Nov 21 2008
What Holiness Is and Is Not
From Dom Hubert van Zeller’s Holiness: A Guide for Beginners:
If personal holiness is thought of as being a name at the top of a list, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something that merits a feast in the Church’s calendar, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as something to which is attached the power of working miracles, it is understood wrong. If it is thought of as mooning about in a state of pious contentment (or sweet ecstasy or noble and aloof virtue), it is understood wrong. There is nothing “superior” — in the sense of being one up on everybody else — about it.
The way to think of sanctity is as something that, by being generous and faithful to grace, gives back to God the love He has given to the soul. So it is for God’s sake, more than for our own, that we should want to be saints. We work away at holiness not because we are ambitious, and want to be experts in a particular kind of lofty career, but because God wants us to be saints and it praised by our striving after sanctity.
Anyone can be holy, or rather act holy, so long as others are saying, “There’s a saint for you,” but sooner or later this sort of holiness wears off. Either the person sees the trap, becomes humble, and goes ahead toward real holiness, or keeping up the act becomes too much of a strain and there’s a swing toward worldliness and perhaps to a lasting unholiness. The whole secret of sanctity is that it is a thing of grace, and so cannot be switched on as a part to be played.
This means that however determined you are to be a saint, you will not become one if you rely on your own strength of mind. The thing that can get you to sanctity is God’s grace. You will need all the strength of mind you have just to work together with God’s grace, but if you imagine that making good, strong resolutions will carry you the whole way, you are wrong. About the first thing to happen will be that God lets you break some of those good, strong resolutions before you get properly started. This will be to put you in your place, and show that you can do nothing without Him.
