You are called to be a saint.

‘I want to be a saint…I am not perfect, but I want to become perfect’.

(St Thérèse of the Child Jesus

All of us have ambitions, dreams and desires for our lives when it comes to family, relationships, careers etc. When aligned with the will of God, these are good things to have as it gives us all a sense of purpose, motivation and direction. It is easy however to indulge the dreams that seem far-fetched (such as my childhood dream to play football for Manchester City) but neglect an ambition that we are all called to by our baptisms, to be saints.

We can often view saints as people from another world, people radically different from us and who we cannot aspire to be. We are all, however, called to take the pilgrimage to holiness as the saints did. All the canonised saints had to walk towards perfection step by step, day by day, with their hand in God’s and they did all this with their eyes fixed on Him. The same is true for all the saints in heaven, canonised or not and the same is true for us in this life, saints in the making.

On this solemnity of All Saints, let us, the Church ‘Militant’, fix our gaze on God out of love for Him. Let us fix our gaze on the Church ‘Triumphant’, all those who rejoice in Heaven with God in communion with the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Joseph and all the saints. Let us fix our gaze on the Church ‘Suffering’ by praying for them on their final purifying journey to God in Heaven. Let us walk with God, desiring to be perfect through Him, to be his saint and to bring his love to the world.

With every blessing

Father Gary