Sainthood, July 12, 2017 Daily Reflection

I have been reading about the lives of many different saints. Most of them went through different stages of belief, self-exploration, suffering, detachment, and ultimately intense communion with God. Everyone of the saints were living human beings, who sinned, made mistakes and lived human lives. Many of the saints had conversions from a life of mortal sins to turning their lives over to the will of God.

Bishop Robert Barron says that all of us should strive to be saints. He says that money, fame, power, and honor are things of this world and they don’t matter, nor do they last. What we should strive for is to be in complete union with God. We should strive to go through the journey of a saint, purification, detachment letting everything go, illumination, giving our lives to God so his light can shine completely through our lives.

I want to be a saint. Like the saints I am a human being, a sinner, a normal person, who wants to be as close as I can possibly be to God. I try to do God’s will daily, daily I miss the mark and sin, I want to move out of the way and let God’s light shine through my life, I get in the way constantly. I want to detach from things, I am pretty good at that but I have not detached from all things of this world. I continue to sin in my thoughts and actions when I make selfish choices, neglect the needs of others, and do not love as God loves. I know that money, fame, power, and honor are worldly things that I don’t need but I am constantly tempted by them. I am fully human but I am still going to strive to be a saint, even if it is the saint with the little ‘s’ instead of the big ‘s’.

We should all strive to be saints. Do you want to be a saint? You have the qualifications, you were created by God and you are a human being, everything else you can work towards!