“The only tragedy is not to be a saint”, wrote the French novelist Léon Bloy. St. John Vianney was thought to be a very holy man, even in his own lifetime. A woman was grabbing him because she wanted a relic. St. John Vianney told her, “Make one of your own!” Aren’t we all called to be saints? Don’t we want to be part of that “great multitude,” mentioned in the First Reading from Revelation? Sure we do! We wouldn’t be here otherwise, right? Notice: the angels show us what to do. They cry “Blessing and glory … honor, power and might be to our God forever and ever.” How do we do that? We do that, give glory to God, with our lives: what we do with our lives and how we live our lives.
Notice the readings the Church puts before us today. The Book of Revelation says that this great multitude have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.” We begin to do this here on earth before we die. How do we do that? We do that by the way we serve God and others. We are given strength to serve when we receive the Eucharist. The Eucharist also takes away our sins. We say: “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” We ‘wash our robes’ in this way – or rather Christ washes them for us by his dying and rising.
All of us here at St. Andrew are serving God and washing our robes doing what we’re doing right now. The young people, too, right? Our gifts are not just for us. This is the point. They are for others AND for our own sanctification – that is, God’s light shines through us – all of us — as through a stained glass window as we serve God’s people and help to bring about God’s reign on earth. Then when we die, after our purification, we join all the holy ones “who have done God’s will throughout the ages” as the Eucharistic Prayer says. They pray for us. Those not in the canon, too, pray for us. We celebrate them all, and we want to join them one day. The question for discernment is this: Do your own plans and ambitions also serve God’s plans and ambitions — for you and for God’s people? If yes, great. You are on the way to sainthood. And you are blessed like those Jesus mentions in the Beatitudes in today’s gospel: they are blessed and they are saints because they served God very, very well. Remember: “The only tragedy is not to be a saint” And who of us doesn’t want to be a saint and wind up on a stained glass window?