“How Can I Become a Saint?”

Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there. Please note that today, Catholics observe the Solemnity of All Saints, a holy day of obligation.

“Mother, how can I become a saint?” the young Clelia Barbieri asked. Her mother’s response is lost to time, but the question was certainly prescient. Clelia was only eleven when she made her First Communion in 1858… and on that same day had her first mystic experience. She was twenty-one when she established a group that would become the Little Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrows, the youngest founder ever of a Catholic religious community. Clelia was dead two years later, a tuberculosis victim. She was canonized in 1989; the order still has about 350 members and works with children, the sick, and the elderly in Italy, India, Tanzania and Brazil.

It may not sound like a particularly saintly life: no martyrdom. No lengthy life of service. But saintly, she was.

Today, we remember the saints and their heroic virtues. Often, we think of the best known, the Blessed Virgin, John the Baptist, Joseph, the apostles, Mary Magdalene, and the like. But thousands of other lesser known beatified and canonized people led simple, faith-filled lives that can inspire us: people like Clelia Barbieri. People like Charlie Rodriguez Santiago, a Puerto Rican layman who advocated for active lay participation in the Mass before Vatican II. People like Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi, who were married for more than forty years, raised four children, and are the first lay couple to be beatified together.

As we pray with them all today, may we remember the challenge that the Catechism of the Catholic Church throws down to each and every one of us: “All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. All are called to holiness: ‘Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’”