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The World Needs Saints

by Catherine Doherty

By November 1, 2021November 23rd, 2023No Comments

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What we need today is saints. Hundreds, thousands, millions more saints! All kinds of violence, hates, and fears vanish like mist in the sun before saints, before men and women in love with God, men and women of sanctity.

Sanctity means much loving. That is what we have been created for—to love—to love our neighbor and, through him or her, to love God.

Loving is fun. Loving is joy. Loving is peace. Loving means serving. Loving means forgetting self for others. Learn how to love, and all the rest will be added unto you.

We are almost beside ourselves today with fears. Our heads cannot rest anywhere, nor our hearts, nor our souls. We seek answers vainly in human solutions—political, economic, and ecological—knowing, even while we do all this, that we are shadowboxing.

Nothing can save us except sanctity. That’s why we need saints today. If St. Francis of Assisi had an atomic bomb, would anyone worry about it? No. Because being a saint, he loved much. And where love is, there cannot be fear or evil.

Ah, we do need saints today! We need understanding, too, to realize that the greatest tragedy that can befall us is not to be saints.

Excerpted and adapted from Grace in Every Season, November 1, pp. 290-291, (2001), available from MH Publications