Growing up, celebrating All Saints Day involved much more than dressing up in a costume on the first of November. For weeks leading up to the celebration, each student chose a saint to research and write a report. The culminating activity: dressing up as that saint on All Saints Day.
Upon entering the school library, girls with names like Theresa and Monica rushed to the saint section to find the saint that shared their name. Not a strong reader yet, I waited for them to select their books before I searched the bottom stack of picture books for a saint named Sheila. “Looks like I’m off the hook,” I told a friend, “there’s no saint Sheila.” Within minutes, most of my classmates heard my declaration, as well as the librarian, and I was instructed to choose a saint from the collection anyway. Book after book, every cover captured a smiling saint in the image of perfection. Clean and tidy. They must have been born perfect, I thought and I found it difficult to look at them. I was a tom-boy. I played Little League baseball, and spit. Scuffed knees and dirt under my finger nails was a badge of honor. I looked nothing like these saints, and I was far from having the patience of a saint, a term I heard my mother use to describe my older sister, named after Saint Catherine. Then and there, I determined that I was not born a saint, would never be perfect, and my mother knew it when she named me Sheila.
Not until I was far into my adulthood did I get to know any of the saints. I learned that they really didn’t start out wholesome and perfect. But what made them a saint was that at some point in their life they turned toward God, embraced the Trinity, and lived their life dedicated to Christ. It was this dedication that resulted in a holy communion with God in heaven. Around this time, I heard a priest define a saint as a friend of God, which is when It all began to make sense. If someone were to be with God after passing from this life, it stood to reason they would be a friend of God during this life also.
It requires a certain dedication to develop and maintain a friendship. Consider the effort we put into our friendships, the hours spent being together, the countless conversations. Over time, as we gain new responsibilities and are pulled in other directions, it requires a certain persistence if we intend for our friendships to last.
As a friend of God, saints also engaged in this behavior. Their faithfulness was more than keeping the commandments and being a “good person”. Their faithfulness was evident in their persistence and dedication to their relationship with Christ.
To be a friend of God and come into union with Him, it is not the patience of a saint we need to adopt, but rather the persistence and dedication of a saint.
Sheila LaSalle
lifewithsaints 