as role models for people, to inspire them to live ordinary life in an extraordinary way

The Bible is forcibly saying that, although we are weighed down by sin, we belong to the communion of saints. In most Oriental Catholic and Orthodox rites, at the solemn mo­ment of elevation prior to communion, the priest says: “The holy gifts for the holy ones”. This reflects the Church’s faith down the centuries that, paradoxically, baptised people, although sinners, are also saints.

Along these lines, Vatican II recalled explicitly that all Christians without exception are called to holiness. Lumen Gentium 40 states that Jesus preached holiness of life, which he initiates and perfects, to all his disciples, whatever their condition of life: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Independently of their merits, He sent His Holy Spirit to inspire Christians from within to love God with all their heart, soul and mind, and to love one another even as Christ loved them (cf. John 13:34).

After Vatican II, there has been a move to recognise more lay men and women as role models for people, to inspire them to live ordinary life in an extraordinary way. Lay saints who have been canonised include Giuseppe Moscati, Gianna Molla and the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux.

For different reasons, sanctity may be shunned by believers, for instance by some put off by the judgemental ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude of other Christians, who then slip up badly on vital issues like charity. But that does not justify refusing to enter into the gradual personal movement towards sanctity, resembling Jesus, who has poured forth his Holy Spirit into our hearts, enabling us to whole-heartedly love God and neighbour.

Today’s feast is a renewed call to us as baptised people: we are weak and sinful and yet called to live out our vocation to sanctity in our day-to-day lives. As Blessed Mother Teresa once said: “Holiness is not a luxury of the few. It is a simple duty for you and me”.

Fr Robert Soler is a member of the Society of Jesus.

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