Steven at Flos Carmeli has a great post today entitled The Holy Family–An Ordinary Life–The Ordinariness of the Saints I love this piece! It reminds me of something a priest once told me, that God is able to use our faults and weaknesses as means to reaching greater virtue and sanctity. For example, St. Francis de Sales had a fiery temper yet he became known as the “gentle saint”.
Steven also makes an excellent point in reminding us that we need to stop trying to be someone else and be the saint that God has called us to be. It is one thing to admire and receive encouragement through the example of historical saints but it is important to draw from it a lesson that we can use in our own life. Not to duplicate their lives but to draw inspiration on how to strive for holiness in our own unique life and circumstances. But Steven says it better than I could so here is an excerpt.
…Too often, it seems, we may do the same with Saints’ lives. We look upon their extraordinary accomplishments and then embellish them so that they become not so much role models as distant figures of impossible faith and piety. We neglect their ordinariness. We admire them, but we can come up with an extraordinary plexus of reasons why we couldn’t possible emulate them in any way. How often have I heard, “Oh, I couldn’t be like St. Therese, she was so holy from such a young age.” So who is asking you to be like St. Therese? We already have one of those, and there are those in the world who would maintain that one is more than enough. (I used to be among them–no longer).
