One of the things that bothers me so much about all of us Catholics is our false view of how we are to become saintly. The majority of practicing Catholics seem to spend most of their time trying to be theologians and philosophers, rather than being who they were naturally created to be. Well, I have news for all of my brethren and sistren: the saints were saints because they did what God created them to do, not because they were theologians.
Photo by Eneas
Learn to Love Your Natural Talents
The Church is suffering because people are not giving their innate talents to the world. Sure, we put our money in the collection basket every Sunday, but there is so much more that we need to be doing. When we donate our money to the Church where does it go? I would venture to say that most of us have no idea how our money is used. But I can tell you with almost absolute certainty that your money is not used to its optimum potential.
Now before you all stone me, I am not advocating that you stop donating your hard earned money. Rather, I am urging you to do more. I have said in numerous posts that your time and talents are for more valuable than the money that you donate could ever be. Imagine what would happen if we all spent a few hours a month giving our time to the Church. There would be no more crappy Church websites, beautiful Christian art would return once again, and the Church would be the vibrant intellectual and social community that it once was.
But I Am Not a Priest or Nun
Dude (yes I said, dude), you don’t have to be a hermit to be a saint. Look at Thomas More and St. Gianna, they became saints by doing what they loved to do – and that’s what we should be doing. I authored two other blogs, Fanatholic and Agnus Daily, and both were draining to me and I found it difficult to write meaningful content on a regular basis. Why were they so hard? It was because I was not meant to be a dedicated theologian/philosopher or comedian (in the case of Agnus Daily). Ultimately, God was leading me to do other things.
If you are a techie, help your parish with their network or website. If you are good with video production, for the love of all that is holy please help make great Catholic media (if you haven’t noticed, most Catholic media is horrible). The world doesn’t need more theologians, it needs real people with real world skills. Once again, please don’t misunderstand me, I love me my Scott Hahn, Brant Pitre, and Jacques Maritain, but they are doing (and did, in the case of Maritain) what they were called to do – and we need to do the same in our own arena.
Okay, So What Do I Need to Do?
Before anything else, you need to figure out what you love to do. There are several ways to do this. My favorite way is to keep a muse journal in which I just write whatever it is I am feeling at the throughout the day. It doesn’t matter what it is. Eventually, you will start to see patterns in your writing that will lead you to an idea of what you truly and deeply want to do with your life. Write down ideas, plans, goals, desires, prayers, even right down the impact that the Sunday Mass readings had on you. The purpose is to get the fluttering birds of thought to settle down and paint a picture of what you are passionate about.
I will tell you what my muse journal writings have led me to conclude, my passion is to help people (and myself) to overcome the barriers that prevent them from achieving greatness. Hopefully I have cleared one barrier in this post to those of you who believe that you need to have an ethereal look on your face and a halo around your head in order to be saintly. Be who God created you to be and do the things that God created you to do, with great love, and you will be a saint.
Let us know what you are passionate about in the comments!
Business, catholics, christian art, church websites, natural talents, saints, Work
