Today, one day after the canonization of Mother Teresa, we celebrate her feast day.
I found this quote from Mother Teresa which in some regards brings us back to yesterday’s message –
“Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves – on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. ‘I will be a saint’ means I will despoil myself of all that is not God. I will strip myself of all created things. I will live in poverty and detachment. I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.” (Mother Teresa)
It’s tough to be a saint. Most of us will never live up to Mother Teresa’s definition of saintliness or Jesus’ definition of perfection. But we can always aspire to it and if we don’t realize it in this life we will realize it in the next. For now we can heed the words of Pope Frances from yesterday’s canonization mass –
“May Mother Teresa – this tireless worker of mercy – help us to increasingly understand that our only criterion for action is gratuitous love, free from every ideology and all obligations, offered freely to everyone without distinction of language, culture, race, or religion.” (Pope Francis).
So with Jesus as our guide, we just need to keep loving. This is our road to sainthood.