The present need: Saints

If newspaper reports on lawlessness and crimes are already becoming a trauma to us, the Beatitudes celebrated in the Word of God today could avert a social nervous breakdown. The crime situation takes too much of the time of worried leaders. The sad part of this is the psychological effect of rampant crime on our lawmen in Congress, our Cabinet members in the Executive branch and our judges in the Judiciary. The more criminals prove their crime can pay after all, the harder becomes the attitude of the authorities. Death penalty was the outcry for killing, drug-trafficking, rape, kidnapping. And here we all are asking ourselves: “Could we take harsher methods as the ultimate solution?” This is a hard question. And harder still is the fact of sin, deliberate, grievous, criminal sin with all its malice staring us in the face.

No, God cannot be present to a rapist, a kidnapper, a murderer, a drug-pusher, a sex-queen who seduces men to sin. These are those who live in open rebellion to God and His laws. But why? Why this rebellion? Have we failed as families, evangelizers, catechists, as educators in schools, as catalysts in government and business, as leaders of our people? The whole situation does come like a disappointment and we have become helplessly incapable of stopping it. Or is this situation the violent reaction to the impersonalism of our age? Automation, mass media, other mass orientations driving people into a state of loneliness and despair. Technology which makes man part of the machinery of production, overwhelming strides in scientific discoveries which dwindle man’s stature to the size of an ant, shoving him onto islands where he feels utter alienation. Men are not functioning as persons that way so much as zip codes, numbers, and more numbers. What they do is an assurance in our attitudes, our thoughts, our actions that we know them as persons who may be lost and alone, who need you to affirm the reality of their personhood. People run haywire whichever way so they can forget their desperation. The personal savior in Jesus Christ is the truer fact about the only one Who sincerely loves and wants us and therefore will save us.

God’s primary revelation to us is Redeemer, and His law comes to us as  a law of love within no other context except that of God being Savior in Jesus Christ. It is in this relating personally to Jesus that the transformation from sinner to saint begins. And it is in this relating that love comes into play. There can be no force greater than the love of Christ which can convert a sinner. Only when the following of the law becomes a response of love for God and for the neighbor does sainthood qualify a person. Because sainthood is nothing but living not anymore one’s self but Christ living in us, as St. Paul tells us.

The ten commandments are the least one can do for a loving God. But their very essence is in the spirit of the law expressed in the Beatitudes. The inspiring challenge is this Sermon on the Mount which Jesus summarized in His last significant sermon before He died: “You will live in my love if you keep my commandment, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in His love.” (John 15:10)

The perspective of sainthood cannot be outside an all-encompassing love. How is it proven? It for Christ’s sake one is poor in spirit, shares in the passion of Christ by suffering, is humble, meek, merciful, focused on God, a peacemaker. This is how we get to be counted among the ‘blessed’. This is how we get to be a saint even in this life. If something goes wrong with the world and people begin losing themselves, it is because we have a dearth of saints, i.e., we have more sinners than saints. While we celebrate the feast of All Saints Day, we don’t say: “Oh, we are poor sinners; we cannot be like the saints, sapagkat kami ay tao lamang.” We often make that excuse to justify our wrongdoing as if sainthood is only for a few chosen ones. No, sainthood is for everyone. We are called to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy. Once I had quoted Leon Bloy in one of my columns, the French author who ended his novel with the words “There is only one misery and that is not to become a saint” (from The Woman Who is Poor). Maybe it would not be an exaggeration to say within the context of our crime situation here in the Philippines: There is only one tragedy and that is not to become a saint. This reality should make us keener on the Beatitudes as a core message with its challenge: Sainthood is possible only when we relate personally to Jesus, our Savior. For that matter, only when we attain to sainthood here,  in the hereafter are we saved.

31st S in O.T.: Lk 19:1-10