If You Want To Be Happy, Be A Saint!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Convent of Immaculate Heart of Mary, Minneapolis, MN

Solemnity of All Saints

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Beloved in Christ, All Saints Day gives us the opportunity to reflect on this wonderful solemnity and what it means to be a saint. One of the advantages of All Saints Day is that it emphasizes the universality of the call to sanctity. When we celebrate individual saints like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas etc, their lives might seem quite difficult to us. You might say, “I will never be like that.” But All Saints Day highlights not only the canonized saints but also all the people we have forgotten in history whom God has remembered as saints. On this day, we celebrate the church triumphant. Now, to become a saint is the ordinary goal of the Christian life. Being a saint is not egregiously exceptional, it is the ordinary goal of Christian life. Everything in the Church— preaching, teaching, liturgy, sacraments, etc is meant to make us saints, meant to make us holy. You know, there is only one sadness in life— and that is, not to be a saint. We can be sad for not achieving success, not getting the money we wanted, not pursuing degrees, did not get the wife or husband we wanted. Those are real sadnesses. However, the only real sadness is not to be the person God wanted us to be. If you let that become the governing principle of your life, everything will change. 

So, what does it precisely mean to be a saint? A saint is someone who is holy. So, what does it mean to be holy? To be holy is to follow the will of God. But what is the will of God? The will of God is to love. That’s all God is. God loves. God is love. To love is to will the good of the other and to do something about it. To be a saint is to habitually will the good of the other and to habitually do something about it. A saint is someone who is consciously aware of the abiding presence of God, who is truly alive and who loves. To be a saint is to make one’s life an oasis of love. If you wake up every morning with the mindset that you are going to will the good of the other, then you are a saint in the making.  Yes, you will do other things but you do them with the mentality of willing the good of the other. One of the best concrete places to look to become a saint is the famous Beatitude. At the beginning of the sermon on the mount, Jesus lays out these beatitudes (Beatitudo in Latin, which means happiness). Do you want to be happy, be a saint: “Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy… Mercy in Hebrew is hesed, which is sometimes called tender mercy (Agape in the NT). Do you want to be happy and be a saint? Be someone whose whole life is hesed. Wake up every morning and say that your entire life will be about expressing hesed. That is the key to happiness. To put it differently, Jesus again says, “Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God.” To be a saint, to be holy, and to be blessed is to desire one thing—hesed, tender mercy, love, which God is. A saint is someone whose life is about one thing- which is hesed, tender mercy. Everything else we do in life— work, relationships, practical life, entertainment etc. should be guided by one thing hesed. What makes us unsaintly, unholy and therefore unhappy is to be divided in heart. When a part of you wants to go one way, and another wants to go the opposite direction, and you have numerous things that govern your life, you will be so distracted and unhappy. Another way to say this again is also found in the lips of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” Righteousness is being set right, doing the right thing, and being the kind of person you are meant to be. What do you hunger and thirst for? What are we hungry and thirst for? We hunger and thirst for all kinds of stuff—for success, power, pleasure, the admiration of others etc. We wake up in the morning thirsting for all these and many more. But if you want to be happy, holy and saintly, thirst for one thing only— righteousness, which is, doing the will of God. When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself the question: what do I want today? Behind and above the things you want to accomplish in the office, in your home, in your workshop, what do you really want? Deep down what do you really want? If you want to be happy, be holy, be saintly, and hunger for righteousness. Once again, the Lord said: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.” When you hunger and thirst for righteousness, when you are clean of heart, when your whole life is about hesed, tender mercy, you will produce peace around you. Definitely! Peacemakers are those who follow this path— the saints. These are the positive attitudes; and behind these positive attitudes, there is also negative attitudes we have to overcome. And they are contained in the beatitudes as well. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” The Gospel of Luke simply says, “Blessed are the poor…” So, how do we read this? You are a saint, you are truly happy if you are not preoccupied by wealth. The principle distraction from the path of holiness is wealth. We think wealth will make us happy. If I get enough of money, cars, houses etc I will be happy. No, you won’t. As a matter of fact, you are truly blessed if you are not attached to material wealth of the world. Hear this too: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” This one sounds odd. How can those who are sad be blessed, some people may ask. How do we read it. It means that you are truly blessed, happy and saintly if you are not attached to and addicted to pleasure. Now, pleasure is good, but if you make pleasure the one thing you seek in life, (and there are a lot of people who walk on this road of constantly seeking pleasure), you are not walking on the path of holiness because doing the will of God will not alway bring you pleasure in a worldly sense. It is not easy to do the will of God. Going further, Jesus teaches, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Another substitute for God is power. Some people are not happy because they don’t power and are not in position of power. They think if they are one of the powerful people around they will be happy. But the truth is that they won’t. But blessed are you, how lucky are you if you are not addicted to power. One thing you want is hesed, righteousness, tender mercy and doing the will of God. If that means you have to give up power, let it be so. Blessed are you if you are meek and not powerful. Finally, “Blessed are you if they hate you, persecute you and utter all kinds of words against you because of me…” You are happy, blessed, saintly if you are not addicted to worldly honor. There are a lot of people who walk on that path. Their entire life is about seeking vain glory, wanting people to like them, honor them, be given award etc. But you are lucky and blessed if you are not attached to these because most of the times doing the will of God means you are not going to be loved or liked by many. So, the only thing we should seek in life is hesed, love, tender mercy, righteousness, and being a vehicle of God’s grace to the world. Get rid of all those attachments and distractions that are preventing you from walking that path. Be single-hearted, clean of heart, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and walk on the path that God wants you and everyone else to walk.  If you make this the central focus in life, you will be a saint. And when the saints go marching in, you will be in the number.