For better or worse, we all live interconnected lives. Like it or not, we find ourselves in situations where others look to us for an example of holiness.
That’s right, someone is probably looking at you to be a model of what it means to be holy!
If that seems a little scary, remember that you can always model this: a devotion to truly holy people—the Saints.
On July 13, we will celebrate the feast day of St. Teresa of the Andes, a young nobody who became well-known throughout the world for her devotion to God, but her fame started when she was quite young, when people in her own social circles began to notice that she was different.
She died at age nineteen, having spent most of her life outside the convent walls which enclosed the final months of her life.
She was fun-loving and enjoyed sports and friends and being silly. In fact, in one letter to her sister she tells the story of how she got such a severe case of “the giggles” that it spread around the dinner table. The priest who was trying to say the blessing for the meal was himself infected and only made it halfway through the prayer before he also dissolved in laughter!
Being a saint doesn’t mean we have to give up the fun things of life; holiness means that we live our love for God in ordinary-looking ways. At work or while studying, while fulfilling home duties and living an active concern for others we encounter and we emulate the love God has for us.
St. Teresa of the Andes spent less than a year in the convent and died when she was still a novice in the Discalced Carmelite Order. Most of her sanctification took place in the “real” world, like the rest of us.
Let us pray that we point others, by our example, to Christ, just as St. Teresa did.