Saints are those who see themselves as sinners

Pope Francis making his confession

A Rabbi used to say that the sinners were closer to God than the righteous. And he explained it by saying that as a means of communication, there exists a thread that links our head to the hand of God. Each time we sin the thread breaks and as the result so does our communication with God. But each time we recognize our sin, and we repent, a knot is made to tie the broken threads together thus restoring the communication. When by chance we return to sin and again we repent, another knot is made; and as we keep sinning and repenting, the thread becomes every time shorter. In this way the Rabbi concluded, sinners are closer to God than the righteous.

The declared saints
The Church has a formal process that tends to be time consuming to declare someone a saint. First, responding to the petition of the faithful because of “fame of sanctity” of that particular person, the biography of the respective candidate is analyzed with a fine comb: virtues and flaws, writings, sermons, works. If the prospects are good, a postulator is appointed and the candidate is declared “Servant of God”.

The postulator then examines carefully the life of the candidate for sainthood and presents his conclusions to the Pope who declares the candidate “Venerable” meaning that the Servant of God lived the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, in a heroic way.

Since the cause of beatification and canonization appears at times to be a tribunal case, beside the figure of the postulator stands the caricatured figure of “the devil’s advocate”. During the entire process, while the postulator finds ways to prove the virtues of the candidate, the devil’s advocate, who in our civil process is the district attorney or the prosecutor, seeks to remove the importance placed on the virtues by evidencing the flaws of the candidate.

The next step is beatification. If the candidate was a martyr, and has been sufficiently proven that he gave his life in defense of the faith, the pope declares him Blessed. If the candidate was not martyred then heaven must decide, that is, the postulator must present a miracle, which must be proven to have taken place through the intercession of the Venerable.

Lastly, the Blessed is declared Saint with the accreditation of a second miracle, which proves that the candidate is already enjoying the Beatific Vision. To him or her a feast day is assigned in the Church calendar, and he or she can be declared the patron saint of parish churches and the faithful can freely and without restriction, celebrate and honour the Saint.

The undeclared saints
“Not all those who live in a psychiatric residence are crazy and not all who are crazy live in a psychiatric residence”, says a Spanish proverb. After seeing how they have hastened some canonizations in recent times to satisfy the wishes or conveniences of some, I dare to use the same expression about the saints… not all who have been declared saints are indeed saints, and not all who are saints have been declared such.

There were, there are, and there will always be people who lived like saints without ever been noticed and declared such; for this reason, the Church created a solemn day to celebrate the never declared saints, that is, those whom the Eucharistic prayer refers to as those “whose faith and dedication to your service is well known”. They are given honour and veneration like the unknown soldiers of wars.

Saint is synonym for Christian
All the saints greet you, especially those of the emperor’s household. (Phil. 4:22)

To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. (Col. 1:2)

The disciples were called Christians, first in Antioch, says the book of The Acts of the Apostles. It was a name given by the outsiders, that is, by those who did not follow Christ and as such it was meant to have negative connotations associated with that name. “Christians” was not the name by which the early Christians were known. As we can see from the second text, Christians who were well known for treating each other as brothers and sisters in Christ were addressed as saints and faithful.

To call someone a saint when officially not yet true, according to the process described above, brings with it an implicit calling to sanctity. For this same reason we call Christians those who strive to be like Christ, such as St. Paul – when he said, “It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20) – but it does not mean that they are already there.

Saints are those who recognize themselves as sinners
“He who stops wanting to be better, stops being good”. (St. Bernard)
There are two types of people: those who are not aware of their faults and do nothing to be better, and those who are aware of their faults and make efforts to be better every day.

Those who do nothing to improve themselves do not stay always the same, on the contrary, each day they become progressively worse. In the moral life, like in the nature, there is a law of gravity; whoever is not going up is coming down; whoever, aware of his imperfections, does nothing to be better each day, will not remain as he is but will go from bad to worse; whoever does not progress will regress.

When I lose the awareness that I am a sinner, then I am truly lost. St. Francis of Assisi, was perhaps the one person who came the closest to almost fully imitate Christ to the point of being called the “Alter Christus” and despite being in life already regarded as a great saint by his companions, he saw himself as a sinner and used to run down the streets of Assisi like a madman shouting, “I am a great sinner”. In fact, the truly wise judge themselves as ignorant, only the ignorant believe themselves to be wise; the true saints judge themselves as sinners, only some sinners believe they are saints.

I may have come far on the path of holiness, but what makes me grow even more, what makes me progress even more is to be able to find sins, defects, and imperfections in my life. For this, all I need is to refine my self-consciousness by making it sharper with the Gospel and surely I will always find something I need to change in myself. The true saints do not see themselves as such; on the contrary, they consider themselves sinners.

The true saints, after having converted from great sins, continually seek, in their conscience, other offenses that escape the examination of conscience of less holy people. They are really nitpicky in examining the bottom of their conscience, finding always something to accuse themselves, therefore they are always in a continuous process of conversion.

In the parable of the sower, the soil is to be blamed when nothing grows; a good soil is that which brings growth, it does not matter that it be 30% or 60% or 100%. What is important is that it produces, a bit or a lot, the quantity is of a lesser importance. We are not called to be the best, but we are called to give our best. Similarly, in the parable of the talents, what is important is not to hide the talent but to be accountable for it, the percentage of the profit being secondary.

homo simul iustus et peccator – On the path to sanctity the human person is and will always be both a saint and a sinner at the same time. To be holy is to walk on this path where today we are better than we were yesterday but not as good as we will be tomorrow. More than a state of being or a goal, to be holy is a process of perfection impelled and motivated by the ever presence of our consciousness of being a sinner.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC