But it’s not just the über-holy that concern us.  When the word hagioi shows up in the NT, it’s is usually on the pen of an apostolic letter to a church, the group of “saints” who gather in a particular city.  Paul’s letter to the Romans is addressed to “those loved by God and called to be saints,” (Rom. 1.17), and 1 Corinthians to “those sanctified in Christ and called to be saints.”  (1 Cor. 1.2)  Ephesians shows us the saints are simply “the faithful in Christ Jesus,” (Eph. 1.1) those who know the width, length, height and depth of the love of Christ.  (3.18)  That we now limit the term “saint” to men and women renowned for extraordinary piety, in some churches even notorious for having miracles associated with them, is perhaps telling.  The small group that meets at our house has been reading a book by Dallas Willard, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California and a Baptist minister who indicts the church this way:  “Think of how we exclaim over and mark as rarities those who seem truly to have the power and spirit of Christ about them.  The very way the bright exceptions stand out proves the rule that the guidance given by the church is not even counted on by the church itself to produce the kinds of people we know it should produce.”^[1]

 

So let me raise a question:  How do you build a saint?  In her little book about the Rule of St. Benedict called Seeking God, Ester de Waal quotes a Trappist monk: 

 

“Miracles may show me the saint, they do not show me how he became a saint: and that is what I want to see.  It is not the completed process that intrigues me: it is the process itself . . . .  Tell me what was churning in his soul as he battled his way up from selfishness and the allurements of sin to the great heart of God.”^[2] 

 

It’s with that question in mind we look at the lectionary readings for this feast day and see (1) the seal of sainthood; (2) the substance of sainthood; and (3) the secret to sainthood.

 

First:  The seal of sainthood – In the Revelation to St. John, he saw an angel who said, “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”  (Rev. 7.2-3)  Debate about this passage is why God “seals” his servants.  Clearly it’s not to protect them from physical harm: Christians contract debilitating illnesses, have car accidents, die sudden deaths just like everyone else.  What John’s vision must mean is that the believer’s salvation is protected regardless of illness, accident or death.  But the word for “seal” can have another meaning:  to designate ownership, like when you put a bookplate in the front of a book.^[3] 

 

This past Easter Vigil I had the great privilege of performing my first baptism, and as if the experience wasn’t going to be emotional enough for me, the first person I baptized was my infant daughter, Flannery Agnes.  I anointed her with oil, making the sign of the cross on her little forehead, and said “We receive Flannery into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign her with the sign of the cross,” making her “Christ’s faithful soldier and servant until her life’s end.”  In the new prayer book, the language is more evocative:  “Flannery, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”^[4] 

 

The seal at baptism marks initiation into Christ and his body, the church, and that’s how saints are born.  When we are sealed as God’s, he puts his name on us, a mark that says “Mine.”  That seal assures us God will never leave or forsake us; that we will persevere in our faith; and it also guarantees we’ll slowly but inexorably become more Christ-like because, as my old pastor in Mississippi used to say:  “God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way.”

 

That’s the second point, the “substance of sainthood,” the responsibility accompanying sainthood, the new ethic:  The beatitudes begin Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the masterpiece of his teaching in chapters 5-7 of the Gospel of Matthew.  The eight qualities listed in the beatitudes – poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, craving for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, persecuted for righteousness’ sake – they are, all of them, responsibilities and marks of life in the kingdom of God.^[5]  (Matt. 5.3-11)  In his little commentary on the Sermon, John Stott writes:

 

[T]he group exhibiting these marks is not an elitist set, a small spiritual aristocracy remote from the common run of Christians.  On the contrary, the beatitudes are Christ’s own specification of what every Christian ought to be.  All these qualities are to characterize all his followers . . . .  There is no escape from our responsibility to covet them all.^[6]

 

This is where the gospel comes in.  What confounds us is our utter inability to actually conform our lives to the Sermon on the Mount.  The Sermon lays bear our incapacity to really “be holy even as God is holy,” and it drives us to the cross for grace; then, when we come to Jesus, who is our righteousness, only then does it show us the substance of sainthood itself, a new way to live a Christ-shaped life not out of obligation or fear but from gratitude.^[7]

 

So – Sealed in Christ, having the gospel firmly planted in our hearts, what do we do?  My last point, the secret to sainthood, is simply to start.  Every journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step.  You don’t start out able to give away everything you own to go live with the poor in Calcutta.  You start with the little things, the small, ordinary opportunities for build the habit of holiness during the day – going to mass; saying your prayers and the Daily Office, which is the church’s prayer; meditation on Scripture; living simply; sacramental confession; solitude and service to others.  I told my wife I was going to bring this up in my sermon, and she said “Man, you don’t want to go in there and whack these folks around with a laundry list of stuff they ought to be doing, not after they’ve been nice enough to invite you to share their pulpit.  It’s just rude.”  But that’s the thing – At its heart, the life of a saint isn’t one of moralistic drudgery, it’s a life of joy.  Richard Foster is a Quaker who writes about spirituality, and he urges us not to

 

think of the Spiritual Disciplines as some dull drudgery aimed at exterminating laughter from the face of the earth.  Joy is the keynote of all the Disciplines.  The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear.  When the inner spirit is liberated from all that weighs it down, it can hardly be described as dull drudgery.  Singing, dancing, even shouting characterize the Disciplines of the spiritual life.^[8] 

 

The saint’s life is lived in the joy of knowing we’re sealed as Christ’s own, and God commits himself to turning us into the “same kind of thing as himself.”^[9]  Every day holds a hundred opportunities to start on the path, remembering tonight and always to beseech Blessed Mary, ever-virgin, Blessed Peter and Paul, Blessed Agnes and all the company of heaven to pray for us, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

 

+  In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.