39. Holiness and elitism

Every year we celebrate the Feast of all the Saints. Is it really fair to forget about the others on that day? If I were a saint, I'd be sad to think that behind the door, lurked those who didn't qualify: the cheats and the sad-faced ones, who could only come in twenty four hours after, for All Souls' Day! But in the end, what is the difference between the saints and the others? Is a selection justified?

What is a saint? Answer: someone who you are sure is in heaven.

And as we are talking about heaven, I can't resist telling you the story of Hatuey, a native Chief of Santo Domingo. Having revolted against the Spaniards, he was pursued by them and was eventually seized in Cuba where he had gone for refuge. There they decided to behead him. However, "good" Christians as they were, they naturally worried about the fate of his soul, so they proposed that he be baptised before they killed him. "Why do I have to be baptised?" asked the native Chief. "In order to go to heaven, otherwise you will go to hell" replied his capturers. "Where do the Spaniards go, to hell or to heaven?" "The Spaniards go to heaven!" "In that case" replied Hatuey, "if the Spaniards go to heaven... I prefer to go to hell!"

Yes, it is the sad story of Christianity that has been imposed, by planking on it rituals and ready-made formulae, resulting in an abominable counter-witnessing.

Entrance to heaven was thus guaranteed if one had a permit: Baptism, a visa without which the would-be entrant was banished without mercy. Today our thinking has shifted: one doesn't even have to be a Catholic... protestants such as Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King or even a non-baptised like Ghandi, take their place in our Pantheon...

What are the new conditions? A good curriculum vitae essentially, and an important status in society. Thus is made the selection, from the intellectual to the professional world, and even beyond death. Now to me this is what hell really is: this selecting, which poisons life, and turns it into a hell, as though exclusion were part of one's destiny, or human sacrifices determined by fate.

The saint is the one who knows that God does not wish to be happy without sharing that happiness; the one who knows that "nobody" can be happy all alone! The saint is that person who has perceived with the utmost clarity, that the longing in the Heart of God will not be appeased, until He has welcomed into it all His children. Even if the saints are numerous, indeed very numerous, they cannot be contented with their own "promotion": they want the others included, i.e. all the others without excluding anyone. We know that among the saints, there are of course the prostitutes and the tax collectors: those who got first into the Kingdom. But all the others should be there too, the mediocre ones, those who hadn't the courage to take risks, the self-centred ones, lacking in generosity: able thinkers, "do-gooders", narrow -minded snobs, stiff-necked Churchmen, lukewarm Religious of every hue and colour. The saints had lived with them and loved them too. Christ saved them and died through and for them. They are there also, and like little children we can count them: one, two, many! 144,000! When we love, we do not count anymore. The story goes, that an African woman on being asked how many children she had, replied somewhat indignantly: "Really and truly, you Europeans count everything!"

The real question then, is not one of number, but of boundary: the night separating the Feast of All Saints from that of "All Souls". I would prefer to say "the longest day", so as not to reproduce in the liturgy the reactions of a world that is both competitive and exclusive. Where in fact is to be found the line of demarcation between being a saint and not being a saint? Between little saint and little sinner? I can of course see the difference between a great saint and a great sinner... but between a little saint and a little sinner; a little sinner redeemed and a little saint sanctified; a little redeemed saint and a little sanctified sinner?

Can one become a saint by one's own efforts? We know that the answer is "no!" We can become a sinner all by ourselves, and we have all done so, but as for becoming a saint by our own resources, we know that is impossible. It is God's love which sanctifies, transforms, and causes us to be what we are. Our merits, if merits there are, are never anything but responses to a greater love, to a love that is primordial. Our merits are simply our participation, nothing more. Anything else is voluntarism and will have no enduring permanence. Whether we happen to be a little or a great saint, we are first and foremost, the one who has been made holy, the child who has been found.

The big catch then, is to refrain from making comparisons, to free ourselves from this obsession with classifications, which is poisoning our competitive society and which inevitably leads to exclusion. Our peace does not come from knowing that others are worse than we are, but from

the knowledge that we are loved in spite of ourselves... it is up to Him who was victim and who knows how to love us, to do the judging. "If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts." (1Jn. 3.20). Our God is obsessed not with judging, but with reconciling! "There is more joy in heaven for the sinner who repents, than for the ninety nine just who need not penance." (luke 15.7.) The joy in the hearts of the ninety nine just, is the joy of being associated with that of the one who was lost and is found!

I am an egoist, I don't deny it, but I claim to be an intelligent egoist. I want to be happy, but I know that I can't be happy all on my own, for the knowledge that entire peoples are wasting away in misery, excluded from the "international economic and financial markets", mars any happiness I might feel. Now I have an intuition I am not alone in feeling this malaise: it is also that of the God of Jesus Christ. Let's look back at what we have said.

"A saint is someone who we are sure is in heaven." But who is the only one the Gospel assures us is in heaven? Answer: the "Good Thief!". Jesus promises it to him as He hangs on the Cross: "This day you will be with Me in paradise." He has broken open the door. True to his thieving instincts, he has stolen heaven. So when you go up there, beware of pickpockets!

The problem is however, that heaven doesn't have any doors! Since the Risen Christ went through them, entrance is free! "Let him who desires come and drink the water of life, freely!" ( Rev. 22.17) Some advice for amateurs: God's heart is wide open to all, absolutely and without conditions. All are welcome, whether they merit it or not, and without making distinctions between little saints and great saints. In God's eyes, each one of us is mediocre with all kinds of flaws, poor specimens of humanity with sullied baptismal robes. The living God makes His rain fall on the so-called virtuous ones as well as on the truly wicked. The Church is a collection of children who had been lost, founded on the renegade Peter, and on Paul the persecutor. In it, there are not any saints, but only those who have been "sanctified", made holy by the unilateral, unconditional and impassioned love of the One who gave everything in order to find us, of Him who through love denied Himself so as not to remain alone in heaven.

Does your curriculum vitae give you cause for fear? But look! I've just heard that your candidature is just the one required in the business! You are the first to be selected. There is no charge for the celebration and work begins immediately.