2 Timothy 1:9 “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” This episode is about our call to holiness and some ways to grow in holiness. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Call To Holiness
2 Timothy 1:9 “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began”
This is something that I am not sure that we are all aware of. Did you know that God is calling us to holiness? I remember when I did the Marian Consecration titled 33 days to Morning Glory, by Father Michael Gaitley, I was stunned when I learned that we are all called to be saints. I felt very uncomfortable with this idea. How could I become a saint? The Saints were so holy, they were so selfless. They gave so much of themselves to God. They made so many sacrifices. Also, they were so close to God. There is no way I could ever be that close to God. These, and many other thoughts went through my mind.
Also, if I am being honest I also had selfish thoughts. Thoughts like, “Do I want to sacrifice that much?” “Their lives seemed so hard, I don’t know if I could handle that.” Becoming a saint seemed to require so much work and the thought of it was very overwhelming. When we were doing the study, I went along with it. I didn’t really ask questions about what becoming a saint meant. I didn’t really ask about what it means to have a “holy calling.” I just did the study, and sat with this idea. I thought a lot about it.
I am not sure if I have talked about our reticular activator with you guys before or not. Your reticular activator is the filter on your brain. We see so many things in the course of the day. Our brain can’t process all that we see. Our reticular activator tells our brain what to focus on. Have you ever noticed when you decide to buy a new car, say you want at Toyota Camry, then you start to see Camry’s every. In the same way, if you start a new diet, you will start to notice things on that diet all around you. After hearing that I was called to be a saint in this study, I started thinking a lot about it. Then I started to notice other people talking about this as well.
I learned that there are two different kinds of saints. There is Saints with a capital S. These are people that have been formally recognized by the Catholic Church as Saints. There is a whole canonization process that one has to go trough to become a capitol S Saint. One of the requirements is that you have miracles associated with your name. You did not create the miracle, as only God can do that, but the miracle was granted to the person because of your intercession. If you would like to know more about the canonization process you can read about it here.
The other type of saint is everyone else that is in Heaven. Did you know only saints go to heaven? This was one of those things for me that when it is explained it makes so much sense it seems like I should have know it and yet, it honestly never occurred to me. God is perfect, and amazing and holy and almighty and all that is good. It makes so much sense that only perfect, holy, good people would be able to be in His presence. And yet, I guess I didn’t really give it much thought. I was at a mission at church one night and the speaker was Jon Leonetti. If you have not heard of this man, you should look him up. He wrote some great books. He also has a podcast called Your Catholic Life. The mission started with Jon asking us all 2 questions. The first question was, “How many of you want to get to Heaven someday?” I am sure every hand in the room was raised. Next, he asked, “How many of you want to become saints.” Can you guess how many of us raised our hands? I think there were 5 people that raised their hands. After this question he let us all know that the only way into heaven is to become a saint.
I want to clarify, because I know this was a lot when I was learning about it, and I don’t want anyone listening to this episode thinking that they are never going to be a saint so they might as well give up on heaven now. We are not called to get ourselves into Heaven. God is the only one that can turn us into saints. It even says in the verse above, “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace,” God has saved us and He is not calling us to holiness based on our works, but on his own purpose and grace. If we become saints it will not be because of something that we do, it will because of God’s grace.
You may be asking why I am even talking about this today if we can’t get into Heaven based on anything we do. My answer is that I want to make you aware of this call to holiness in case you, like me, have not heard it before. Just because you don’t have final say over the results, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do all that you can do to prepare. When you are in school and your teacher gives you a test, you don’t have control over the grade you get on that test. The teacher is the one that grades the test. However, you do have control over whether you prepare for the test or not. You can do everything in your power to prepare for that test so that you have the best chance of getting a good grade. But, what if you didn’t know about the test? What if your teacher gave you a pop quiz, would you be as prepared for that?
This may not be a perfect analogy, but it is what came to mind when I thought of a way to explain why I am telling you that you are called to be a saint. If you do not know that you are called to holiness, if you do not know that there are only saints in Heaven, then you can’t be prepared for it. You can’t do everything in your power to prepare for Heaven. And that end goal is much more important than any grade on any test.
If you are like me, your next question is how do I become a saint. I don’t need to be a saint with at capital S, but I do want to be a saint in Heaven someday. I think the first step is knowing that you have this calling and that God gave us His purpose and grace when He gave us Jesus. You already have everything you need to be holy inside of you. Being a saint does not require big gestures. You don’t have to give away all your money and possessions and live in a foreign country ministering to the poor and hungry. If you feel called to this, you are welcome to and that is great. But this is not what I am talking about.
I think small gestures of love are a great way to grow in holiness. Matthew Kelly talks about this in several books I think, but the one I think he talked about it the most in was titled, I Heard God Laugh. In this book he talks about how we can all create holy moments as we go through our day. We can hold the door open for the person behind us, we could do random acts of kindness, we could show our children a little extra patience when they really need it. All of these things are ways you can grow in holiness. God is love, and when we show that love to others we are reflecting God’s light through us.
Another way to grow in holiness is to learn about God and read His Word. I have grown so much in the last few years just by reading scripture and reading books about the Saints, and other spiritual writings. I have recently learned that a major saying in AA Alcoholics Anonymous is “If you want what I have, do what I do.” The meaning of this is for those that want the sobriety that they hear others talk about they need to do what they are doing, such as showing up for meetings, working the steps of the program, staying in contact with their sponsor or others at the meeting. I think this is also a great saying for how to grow in holiness. If you want to be like the saints, do what they do. Read about the saints and their lives. When I have read about them I learned two main things. One, they were regular people, like you and I. It is not that they did not have any struggles, they had plenty. What made them so holy is how they handled those struggles. And if they can do it, so can you. The second thing I learned is that they never gave up trying to be holy. They were humble and knew that they weren’t perfect, and they didn’t let that get in the way of them continuing to try over and over again. Read what they did and do what they did.
There are many ways that you can grow in holiness and I am sure I will talk about this again some time. However, I know you don’t have all day to listen to this episode so I will end with Purgatory. This is not a way to grow in holiness, but it is a way that helps you become a saint. God is so merciful and He knows that we are a fallen people and perfection is not in the cards for us. Instead of condemning us to hell, those that die in a state of grace get to go to Purgatory for a purification process. This is the reason for purgatory. This is where we go to be purified so that we can be good enough to be in the presence of God.
God wants us all to be saints. Yet, he also gives us free will so that if we do not choose to be in His presence we don’t have to. If you are listening to a podcast titled, Walk Boldly With Jesus, then I am sure you want to be living in the presence of God someday. This is possible. All you have to do is want it and then tell God you want it. Then do your best to live a holy life and He will do the rest. I look forward to the day we can all gather together in Heaven and celebrate the Lord together.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we accept your call to holiness and we ask that you help us to carry it out. We ask that you show us how to be holy and you put this calling on our hearts. Lord, we know that we can only get into heaven through your purpose and grace and we thank you so much for both of them. You give so much to us and we give very little back in comparison. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!