A Simple Saint

                This morning in Rome, Pope Francis officially declared what the world has known for decades:  Mother Teresa is a saint.  Few doubt her place among the Church Triumphant, having witnessed her powerful ministry to the poorest of the poor, but the tremendous and persistent outcry for her canonization from people of all religious backgrounds and walks of life testifies to something more.  Mother Teresa wasn’t a powerful pope like St. John Paul II.  She wasn’t a brilliant theologian like St. Thomas Aquinas, nor a glorious martyr like St. Joan of Arc.  Mother Teresa was a simple woman who did “small things with great love.”  That’s exactly the kind of saint we needed – a simple saint.

                There’s a lot of confusion about what saints are and what they’re not.  Though we tend to romanticize the lives of the saints, saints aren’t gods or icons of worship.  Saints aren’t distant figures who entered heaven through some special, God-given advantage.  Most importantly, saints aren’t perfect.  Saints walked the earth, faced tough choices, made mistakes, suffered and died just like everybody else does.  Saints are real people – real people who lived life well enough to receive the crown of victory.  Like great generals, political leaders and sports figures in the secular world, saints are our spiritual heroes and our greatest role models.   

 But we should never forget that saints are also our best friends and closest allies.  They’re always on our side, encouraging us to live life well and praying that we, too, may obtain the crown of eternal life.  So we should pray to the saints like we talk to our BFFs.  We should share our problems with them, seek their support and ask them to put in a good word for us with God. 

        

The challenge with sainthood for us is that it seems so unachievable.  How could an average Joe like me ever become a saint?  “I’m no Mother Teresa.”  Well, if the standard for sainthood is superhuman virtue, then apparently Mother Teresa was no Mother Teresa either.  She was known to be short-tempered and impatient, and she has been roundly criticized for not doing enough to improve the conditions of the poor.  Mother Teresa’s success in life wasn’t in being perfect, it was in simply following Jesus as best she could.  In doing so, she proved that doing “small things with great love” isn’t just highly achievable, it’s highly contagious.  She began the Missionaries of Charity alone, seeking out the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta.  By 2016, her simple example has inspired so many that the order is now blessed with more than 4,500 religious sisters in 133 countries. 

Saints like Mother Teresa inspire real people to use their God-given talents, as simple as they may be, to help others.  We need more saints like Mother Teresa to teach us that sainthood is the only goal worth living for.  We need more saints like Mother Teresa to prove that sainthood is highly achievable.  We need more saints like Mother Teresa to hold our hand along the journey and show us how we can become simple saints, too. 

            Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!