Holiness is not boring
If you enter our church and look at our sanctuary you will see a bunch of eccentrics — the images of the saints, of course. Our Lady and St Joseph are quite respectable, but if you came across John the Baptist in the street, you would probably cross over to the other side when you saw him. Then there’s St Cuthbert who, when he wasn’t walking around carrying St Oswald’s head, would be standing in freezing cold water up to his waist. And that’s only the stained glass. Half of the statues show the saints proudly carrying the weapons that were used to kill them. There is St Charles shown as he walked the streets of Milan with a noose around his neck. There are hooded monks and veiled nuns oblivious to the world around them, lost in heavenly contemplation.
We have a tendency to think of the saints as weirdos, as exceptions, as special people. They’re not like us. As Saint John Henry Newman said so incorrectly about himself, “I have nothing of the saint about me.” We think that sainthood is something beyond our reach. But God has made each and every one of us in order for us to be saints. Sainthood is an invitation to people “from every nation, race, tribe and language.” (Rev. 7:9) Our Holy Father St Philip wanted all of his spiritual children to become saints. Not canonised saints — we should love to be unknown. And as Blessed Dominic Barberi said, that’s too expensive. But we should all be saints nonetheless. Because a saint is quite simply someone who is in heaven.
Those saints on our sanctuary are all different. And the fact that they’re slightly weird shows also that they are not boring. So many people make the mistake of thinking that being holy has to make us dull. But to be focused on getting to heaven does not mean we have to abandon our unique personalities and become clones of each other. We need many saints to show us that there are many ways of following Christ to heaven — in fact, as many different ways as there are people. There will be some saints that we relate more too, that we have more in common with, who inspire us on the way. But when you do reach heaven, you will be the first person to get there by exactly your path. And you will arrive in the spot that God has prepared before all eternity precisely for you. And nothing about that idea is boring.