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The lives of the saints teach us about the struggle for holiness. The stories of flesh-and-blood human beings, who despite their human frailties, struggled to do the will of God provide hope and inspiration for our own lives.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, discovered his vocation while reading about the lives of St.Dominic and St.Francis. Ignatius, a courageous and worldly Spanish soldier, was severely wounded by a cannon ball at the Battle of Pamplona. He was brought to a mansion to begin the slow process of recovery and healing. The only reading material available in the house were lives of the saints, not exactly the usual Spanish romances that Ignatius preferred.
He read about the zeal and heroic sacrifices of various saints and began to wonder whether he might be a saint as well. All of the energy and focus he used to be a courageous Spanish soldier and to elevate himself socially at the Spanish Court would now be focused to promote the Kingdom of God.
In the prayerful heart of Ignatius was born the Jesuit order and the counter-reformation as well as all sorts of creative faith ventures and initiatives. Ignatius discovered his mission for the Church while reading and meditating on the lives of the saints.
We too draw inspiration and fortitude by reading the lives and literature of the saints. They struggled with patience and with their tempers. They struggled with temptation and discouragement. It was in the discovery of their own frailty that they at the same time discovered the power of Christ working inside them.
The lives of the saints are filled with mistakes, sins and failures. St. Peter was in impulsive and cowardly man who had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. St.Paul persecuted Christians and was an accomplice in the murder of St.Stephen. St.Augustine was a selfish and restless young intellectual who arrogantly used other people. St.Teresa of Avila was a garrulous cloistered nun with a superficial prayer life. St.Francis de Sales and St.Vincent de Paul struggled with quick-trigger anger.
Through the gradual healing and strengthening of the Holy Spirit, these people learned from their mistakes, their failures and their sins to mistrust themselves and to trust completely in the power of Jesus Christ working within them. They threw off their light loves, their superficial attachments, their vices and their illusions into the bonfire of the Holy Spirit where they were purified.
The saints approached their weaknesses with humility. They realized that they were being formed in the image of Christ right in the crucible of their mistakes. With time and God's grace, they became more and more single-minded in dedicating their lives to Christ. They received the courage to persevere in their struggles, to trust not in themselves but in the strength and power of Christ.
The distinguishing mark of the saints is not so much their lack of faults or perfectly balanced temperaments and personalities. It is rather their willingness and urgency to rise after a fall. It is their courage in fighting the good fight.
The saints take all that they have to give - their characters, their hopes and dreams, their talents and weaknesses, their affections, their life circumstance and particular time in history - and pour them into the chalice of God's will, mingling them with the blood of Christ's suffering.
For those of us who have a tendency to go over and over our mistakes in our minds, for those of us who become discouraged and indulge in self-pity, for those of us who have given up on the possibility of curbing our tempers or becoming more patient with our spouse and our children, we turn to the saints.
They are our friends. Their writings and biographies are concrete signs of their intercession for us at the throne of God. They are beacons of light and hope. They teach us that we too can profit from our mistakes and begin again anew.
(October 31, 1996 - Dialog)
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