How to become a saint

Today the Pope makes Cardinal Newman a saint (well, almost - today he becomes Blessed Newman. He'll have to wait a while before he becomes St. Newman) Speaking earlier to children, the Pope urged them to aspire to sainthood.

So how do you become a saint? According to Paul (before the church made him an official 'saint') you don't become one: you are one. Writing to Christians in Corinth, Colossae and Philippae, he begins each letter with Dear Saints (or words to that effect).

Wouldn't we all like to be better people? Aren't most of us fed up, from time to time, with the way we are: our failure to love and care for our fellow human beings? "Oh! I'll never be a saint," we say, usually thinking of some outstanding person whose life is either an inspiration or a rebuke to us. "We feebly struggle, they in glory shine" goes the line from the famous hymn, 'For all the saints'.

But suppose the churches (all of them, not just the Roman Catholics) have got it wrong. Suppose it's not a question of finally getting there: after years of struggle and self-denial finally arriving at saintliness? Suppose it's really a question of discovering who we really are and letting that wonderfully profound, disturbing discovery permeate our whole being? True, the discovery might lead some of us into a life of struggle but not feebly: joyfully.

The whole point of this blog, as the title suggests, is that this realisation, this aliveness happens now; not in some static future but in each fluid, ever-changing Now. It can only happen in each Now. To be sure some of us are far more gifted than others but that is a matter of genes, not spirituality.

(Saint) Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive". Not, you notice, being good but being full of life.