Models of being holy - For all the saints

John Freund, CM
November 2, 2014

Robert P. Maloney, CMModels of being holy – For all the saints –  We all have a vocation to holiness. With all the variations of  “takes this test to find out who you are….” Father Robert Maloney CM offer a serious invitation to identify which style of holiness fits you.

“For Catholics in all ages the saints have made holiness real. They give it flesh. They show us in the concrete what it means to live the gospel. Even in our most anti-institutional moments or in cultures where events like canonizations evoke less than an enthusiastic response, there is something deep within us that yearns for holiness. We want the charity of Christ to fill us. That is, after all, what it means to be a Christian.

“From the lives of the saints, our tradition has distilled certain models. Models are concrete images. They are not metaphors like the classical “following of Christ,” “climbing the ladder of perfection,” or “ascending the spiritual mountain”; rather they give a clear, brief (even if incomplete) insight into the concrete reality of holiness and make us aware of what commitment to it involves. They are like “icons” of the gospel, symbols of Christian self-giving.

“Models do not exhaust the reality; they are partial representations of it. They complement rather than exclude each other, as each places a particular emphasis on what it means to be holy. As symbols, they also arouse an affective response within us, drawing us toward the goal of holiness. Who could fail to be moved, even while horrified, in reading how Brébeuf’s captors ate his heart in the hope of absorbing the courage they had seen him display!
“Below, I will describe a few of these models, with the hope that they will be helpful to all of us in seeing where we might fit.
Robert Maloney – Models of Being Holy

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