What do people think of when you talk about “holiness”?
Monks in silence with their hands folded? People praying on their knees for hours? Somber-faced sisters who never have any fun?
Someone once told me, “Who would want to be a Saint? They suffer a lot and have very hard lives.”
So holiness conjures lots of images…not all of them good. You want the people you’re evangelizing to desire holiness. So, you’ll have to help them understand what it means.
Here are 5 facts to help people understand holiness and open their hearts to desire it.
1. Holiness is not piety…it’s love
In the mind of the Church, holiness means charity…love.
Charity is a special kind of love. It’s God-like love, a self-sacrificing love. Charity is love that gives itself for the sake of the other.
Holiness is not about pious actions. Rosaries, daily Mass, Bible reading, praying in front of abortion clinics…those are all great things, but just because you do them, it doesn’t mean you’re holy.
2. Holiness is about the heart
In Matthew 15:8 Jesus says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
Sometimes prayers and devotions are just going through the motions. People just say and do what they’re supposed to without really meaning it.
God wants your inside to match your outside. Holiness is a heart perfectly aligned with God’s will.
3. The Saints love with God’s own love
At one time, I figured Saints just had more capacity to love than I did. Either that or I had a character flaw. Maybe I was “love impaired” or perhaps “affectively challenged.” I didn’t get how they could gush over the Eucharist. I wasn’t feeling anything when I went to Mass.
Then I learned something extremely important. The tremendous love of the Saints doesn’t come from them. It comes from God. God loves us in Christ and then gives us his own power to love.
When someone is holy, it just means they love like God. But that love doesn’t come from them. Believe it or not, they’re so filled with God’s love, it permeates them and flows through them to others.
So if you think you could never love like the Saints, don’t sweat it. Just allow God to transform your heart so he can love through you. That’s what they did.
4. Holiness is for everyone
St. Francis de Sales’ great classic, Introduction to the Devout Life is actually the prelude to another work on the mystical life, the Treatise on the Love of God.
The Introduction deals with the ascetical life. St. Francis knew that if you fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, then receive the love of God and put it into practice…you’ll naturally come to the mystical life. And, that’s where holiness is born and Saints are made.
Introduction to the Devout Life was written for lay people. So, Francis de Sales must have thought holiness was for everyone. This is in the 1500’s! It’s always been the Church’s position that holiness was not just for a select few monks and nuns that somehow got special favors, although that idea got popular for a while.
The truth is everyone is called to this and it is possible.
5. Being perfect isn’t perfectionism
What doesn’t Jesus mean when he says, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”?
It doesn’t mean all the paper clips in your drawer are in perfect order. Or, when you make your bed there’s no wrinkles. It’s not perfectionism. The word for perfect in the Greek is “teleos” which mean your final goal or end. Jesus is saying you must attain your end, as your heavenly Father attains his end.
How does he do that? By loving. By going out of himself.
So to be “perfect” means God’s grace allows you to get beyond yourself, to give yourself to God and give yourself to others as a pure and selfless gift. Jesus is saying is that you were made to love God and love other people. Let yourself be drawn into that love by grace.
What is holiness?
Far from the sanctimonious piety most people envision, holiness is about loving in a selfless way.
It’s never two-faced or double dealing. It depends on a unity of heart, mind, and soul that is directed toward God.
And, most surprisingly, it’s not about being able to muster up a great love for God or others. It’s actually being a channel of God’s own love to the world and back to him…making God’s love present and real in the world.
I think this is a very different thing. Everyone can understand love. Everyone desires it. Everyone wants to be the recipient of it.
Love is attractive. It’s what we’re all called to. It’s what we’re made for. Bring holiness and love together and attract people to it.
