The Perfection of the Father

Jesus, I trust in you!

Last Sunday, the Lord Jesus said, “Unless your holiness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” We might have biased opinions about scribes and Pharisees because we have heard our Lord call them hypocrites. But during his time, these groups of people were the icons of religiosity because of their expertise and minute or detailed observance of the law. If there was anyone who would most likely enter the Kingdom of God, it would most probably be the scribes and Pharisees. No one could be deemed worthier than them.

But to the mind of the Lord, the meticulous observance of the law was not enough. If a person wanted to belong to the Kingdom of heaven, he had to surpass this high Pharisaic standard. In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus raised the standard of holiness. No longer are the scribes and Pharisees the standards of holiness. Instead, the standard would be the Father himself: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In the first reading, the Lord said to Moses: “Be holy, for I the Lord am holy.”

What does the holiness of the Lord mean? The holiness of the Lord means that he is not like his creatures. His ways are different. His thoughts are different. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, for I am God and not man.” That is why to be holy as God is holy means living according to the paradigms of God and not of man. This is difficult because of the immense difference between the ways of God and the ways of the created world.

For example, it is but natural for us to love our neighbor and hate our enemies. It is but natural to love those who love us, those who like us, those with whom we share common interests. It is but natural for us to love those who are good and kind to us. But the Lord tells us that our holiness must be greater than mere natural goodness. Our love must be supernatural. Thus, as the Lord is good to all the good and bad alike, so also our love must not be limited to the lovable but also must extend to the unlovable. “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors.” While it is natural to feel hatred for the enemy, loving them and praying for those who make life difficult for us is supernatural. This is because God is love. He is kind and merciful. Thus, the Lord admonishes us: “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart. Though you may have to reprove your fellow citizen, do not incur sin because of them. Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of them.” This is why “an eye for an eye

and a tooth for a tooth” does not work for us. “Kapag buhay ang inutang, buhay rin ang kabayaran,” likewise does not work for the Christian. Rather, the Christian response to evil is goodness: “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one as well. Hand over your cloak to the one who sues you for your tunic. Should anyone press you into service for 1 mile, go for 2 miles. Give to the one who asks of you, do not turn your back on the borrower.”

This is why it is so difficult to propose the way of Christ to the world. The resistance of many to the bishops’ opposition to death penalty and also to extrajudicial killing comes from the fact that the standards of God are way above the natural standards of the world. It is easy to understand why people are more inclined to Duterte’s argument: “Masama sila kaya dapat lang sila mamatay.” Killing the enemy sounds so natural because this is the way the world thinks. Many people cannot comprehend the concept of supernatural mercy and patience. “God does not delight in the death of the sinner. He desires that the sinner should repent and live.”  It takes a lot of faith and a lot of grace to comprehend God’s wisdom in his mercy and patience. And yet, if we want to go to heaven, we must make this great effort to leap from natural logic to Divine wisdom. “The wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God,” so said St. Paul. If our holiness does not surpass natural goodness (that is, the holiness of the scribes and Pharisees), then we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. No less than the perfection of the Father is what it takes in order to enter heaven. We cannot afford to lower the standards of Christian living because Jesus elevated them.

Christian life is indeed challenging because it beckons us to go beyond the limits of natural goodness. We must aim high – aim for the height of supernatural holiness. Goodness is not good enough. We must be holy as God is holy if we want to enter heaven. Pope John Paul II said: “The standards of Christianity are high. They do not admit mediocre morality nor shallow spirituality.”

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Nothing more important than this

Jesus, I trust in you!

“Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem…” These words of St. Luke fittingly describe the life and mission of Jesus on earth. The very purpose of his coming to earth is proclaimed by the Nicene Creed: “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven…” And in the life of Jesus, this is exactly what Jerusalem stood for: our Salvation. Jerusalem was the place where prophets were killed. Jerusalem was where Jesus would be crucified and be offered as a sacrifice in atonement for our sins. This is why his life on earth was a journey, a resolute journey towards Jerusalem. The adverb used is “resolutely”…desididong desidido. His mind was made up. His will is sure. This is the reason why he was sent. This was the reason why he came. If he did not go up to Jerusalem, his incarnation would be rendered useless. (Sometimes, I go to the mall with the clear intent of buying an item but eventually I get distracted by other things and end up going home with some other items without the original intent of the mall trip. Then the trip becomes useless.) He simply had to go to do his Father’s will.

Not even the rejection by a Samaritan town dissuaded him from his purpose. Of course, James and John felt insulted for him. They even wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume them. But Jesus was not sent into the world to condemn the world. He was sent to save it. And so, he rebuked them. The fire and brimstone will come at the end of time. But for now, it will be a time of mercy. His journey to Jerusalem was a journey of mercy. He journeys to the Cross where he shall obtain mercy for all. On the Cross, he will not exclude the inhospitable Samaritan town from his prayer for mercy. He will not exclude anyone…not even his persecutors. He will open wide the gates of mercy and invite all to enter. In fact, he did not even wait to reach Jerusalem. As they journeyed, he invited people to follow him. Many of us limit this passage as an invitation to priestly and religious vocation. We miss the fact that the invitation to follow him is actually an invitation to accept grace and mercy. It is an invitation to holiness. (St. Jose Maria Escriva said that not all of us can become rich, wise, and famous. But all of us can become Saints. In fact, we do not even have to leave our work and enter the monastery to become holy. Even the most common tasks of everyday can be an instrument for sanctification.) It is an invitation to salvation. And none can be more important than what he has to offer. Worldly security cannot measure up to the of the Father’s love (foxes have lairs, birds of the sky of nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head). During a storm, foxes are afraid that their lairs will be flooded. During a hurricane, birds are afraid that their nests will fall to the ground. But even in the midst of a storm, Jesus is able to sleep tightly, to rest secure because he knows he rests in his Father’s embrace. No earthly relationship should even hinder us from a mission as great as the proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God). Notice that once you have accepted the invitation to follow Jesus, you have found life. They who have rejected the invitation remain dead. So let the dead bury their dead. But you have found life. You have found joy. Share now to others what you have found. Give them a chance to possess what you now have. Proclaim the kingdom of God. Nothing can be deemed as more valuable than the Kingdom of God (No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God). I remember that story in Genesis when God set the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. He sent angels to rescue Lot and his family from the impending doom. Lot’s family was told to flee as fast as they can to the next town and not to look back. But Lot’s wife looked back. Perhaps, she looked back at the property she left behind. Perhaps, she looked back at her friends and neighbors. She looked back and became a pillar of salt. As St. Ignatius said:

“Eternal Word, only begotten Son of God,
Teach me true generosity. Teach me to serve you as you deserve. To give without counting the cost, To fight heedless of wounds, To labor without seeking rest, To sacrifice myself without thought of any reward Save the knowledge that I have done your will. Amen.”

Sr. Cecilia OCD of Argentina at the moment of death

Let us willingly accept Christ’s offer of grace and mercy. It is an offer given right now. (TV shopping networks advertise with a sense of urgency: Call now. If you buy now, we will add this item and another item more. But wait, there’s more… there’s a discount. The same is true with Jesus. He gives the offer right now.) Let us not delay our response. It is so good an offer that accepting it is its own reward. God himself, his love, is the reward which no one can offer us but Christ himself. “You will show me the path of life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.” (Last night, over facebook was a picture of Sr. Cecilia of the Carmel of Santa Fe in Argentina. She suffered lung cancer, an extremely painful disease. But at the moment of her death, she had a very sweet smile on her face. In the photograph, she looks like a lover who has arrived to the encounter she has long been yearning for. This Carmelite nun shows us what we mean when we say: You will show me fullness of joys in your presence.) In Jesus is found fullness of joy. It is worth everything. We need not count the cost.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Priests Smelling like the Good Shepherd

PRAISED BE JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!

The TV series ‘Parikoy” is creating a renewed interest in the Catholic priesthood. It casts a handsome actor to play the role of a young priest who definitely immerses himself into the lives of the flock he serves. Perhaps, the TV series would like to portray what Pope Francis said: that shepherds must acquire the smell of the sheep. Indeed, the Pope’s words are creating a great paradigm shift in the way we now see the priesthood. There is now a trend of expecting priests to descend from their exalted social pedestals in order to be more immersed in the lives of the ordinary people and this seems laudable. After all, this is the example that the Lord Jesus himself left us. He descended from his heavenly throne and became poor like us. He embraced the misery of the human condition. But we must not forget the reason for this self-emptying. He came down in order to lay down his life for his sheep. He came in order to battle the wolf that threatens his sheep. He engages in this battle by laying his life and in this way, he emerged as the victor: “I have power to lay (my life) down, and power to take it up again.” He descended into the depth of our human misery, which is death, so that rising from it, he may take us up with him. And it is this truth that many of us miss. Expecting the shepherd to smell like the sheep, we think that the priest should be like everybody else and thereby lose sight of the very purpose of his ministry, which is to be like Christ as told to us by the 1^st letter of St. John.

Jesus said: “I am the Good Shepherd, I know my sheep and mine know me.” That Christ knows each of us is something that we are sure of. But do we, who consider ourselves as the sheep of Christ, know Christ? I think it is important to know Christ because unless we do so, we will never be like him. And this is the role of the priest. His role is to elevate the flock so that they may know and be like Christ. I remember my seminary rector who told us that when everybody is drowning in the mud, someone has to be on a higher place in order to pull up those who are drowning. If everybody is in the mud, who will be capable of pulling people out of their predicament? In a hospital, it is important that the doctor be well because if he were sick like everybody else, how can he treat and cure his patients? Christ who went down into the depth of human misery had the power to rise from it and to bring us with him. If the sheep want to pass through the valley of death, they have to listen carefully to the voice of the Good Shepherd  and follow him because “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

If we expect shepherds to acquire the smell of the sheep, we must not forget that the sheep must acquire the smell of Christ the Good Shepherd. The sheep must acquire the odor of holiness, the sweet odor of Christ, lest the shepherd fails to bring them to the green pastures and the restful waters of heaven. We simply cannot afford to remain in the world as if we were of the world. Remember that St. John tells us in the 2^nd reading: “The world did not know him.” Being the alter Christus, the priest cannot smell like the world. He must be the first to exude the sweet odor of Christ. Kailangang mag amoy Diyos ang pari. Hindi mag astang Diyos kundi mag amoy Diyos. This is what we need: holy priests, not entertaining priests, not singing priests, not acting priests, not running priests, but holy priests, priests who pray, priests who really know the ways of God. If the sheep are to be led to holiness, they must be guided by holy priests. Look at how St. Margaret Mary was guided by a holy spiritual director in the person of St. Claude de la Columbiere. Look at how St. Faustina was guided by Blessed Michael Sopocko. Look at how St. Dominic Savio was guided by St. John Bosco. The list goes on and on and on…holy priests leading their flock to holiness. We need to pray for holy priests to serve God’s holy people…priests who do not smell like the world but who exude the sweet odor of Christ!

Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Grace, Time, and Fruits

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

Last Sunday, we heard about how the Lord Jesus revealed to Peter, James, and John his glory as God’s only begotten Son, a glory “full of grace and truth”. Contrast that vision to the one received by Moses in today’s 1^st reading. On Mt. Horeb, Moses saw what he called “an incredible sight”: a bush that burned and yet remained unconsumed. On Mt. Tabor, the 3 disciples saw Jesus transfigured before them, his face and clothing resplendent in light. On Mt. Horeb, Moses was told by the Lord: “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet for you are standing on holy ground.” On Mt. Tabor, Jesus took Peter, James and John with him. On Mt. Horeb, Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God. But on Mt. Tabor, Peter was even able to say, “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” Both were revelations of the same Divine glory, manifestations of the immeasurable holiness of God. And yet, as we can plainly see, Peter, James, and John were not told to stand at a distance, nor did they hide their faces in fear as Moses had done. The disciples were invited to draw near this unapproachable light of Divine glory. You may say that Christ our Lord gave us the means to approach the unapproachable – to behold with unveiled faces the glory of the living God.

This makes us feel so privileged. How grateful should we be that we have been called in Christ. However, St. Paul in the 2^nd reading shows us the gravity of the obligations that accompany this privilege. First, he spoke of our ancestors who were all under the cloud of the Divine Presence and who ate spiritual food and drink in the desert. “Yet, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.” Then, St. Paul said: “These things happened as an example to us, so that we may not desire evil things as they did. Do not grumble as some of them did, and suffered death by the destroyer. These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us.”

Thus, we should not take our Christian faith for granted. If they who have simply entered the cloud were later on found wanting and have fallen, how much better will we fare? By becoming Christians, we have received more than what they have received. And as Spiderman would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The Lord Jesus warns us: “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” We are like fig trees planted in the orchard of the Lord. He searches fruit from us, and gives us sufficient grace and time to repent in the hope that we would bear fruits of holiness in the future. But if we do not bear fruit, considering the fact that we have been given both capacity (grace) and opportunity (time) to repent, we shall be cut down. We will all perish as they did.

And so let us not procrastinate our conversion. Let us not tire God’s patience nor abuse his mercy. Let us take our Christianity seriously for the standards of Christianity are very high. They do not admit shallow spirituality nor mediocre morality, said Bl. John Paul II. Considering what we have received, the standard to be met ought to be very high: Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Therefore, let us not be overconfident and let us get to work on our salvation. “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall!”

Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee! 

The Transfiguration and the Pontificate of Benedict XVI

The papacy of Pope Benedict XVI is like the Transfiguration of the Lord. At the Transfiguration, our Lord manifested his glory as God's only begotten Son - that glory which lay hidden beneath the veil of his human nature. During his pontificate, the Holy Father unveiled for us the true glory of Catholic Liturgy - that glory which, for some time, lay hidden beneath much of the confusion that occurred after the 2nd Vatican Council. For some time, the liturgy seemed to be no more than just a social assembly, a fraternal meeting of members of the Church, a fellowship and even to some extent, a show that was meant to entertain. For some time, many members of the Church lost sight of the Supernatural in the Liturgy. The Holy Father unveiled for us the  true glory of Catholic Liturgy. He reminded us that Liturgy is not about us, but about God. He reminded us that Liturgy is not some project made by some committee but a gift that we have received from God. He reminded us that Liturgy is not an exchange of pleasantries between celebrant and people but rather, it is a procession towards the Lord. He taught us that Liturgy is seeking the face of the Lord. Indeed, in the illustrious pontificate of Benedict XVI, the glory of Christ's face was once again beheld through the Liturgy.

My only worry is that at the Transfiguration, the Lord gave his disciples only a brief glimpse of his hidden glory. Will the close of Benedict's papacy also hide again the glory of the Liturgy which shone for but a brief moment? As the radiance of Christ's face will later on disappear to give way to the blood, sweat and spittle of the passion, will the same happen to the Liturgy? Will the glory of the Liturgy be covered once again with human attempts to make it more man-oriented than God-oriented? Will Liturgy be once again a project subject to the tinkering of human committees? I hope not.

But should it happen, I am confident that just as the radiance of Christ's face will reappear on a permanent basis at the Resurrection, so also will the glory and radiance of the Liturgy be made manifest again at a time we do not know. How I wish that the glory of the Liturgy which was unveiled for us by the Holy Father should never fade! How  I wish that the Benedictine Reform continues! 

This gives us reason to pray and fast even more seriously for the election of the new Pope when the Holy Father abdicates from the papal throne. Like Queen Ester and Mordecai and the Jewish People, we should fast and pray as if our lives depended on it. May the Holy Spirit appoint a Pope who would show the splendor of the Liturgy even more. Let us pray and fast as if our lives depended on it!

Pope Benedict's Legacy and the Transfiguration

PRAISED BE JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!

Jesus took Peter, James, and John to Mount Tabor and while he was praying, he was transfigured before them. What took place was the revelation by Jesus of his glory as God’s only begotten Son: his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzlingly white. “On the transfigured face of Jesus a ray of light which he held within shines forth. This same light was to shine on Christ’s face on the day of the Resurrection. In this sense, the Transfiguration is a foretaste of the Paschal Mystery.” (Benedict XVI, 6 August 2006.) This glory of the Lord was revealed in prayer. “The Transfiguration is a prayer event” (17 February 2008.)

I find it significant that of the three disciples who were with Jesus that day, it would be Peter who would point out the beauty of what they saw. It was Peter who would say to Jesus: “Master, it is good that we are here.” It was Peter who would express the desire to linger on in that wonderful place by volunteering to build 3 tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. I find these significant because this is precisely the legacy which the Holy Father Benedict XVI is leaving us. This Pope is one who constantly invited us to seek the face of the Lord. Benedict constantly tells us that seeking the face of the Lord, desiring to know him is our daily task: “The desire to know God truly, that is, to see the face of God, is in every man, even atheists. And we perhaps unwittingly have this desire to see simply who He is, what He is, who He is for us. But this desire is realized by following Christ, so we see his back and finally also see God as a friend, his face in the face of Christ. The important thing is that we follow Christ not only when we are in need and when we find space for it in our daily affairs, but with our lives as such. The whole of life should be directed towards encountering Him, towards loving Him…” (16 January 2013)

At the very heart of the ministry of Benedict as successor of Peter is his concern that the liturgy be celebrated in the proper way. To him, “the true celebration of the Sacred Liturgy is the center of any renewal of the Church.” “The Church stands or falls with the Liturgy.” “His profound concern is that the Church worships Almighty God correctly, and thereby be fully connected to the indispensible source which sustains and empowers Christian life, witness and mission. If the liturgy is impoverished or off-track our ability to live the Catholic faith and to evangelize suffers.” (A. Reid) “At the heart of his reform is Pope Benedict’s conviction that Catholic liturgy ‘is not about us, but about God’.” (Ibid.) Thus, the liturgy, as also the entire Christian life, must be a procession towards the Lord. It must constantly seek the face of God. The glory of Christ which was revealed at both the Transfiguration and the Paschal Mystery, is revealed to us in the Sacred Liturgy. In the Liturgy, Christ shows us the radiance of his face. And Benedict, like Peter, constantly reminds us: “It is good to be here.”

By doing so, Benedict encouraged us to look beyond this world and to look towards heaven. Our concerns should be higher than our stomachs. Our minds must not be occupied only with earthly things. “Our citizenship is in heaven.” Our minds must be elevated towards sublime things. Our hearts must seek Jesus who inspires and perfects our faith. Our eyes must constantly seek the beauty of Christ’s face. Benedict would always say: “Conversi ad Dominum” – let us turn towards the Lord. Thank you, Holy Father, for this wonderful legacy!

Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Need for Holiness in the Priesthood

The Feast of the Sacred Heart is the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of the Clergy. This feast gives us the occasion to speak about the relationship between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the holiness that is demanded of the clergy and of the entire People of God as well.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart allows us to look into the interior life of Christ. The image of the Sacred Heart shows us an exposed human heart – something which seems strange as all of us know that the heart is an internal organ. The iconography of the Sacred Heart thus teaches us that Jesus is the Master, the Teacher of the Interior life. As priests and religious, it is only right that we should concern ourselves with the interior life. It is our task to imitate the beloved apostle who leaned towards the breast of the Lord to learn the secrets of his Heart. It is also our task to testify, like the same beloved apostle, to the gushing forth of blood and water from the opened Heart of the Redeemer. These images of the beloved disciple and the Lord are truly intimate images expressive of the intimate friendship which we priests should enjoy with the Lord. To me, the priest is first and foremost a friend of the Lord. Before all our pastoral duties, we ourselves must first “draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation,” “be strengthened through his Spirit in the inner self,”   and “comprehend…what is the breadth which surpasses knowledge.” In other words, we who share in the priesthood of Christ must lead lives of profound interiority. We must be men who constantly go to our inner rooms to pray to our Father in secret. The Holy Father has time and again reminded us of the necessity of retreating from activity in order to sit at the feet of our Lord and be truly his disciples.

The letter coming from the Congregation of the Clergy reminds us of this: “The expression found in Scripture ‘This is the will of God: your holiness!’ (1 Thess 4:3), though addressed to all Christians, refers to us priests in particular, for we have accepted the invitation to ‘sanctify ourselves’ and to become ‘ministers of sanctification’ for our brothers. In our case, this ‘will of God’ is, so to speak, doubled and multiplied to infinity, and we must obey it in everything we do. This is our wonderful destiny: we cannot be sanctified without working on the holiness of our brothers, and we cannot work on the holiness of our brothers unless we have first worked on and continue to work on our own holiness.” The Sacrament of Holy Orders configures us to Christ. We must acquire not only the mind of Christ, but his Heart as well. If St. Augustine calls the priesthood as amoris officium (Sacramentum Caritatis, 23.), then it is very clear that we must acquire the Heart of Christ. The flock of Christ deserves to be loved by nothing less than the love of the Lord. Thus, the responsory of the Litany of the Sacred Heart should truly be a priest’s prayer: “Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine!” This conversion of our hearts into the Heart of Christ cannot be made possible drawing close to his opened Heart to learn its inscrutable riches. It cannot be made possible without looking upon him whom we have pierced.

St. Claude de la Columbiere, SJ, the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary, lived in the friendship of Christ’s Sacred Heart. It would be good to end our meditation with his prayer: “My Jesus, You are my true Friend. My only Friend. You take part in all my misfortunes. You know how to turn them into blessings. You listen to me with great kindness when I tell you all my troubles, and You always have something with which to heal my wounds. I find You at any time of the day or night, for I find You wherever I happen to be.  You never leave me. If I change my dwelling place, I find You wherever I go. You never weary of listening to me. I am certain of being loved by You, if I but love You. My worldly goods are of no value to you, but by bestowing Yours on me You never grow the poorer. However miserable I may be, no one more noble, more clever, or even more holy, can come between You and me and deprive me of Your friendship. And death, which tears us away from all other friends will unite me forever to You. All the humiliations attached to old age or the loss of honor will never separate You from me; On the contrary, I shall never enjoy You more fully and You will never be closer to me than when everything seems to conspire against me and cast me down. You bear with all my faults with extreme patience. Even my lack of fidelity and my ingratitude do not wound You to such a degree as to make You unwilling to receive me back when I return to You. O Jesus, grant that I may die loving You and that I may die for love of You.   Amen.”

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine!

John Paul II, the Saints, and Holiness

We have the strange understanding of saints as people who are totally remote from our own experiences: medieval, other worldly, strange – almost fairy tale like. To many, saints are those whose feet are up there in the clouds, residing in their own ivory towers, so far from our daily experiences – they must be people who belonged to some other time, definitely not ours.

That is why at the end of the Great Jubilee 2000, when John Paul II wrote that “all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness” ( John Paul II, Novo Millenio Ineunte, 30.), some people thought that it was simply impractical to still speak of holiness in pastoral plans. It simply did not seem consistent with the language of the times. Can holiness be the foundation of pastoral planning? Shouldn’t we speak in more practical terms?

John Paul II taught that holiness is very much the language of the 2^nd Vatican Council: “It is necessary therefore to rediscover the full practical significance of Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, dedicated to the "universal call to holiness". The Council Fathers laid such stress on this point, not just to embellish ecclesiology with a kind of spiritual veneer, but to make the call to holiness an intrinsic and essential aspect of their teaching on the Church. The rediscovery of the Church as "mystery", or as a people "gathered together by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit",¹⁵ was bound to bring with it a rediscovery of the Church's "holiness", understood in the basic sense of belonging to him who is in essence the Holy One, the "thrice Holy" (cf. Is 6:3). To profess the Church as holy means to point to her as the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave himself precisely in order to make her holy (cf. Eph 5:25-26). This as it were objective gift of holiness is offered to all the baptized.” (Ibid.)

John Paul made it so simple. To him, Holiness is simply “belonging to Him who is…the Holy One.” It means incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. It means abiding in Christ as He abides in us because He is the Vine and we are the branches…we belong to Him. Thus, at baptism, the question asked of the catechumen: “Do you want to be baptized?” actually means “Do you want to be holy?” It is because baptism incorporates us into Christ, makes us belong to Christ. Belonging to Christ is the very essence of holiness. Christian life as a vocation to holiness expresses the radicality of the words of Jesus: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48.)

John Paul canonized and beatified many saints, “among them many lay people who attained holiness in the most ordinary circumstances of life.” (NMI, 31.) He did so in order to teach that the “ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes’ of holiness. The ways of holiness are many, according to the vocation of each individual.” (Ibid.) “The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living.” (Ibid.) Yes, the standards of ordinary Christin living are high. Therefore, “it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity.” (Ibid.) John Paul has always been critical of mediocity. He always reminded us to “cast into the deep.” (Duc in altum.) We should not be satisfied with a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity.

John Paul, who canonized and beatified many saints is himself now a “Beato.” He himself understood that if all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness, the pastor himself must lead by example of holiness. And holy indeed was John Paul – intense in his prayer, exemplar in his ministry, heroic in his suffering. His holiness was rooted in his communion with the Lord and His Blessed Mother. Totus Tuus – his famous motto, expressed his unconditional surrender and consecration to the Blessed Virgin. It was his constant fiat, closely in imitation of the Fiat of Mary that accounted for a truly fruitful ministry. And the fruits are undeniable: the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the death of Communism, the struggle against Moral relativism, the defense of all human life, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law, the publication of the new liturgical books, the World Youth Days, and the World Meetings of Families. Truly, when one abides in Christ the Vine and Christ abides in him, he bears fruits, fruits that endure.

Blessed John Paul brings the world of saints so close to us. His sanctity isn’t just a story we read in the Roman Martyriology but one which we saw with our own eyes. Our eyes have seen him emerge from the balcony of St. Peter’s at his election to the papacy. Our eyes have seen him traverse the world to preach the Gospel. Our eyes have seen him here, at this very place, when he met with businessmen. Our eyes have seen him meet our clergy, our consecrated persons, our catechists, our youth, and our families. We saw him advance in age, suffer in illness, and die in peace. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of his saintly predecessor: “No pope has left us such a quantity of texts as he had bequeathed to us; no previous pope was able to visit the whole world like him and speak directly to people from all continents. In the end, however, his lot was a journey of suffering and silence…He has left us an interpretation of suffering that is not a theological or philosophical theory but a fruit that matured on his personal path of suffering which he walked, sustained by faith in the Crucified Lord.” (Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005.)

I am so confident that from heaven, Blessed John Paul looks upon us at this moment. From heaven he continues to challenge us: “Do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows "what is in man". He alone knows it.” (John Paul II, Homily at the Inauguration of his Pontificate, October 22, 1978.) Let us not be afraid to belong to Christ. Let us not hesitate to surrender all to Him. Let us abandon ourselves totally to His Blessed Mother. His formula for sanctity are two simple words: Totus Tuus. I am all yours, completely yours!