God calls us each to holiness,
to sainthood.
Every day, each experience we
have helps us grow in our faith and in our purpose: To achieve holiness; to
become saints; to fully become the person God intends us to be.
Each experience, then, has the
potential to be “purgative.” Purgation is a process that gets us ready for God.
Just as God’s grace was given to the martyrs, so it is given to us to grow in
holiness and towards sainthood.
Everything we experience is an
opportunity to grow in our holiness. God can “make us worthy and powerfully
bring to fulfillment every good purpose” by giving us circumstances that cause us
to depend on Him, to trust in Him, and to respond according to His will
In other words, through our
circumstances we allow God to mold us into a loving, forgiving, humble person
versus a bitter, frustrated, angry person. (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12)
During this process, our
passions can take us places that we may not have ever dreamed of and thus do
things that are completely unique to each of us. In these places we cannot be
lukewarm Catholics—we are expected to be on fire for our faith so that God can
use us to build up the kingdom! In this the Year of Faith, it is important to
ask God to ignite our passions so that you can serve Him. It is time to pray
that God saves us from a lukewarm existence where we neither serve Him nor grow
in our holiness. (Revelation
3:15-16)
We each have received different
blessings from God. Maybe we have good health or we have a rewarding career. Is
intelligence or a great marriage our blessing? God’s blessings are another way
that we can grow in holiness towards our sainthood. For God to mold us into
sainthood with our blessings, we have to actively offer them back to God. We
have to honor God with them. They aren’t meant to stockpile but to serve. (Proverbs 3:5-10)
For many of us, the most
profound way that God is able to mold us is through our sufferings and our
struggles. In our weakest, most vulnerable moments, when there seems to be no
hope nor any other solution, we crawl to the foot of the cross and lay our
cares upon Christ who died for us. Oftentimes, before we make that journey to
the cross, we mistakenly think we are able to take care of ourselves and thus
miss the opportunities to grow in holiness and towards sainthood. (2 Corinthians
12:10)
When we are pleading for God
to reach down from heaven and touch us—and give us “signs”—it is probably time
to take a step back and look at the people with whom our paths have crossed.
God uses all the people—family and friends and critics and adversaries alike—to
mold us. Each person has been placed in our life for a reason: to grow in
holiness and become a saint. Whether the person has put a stone in our path
making it more difficult, or has removed one, each person can help us each
reach our goal of sainthood! (Mark 16:2-6)
In all things, through all
circumstances, and throughout each day, God desires each of us to grow in
holiness towards sainthood. This can only happen when we allow Him to be the
Potter and recognize that we are the clay.
Cheryl Dickow
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