How often have you said of
someone you know and loved, “She was a saint”; or “He was no saint”? What makes
a “saint” a saint anyway?
You heard this week that the Pope
of the Roman Catholic Church is near to declaring that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a Saint? Can
there be any doubt that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a saint? I think not. Mother Teresa is a model for all Christians,
indeed for all people who worship the One True God, of humble servanthood. She was Jesus to so many people, following
the leading of Jesus to all of his disciples as she cared for the poor. I join
the Pope in holding her up as someone who devoted her life to God in a way
which teaches me and all who will be saints what it means to be a transformed
disciple of Jesus. But, are her deeds, is the good she did on this earth, that
which makes Mother Teresa a saint? Our friends in the Roman Catholic Church
will declare she is a saint because of two verified miracles of healing for
those who prayed to Mother Teresa after she was dead. That is a part of their
definition of sainthood. I do not judge their understanding of the faith, but I
do disagree with it. Again, I don’t disagree with the conclusion about the good
Mother Teresa, just how her church got to their conclusion.
I believe that the saints do
not “earn” their status in this life or in death. The saints are those who, by
grace alone, are called into the fellowship of God. The category of “saints” includes that
grandma to whom you attribute sainthood, not because she was so good and kind,
but because she was a child of grace.
This Christmas week I urge you to give thanks for all of your “saints
who from their labors rest”. No miracle
other than the miracle of the grace of God being visited upon them is needed.
Sainthood is not attained by being good, but by the work of this Baby Jesus
whom we come and worship this Christmas, the work of that Baby on his Cross
done “for all the saints”, like me and you. Miracles happen, not because of the
saints, but because of God alone, for God alone possesses the power and deserves
the glory. In giving praise to the “saints”,
we are giving praise to God alone. So, here is my Christmas prayer for you,
dear readers and friends; dear saints by the grace of God and the body of the
Baby Jesus:
“ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend,
with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
(Ephesians 3:18-19, NRSV)
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