How Do I Become a Saint?

Today (October 1st) is the feast day of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux who declared "I want to be a saint".  With these words she gives us a hint to answer our opening question.  Unless you want to be holy, you will not be holy.  Unless you want to please God, you will not please God.  To be a saint, you must will it.

Being a saint isn't as complicated as one may think, for all who are in the Lord Jesus Christ are saints ("holy ones").  The Apostle Paul often addressed the Christians in his letters as saints.  These were baptized men and women who expressed faith in Christ and lived it out in love.  If that describes you, then you qualify as a saint!  You may not be a capital-S canonized Saint proclaimed by the Church, but you are a saint, nonetheless.

As Thérèse discovered, wanting to be a saint begins in the soul allowing the love of God to penetrate our hearts, turning from a disordered love of self to the love of God and neighbor.  As Saint Thérèse described,

On the day of my conversion Charity entered into my heart and with it a yearning to forget self always; thenceforward I was happy.  

Subsequently, she decided that her way to heaven was in becoming little.  

I applied myself above all to practice quite hidden little acts of virtue; thus I liked to fold the mantles forgotten by the Sisters, and sought a thousand opportunities of rendering them service.

Though simple, we know that remaining a saint isn't always easy.  Being holy is an ongoing process and requires a daily surrender of our will to God.  The good news is that God is always ready to give us the grace we need to be and remain holy - through faith, prayer, the Sacraments, and through one another as the Church.

If you haven't done so already, begin today by declaring out loud, "I want to be a saint!" and join Saint Thérèse in her "little way" through faith and action.

How does God Think?

Imagine you have only one thought.  Choose a thought (make it a good one), close your eyes and focus on just the one thought....It seems like an odd exercise, but probably difficult to focus.  I realize how limited one thought for us is and how limited I am.

How does God think?

God’s thought is not sequential, it is eternal.  We could say that the thought of God is singular.  Imagine that! ONE THOUGHT; but unlike our thought, this one thought of God is HUGE, with an infinite number of levels and facets and dimensions.  It includes every thing, every one, every time, and every place.  There is nothing that he has not already considered and accounted for in His one thought.  I dare to add that God’s thought has a certain priority:  the highest of which is His love for and the salvation of His people.  It may surprise us, but God’s highest priority in our life is not our academic success, it’s not our financial stability, it’s not our health, our love life, or anything else UNLESS it is directly connected to our salvation.

How do I know this is his highest priority?  Because of the conversation Jesus has with Simon (Peter) and the disciples.  He explains that “he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  At the heart of suffering is love.  And Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of the love of God.  In this way, he won forgiveness for sin and restored the relationship of the human race with God.

In our lives and especially when we are suffering, our thoughts can be many and limited.  They are temporal and earthly; and Jesus basically says here, that our thoughts are vastly different than God’s.  Unless God reveals himself to us.  And this is why God sent us prophets like Jeremiah, and his only Son, so that our minds might be renewed by participation in the eternal thought, the eternal love of God, who has for our destiny, a heaven worth far much more than anything on earth.

Jeremiah
Today, our first example is Jeremiah, who prophesied the defeat of Judah by the Babylonians because they had abandoned God, committed idolatry, and forsaken morality.  His reward, as we heard, was derision ridicule and reproach.

In this context, he says he was duped by the Lord.  Being a prophet, telling the truth, proclaiming and living the word of God, did not bring him glory in this life, but suffering.  In his trials, he says that he will speak of God no longer, but alas, he cannot hold it in.

I want to impress upon you how Jeremiah’s knowledge of God is not primarily academic in nature, but relational.  Jeremiah did not study to be a prophet; God called him.  Together they had a relationship and from that relationship, Jeremiah’s knowledge and experience of God grew.  Because of this relationship he was open to God’s understanding of events even in these moments of trial.  If we read a little further in Jeremiah’s lament, we hear how he is renewed in his thinking:
“But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not prevail.”

We, like Jeremiah are called to know and proclaim the Word of God.  Each of us, baptized into the Body of Christ, share in the prophetic role of Christ in word and deed.  Perhaps your entire experience of God has been more academic (religious education classes) than relational, and you long for something more.  The good news is that God has already made the first move for you.

He sent His Son from Eternity into time so that everyone could be a prophet.  In baptism, each of us has received the Word made Flesh into our very souls.  Faithful to His promises, the eternal Triune God came to dwell in each of us.  Jeremiah received the word of God and could not hold it in.  Have you ever experienced the joy of that kind of relationship with God?  One in which you cannot contain the words or feelings or knowledge welling up within you?  Perhaps there is something holding us back.
How?

Epistle
I his letter to the Romans, St Paul states: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  His language implies that we have an active choice in allowing God to transform us.  He will not impose his will on us without his consent.

Such a transformation would be daunting if we had to rely on our human strength, but, again, God has already made the first move.  He has promised and delivered the grace we need to begin this renewal with an act of faith, of simple trust in God to accomplish His work in you.

Therefore, the renewal of our minds is not something we do blindly.
It is not devoid of reason,
does not eradicate prior knowledge,
does not deny previous experience;
rather God’s grace builds on our past and actually redeems it because all that we are and what we have experienced is of value to God.

In addition, renewal of the mind is
objective:  the goal is our salvation, (His highest priority), and
it is personal: each person experiences renewal in a manner particular to themselves for the good of all in the Body of Christ.
Moreover, Paul says, God’s will is “good, pleasing, and perfect”, which means that anything he has allowed us to experience, positive or negative, is part of His plan.

It is important to note that for God, His will and his thought are the same.  His eternal thought is his eternal will.  With this in mind, we come to the gospel passage where Jesus is confronted by Peter.

Gospel
Perhaps Simon Peter was feeling duped.  As we heard last week, he had just proclaimed Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God”, and now, Jesus is telling them he has to suffer and die.  Peter cannot accept this path for his Christ.   In his mind, Christ is to conquer the enemies of Israel and establish a kingdom on Earth.  Peter needed a renewal in his thinking; therefore, Christ rebuked him harshly and even tells him so.  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

The words he spoke before were from the heavenly Father, but these words are contrary to God’s plan.  See how Jesus does not change to meet Simon’s expectations, but goes on to emphasize his point and call all his disciples to carry the cross.

Do we not feed duped from time to time, like Jeremiah or Simon Peter as we struggle to understand why God allows both good and evil to occur in our lives?  Some would have us believe that we are promised happiness in this life if we did all the right things, or did only what we wanted, or simply had enough faith in Jesus; but when we meditate on the cross, we realize the first thing we need is His grace to help us and sustain us every step of the way.  Grace to properly understand not just the sufferings of life, but even why we should have joy and success while others suffer.  Ultimately, we will not have an adequate understanding of our place in God’s eternal plan if we do not have a relationship with Him and through His Son.

Today, in your relationship with God, I encourage you to memorize the words of today's Psalm (63) and let them be your words:

O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me.

Homily for the Funeral of Joseph Hilkert

There are a good number of jokes involving Saint Peter and the pearly gates of heaven; and, as far as I am aware, Joe Hilkert knew them all.  Perhaps he told you one of them (two or three times).  Joe knew how to laugh, and it was hard not to laugh when Joe was laughing.  Joe also knew tears - tears of joy, of sorrow, of repentance, and tears of deep gratitude.  More importantly, Joe understood what we heard in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord...will destroy the veil that veils all people.
The web that is woven over all nations. He will destroy death forever.
The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces;
The reproach of his people he will remove…

This mountain was Mount Zion, where the Jewish people worshipped in Jerusalem at the temple, and the veil refers to the curtain that separated the people from the holiest place on earth, the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God was among his people.  This veil separated the people because sin separated them from God.  By extension, the veil reminds us that our sin brought the shadow of death which has been the reproach of all humankind everywhere on earth throughout time.
Joe knew that Jesus Christ was the Son of God sent to remove the reproach of sin and destroy the veil of death by living and suffering and dying in the flesh.  But Jesus, though fully human, was fully God.  He did not sin nor did he remain in the grave.  Rising on the third day, Jesus Christ brought power and redemption to the human experience and to every person who would call on God faithfully.

For the Jews who had become followers of Christ, Mount Zion was no longer a hill in Jerusalem, but the Church, the city of God with Jesus Christ as its founder and head.  Baptized into the Body of Christ, Joe came to know and love God here at St. Joseph’s.  He also learned to love the Church, that is, his brothers and sisters in Christ, beginning with his parents and siblings, friends and classmates, and the sisters who taught at St Joseph School.  His cherished bride, Pat and their four children, their spouses and his 13 grandchildren.  Did he love you perfectly?  No, but he did love you, and I expect he did what he could to share what he learned by example.

It was evident that Joe loved Christ and His Church, and was especially fond of the first disciple, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  We know he was not unduly outspoken about his Catholic Faith in public, yet it was hard to miss the large crucifix he wore about his neck and that one well-known sign in his shop which read, “Eternity: Smoking or non-smoking?”  Indeed, this was in character with Joe’s penchant for jokes, yet in a small way, Joe was asking a very important question of his customers - a question he was asking himself.
As St. Paul told the Romans:

We shall all stand before the judgement seat of God; [and] each of us shall give an account of himself to God.

There are many who have not given this reality enough consideration.  In this post-Christian age, it’s not fashionable to speak in absolutes.  Joe understood, however, that whether they were fashionable or not, God had loved us enough to reach out to us and tell us his absolutes; and so, Joe lived his life accordingly.  He knew nobody was perfect, including himself, yet he did not use that as an excuse.  He was not too proud to acknowledge his sins and confess them, turning to God for forgiveness and the grace to do better.

He knew that preparing himself for the moment of judgment was not something that we can knowingly put off.  Baptized into Christ, he had an obligation to live out his relationship with God on a daily basis.  The most important way in which Joe prepared himself centered around this altar which presented to Joe the grace to strengthen his faith and to be more like Christ.
In the Gospel from the Apostle John.  Jesus makes an amazing declaration and and promise:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven…. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.”  With these words, Jesus makes clear that he has come to save not just our souls, but our bodies as well - that God loves all of who we are and that our bodies have a role in his plan of salvation.

When he made his claim even more emphatic and literal by saying “my flesh is true food and my blood true drink,” many of his disciples walked away and he let them go.  Even though they believed he might be the Son of God, they could not bring themselves to believe that he could do as he promised in this dialogue.

Eventually, at his last supper, on the night before he died, Jesus fulfilled his promise from the Gospel of John.  Taking bread in his hands, he said, “this is my body” and taking a cup of wine, he said, “this is my blood.” Miraculously and mysteriously, Jesus held himself in his own hands and offered himself as food and drink to his followers for the first time, then commissioned his apostles, and therefore, His Church, to do the same in memory of Him.

That which was too confounding for the early disciples did not trouble Joe Hilkert, who gazed upon the bread and wine offered on this altar week after week.  He knew that in this sacrificial meal was the true presence of Jesus Christ whom who could do as He promised; and so, Joe looked forward to being raised up body and soul on the last day.

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On a few occasions, Joe enumerated to me all the blessings he was grateful for.  From here, I can see many of them. (Especially you, Pat.) He also wondered why he was so blessed, while others weren’t.  Given the same circumstances, however, not everyone would be as grateful as Joe was.  Ultimately, it is a matter of perspective and grace; for, when faced with heart bypass surgery, and finally leukemia, he allowed both of these events to transform him into the man God wanted him to be.  He was not bitter; rather, open to the eternal plan of God, he embraced them and learned to embrace God more because of them.
Joe could do this because he trusted God to be faithful to His promises - promises like the ones we read from Isaiah, Saint Paul, and Saint John; therefore, Joe knew the consolation of a God who wiped away his tears and who sent Jesus Christ to remove the reproach of sin and destroy the veil of death by living and suffering and dying in the flesh.  And Joe was deeply grateful.
He knew that Jesus, though fully human, was fully God, who rose on the third day in order to bring power and redemption to every human experience and to every person who would believe in Him.  And Joe was deeply grateful.
Knowing that Jesus had the power to give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, Joe faithfully sat in the pew wearing a dapper suit or stood here to help serve the body and blood of Christ to his brothers and sisters. And he was deeply grateful.
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In the end, some turn to God in fear, begging forgiveness, hoping it’s not too late to repent.  Some turn to God in anger, because things didn’t turn out the way they wanted or imagined them to be.  Still others, like Joe, knowing that God can raise them up on the last day, turn to God in love and trust, and say,  “I am deeply grateful.”