+ Today is the great feast day of all the saints in heaven: the
canonized and the not yet canonized. So often we think of saints as
those who live a pure, holy and basically unearthly life and then somehow get
assumed into heavenly glory. There are a small minority of those in heaven.
There are also those specially chosen by God to go outside their often-times
selfish comfort zones and do something really important for the life of the
Church – when crises arise and spiritual heroes are needed to bolster the
faith, and lead the flock. Among these are those who found religious orders who
preach, teach, take care of the poor and the sick and the suffering.
But I think more important
than all of those are the ones who lived a real human life, encountering real
human interactions, making mistake after mistake after they committed
themselves to lead good Christian Catholic lives, but kept getting up and
starting over again – who are also called to heroic measures of self-sacrifice,
love, compassion, helping those God the Father places directly in their paths
each day: be they family, coworkers, or total strangers – who wake up when
Jesus hits them over the head somehow and says: hey I want to use you for my
game plan – in saving people, in saving the world, are you game?? St. Paul
comes to mind here, and St. Francis and saints to be like Thomas Merton, and
Dorothy Day.
These are the kind of saints
who eventually – when their own strivings and wills are smashed, put to rest
and buried: can at last think only of
doing what God would have them do: thus living the life of Beatitude
proclaimed by Jesus in the gospel passage. Brother Richard Steinberg, aka Paul
Andre, JSC RN is such a saint now that he has been “transferred to the
Motherhouse in heaven” as the Joyful Servants of the Cross like to put it – he
lived a very full life and was tempted in all of the ways the rest of us are –
but as he puts it: when God hits me over the head and gets my attention, then I
am willing to do what he asks of me: and great great things he did indeed as a
monk previously, as a soldier, as a husband, as a father, as a nurse, as a
gardener, as a gourmet cook – giving his all for the people God put in his life
– and many cats, and dogs, and birds, and geese and ducks as well!
In co-founding the Joyful
Servants of the Cross, we both followed God’s bidding – and lived 13 years a
life of true holiness, worship, study, recreation, and hard work in the
vineyard of the Lord: he as a nurse, and me as a priest.
Brother was more than ready to
make the simple leap into his promised eternal inheritance on February 5th
of this year, the feast of St. Agatha, Patron of Nurses of all days: and now
with all the other saints of any making – while glorifying God at each moment,
still do all they can for us here on earth who are still “in via” on the road
to where they are!
I have not a shadow of a doubt
that Brother is here at our monastery in spirit, and that he is very active in
inspiring and suggesting things as to how I an “keep the order going as long as
I can” – which was his last wish for the group.
Yes, there are Saints, and
then there are saints of all sizes, ages, stages and flavors: and the are just
so willing for you to pray to them, talk with me, do things with them, things
that will help the Kingdom to Come more this day than yesterday! Just think,
one day we can be saints WITH THEM! AMEN!
Blessed
be God in his angels and in his saints!
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