Dear Friends in Christ,
Our rich liturgical calendar is full of popularly-known saints this month of August and we will benefit by turning our focus toward the topic of saints and sinners. Most of us tend to associate ourselves with the latter, not daring to consider ourselves as saints. But our alignment can influence the unfolding of our lives in a way that perhaps we haven’t considered. How we think about ourselves matters.
St Paul refers to the baptized recipients of his letters as “saints,” those sanctified in Christ (1Cor1:2, 2 Cor1:1, Col 1:2, Eph1:1). He exhorts the faithful to “…think of yourself as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:11),” and then goes on to explain this new life in Christ. So, the Baptized are dead to sin and sanctified in Christ. Through our Baptism we have been made the holy ones of God, and we are called to live out of that holiness as saints, that we might live for all eternity in and with God. That is the most important of ALL things for us, and it should awaken in us an exciting hope!
What does it mean to be a saint, to be holy? It is to follow the will of God, which is to be like His Son, Jesus, which is to love. When we sin, we turn away from love; but we are no longer slaves to sin (Rom 6). Sin is a choice.
Here is why how we think about ourselves matters…If I see myself as a sinner, then sin can easily become inevitable, ordinary, to be expected. I feel trapped in a repetitive cycle with no hope to escape. I believe myself unworthy, lowly, lacking in value. I step further and further away from God in repetitious sin and discouragement. If I see myself as a saint, as one sanctified in Christ, as aligned with God, and called to live out of the status of beloved child of the Heavenly Father, then I will begin to see my sins in a whole new light. They will become bigger and even more serious than I had thought, and I will grab hold of all my spiritual weapons and go powerfully forward for God, fighting the inclination to sin. And when I “forget who I am” and fall into sin I can come back to my Father and be forgiven and restored through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, filled with hope.
Do you think of yourself as someone made holy in Christ (saint) who falls, or as a sinner who occasionally does the right thing?
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