What is the sign of success in our life? When we reach the end of it, what will determine whether we made a success of our life or a failure? There is only one form of success for us and only one form of failure. If you are a saint at the end of your life, your life has been a success. If you are not a saint at the end of your life, you have been a failure. That may sound very severe, but we must remember that Jesus had a good deal to say about the many that are called and the few that are chosen, and the narrow path to life and the few who find it. Unless we seek and accept and follow the grace God gives us through Christ, we cannot reach heaven. Of course, if becoming a saint is the sign of success and failing to do so a proof of failure, it is necessary to know what we mean by a saint.
If we were to think of a saint as necessarily someone very austere, very deep in prayer, utterly dedicated to the service of God and the Church and obviously very different in his way of life and his circumstances from us, then we might well be dismayed at our prospects. But a saint is someone who loves God with his whole heart and whole mind and whole soul and all his strength. If a person has a small heart, a weak mind, a feeble soul, and hardly any strength at all, that does not preclude his being a saint, provided he does love God with all his small heart, all that weak mind, all that feeble soul, and with whatever strength he has got. It is not the size of what we give God that makes us saints, but the totality of it, whether it be great or small. . .
If there is one thing that we can say certainly of all canonized saints, and possibly of each non-canonized one, it is that they were absolutely determined to become saints. They had a passionate desire to be saints. They were bursting with the desire to be saints. That is the condition needed if one is to become holy. You have to desire it with great fire in your heart. You must decide that you will become a saint. . .
St. Thomas Aquinas was a very great expert on spiritual matters, and it is said that a sister once asked what she must do in order to reach sanctity. St. Thomas did not give her twelve volumes of the Summa Theologica, or even a long lecture. He answered her in two words: “Will it,” he said. The desire for perfection is an act of your free will made under the influence of God’s grace. . .
This desire, this ambition, this passionate desire to become holy, to grow gradually into a saint must have certain qualities if it is to last and be genuine and become effective. Firstly, [as we have said] it must be a desire flowing from God’s grace in your soul, and aimed at the glory of God and the good of other people. . . Secondly, it must be very humble, indeed. . . It would be no use desiring perfection out of a sense of one’s personal excellence and will power and natural goodness or anything like that. . . Thirdly, we must have confidence in God alone. “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus said. But, as St. Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” . . . And finally, we must do something about it in a practical way and not keep it just a desire without effects in our life. . .
One practical way to grow in love and holiness is to increase the number of [sanctifying] activities and exercises you engage in, the number of acts of love for God you make each day, the number of loving good deeds you perform, the number of prayers you say and Masses you attend each week. You make your love grow by doing more with it. You increase the number of little sacrifices you make to please God, to save your neighbor’s soul, and to make reparation to the wounded heart of Jesus. . .
Then, too, we can work on deepening the purity and intensity of our love for God and others by having a really pure intention to do everything for God with all the love we have. We can do it in a most powerful and effective way by making little sacrifices out of love, little mortifications, little self-denials, and many little services to our neighbor out of intense love for God overflowing onto them. We can grow enormously in the intensity of our love for God by accepting the trials and troubles of life, not just with a negative resignation but with deliberate submission to them for the glory of God, in union with Christ on the Cross. . .
Jesus, our God, invites us to become saints. With His help and the help of His Mother, even the least of us can achieve it. What should I do in order to attain perfection? Will it!
