So if one desires sainthood, one must be willing to empty themselves of everything. This is because it is the simple cost of sainthood. It is one thing. A simple thing. Yet at the same time it is the most difficult thing. This is because this one simple thing is everything.
Well surely you mean money, correct?
No. Although it is helpful to be able to separate yourself from material goods since you cannot take them with you.
I think God wants something deeper and more difficult. He wants your impatience with the driver in front of you on the road. He wants the anger you feel at your family members who betrayed you. He wants the jealousy you have of your neighbors. He wants your fear of losing your reputation. He wants it all.
That is why when you claim that you simply want to be a saint you immediately find that you are tested in a certain way. Things become more challenging and not easier. This is the pain of Christ ripping you out of yourself so that he can pour himself into you.
It is the same way with love, for God is love. If you are unwilling to give of yourself and empty yourself to the people around you, what do you have? Only what you are able to take. What is that worth?
I tried an experiment with my classes as we discussed this very thing. I told the students that there was a new rule in class. You must give your book away that you had been given at the beginning. At any time I would check and if you did not have a book, you would fail for the year.
The reaction immediately was one of hesitation. How do I give away my book and still have one in return? What if someone forgot a book in their locker? What if someone had lost a book? No, the only way it would work would be if everyone had a book and instantly at the same time passed it to the next person. This would be the only way to insure that no one was without a book.
Our society is different. We think that we have to keep taking everyone else’s book around us as if we are going to run out of love. After we have stockpiled enough love, we look around and wonder why no one else has any to give us. We wonder why love has run dry in the world while we are drunk from stealing it. And a stolen love has no resemblance to the depth of a love that is freely given.
Christ asks us to love as he does, which is to simply give all of ourselves. Every single last bit. It is only when you give love away, completely and totally serve the other, that you are able to receive at all.
If your arms are full, you can hardly receive. If you are taking, you can hardly give.
My wife and I are simply two glasses of water, half full or half empty, you can take your pick. We both desire to have our glasses full, but unless we empty ourselves into the other, neither of us will be full.
If we start to make comparisons, fight over petty things, make our relationship a competition of who can prove that they love the other more, we lose. We end up stealing water from each other as we take and take and neither of us become filled in the process, we only worry about the other having more water then we do.
When our goal is to fill the other glass by emptying ourselves, we present an opportunity for us to be filled. If we are meant to be saints, to be Christians, to imitate Christ, then we must empty ourselves of who we are completely. As long as there is a speck of us that is not given completely to Christ, we are simply offering ourselves and the world has had enough of people offering their version of American idol worship.
For how can we offer Christ to anyone when we are still holding on to our hatred, our jealousy, our anger, our lust, our pride, our sloth, our gluttony? How can we become saints if we only define saints by our definition and not Christ’s? No, there is no easy alternative, we must give it all.
Empty the glass. Give away your book. Give of love until your arms are spread wide open and you have nothing to give but Christ.
And we all know what Christ can do with a little water.
