Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

Family life shows forth many paths to holiness and sainthood

As a student and lover of Church history going back to my grade school days, All Saints’ Day has always been a favorite feast of mine. It’s a day to celebrate the entire history of the Church with all the richness of the stories of its holy men and women and the variety of times, places and cultures in which they lived and shared the Gospel.

The saints can seem so different on the surface. There’s St. Paul, an Apostle and missionary who lived in the first-century eastern Mediterranean region. He seems a world away from St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a cloistered nun in 19th-century France.

Then there’s St. Charles Lwanga, a young adult martyred in Uganda in 1886 who lived a life so different from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, born in New York City in 1774, a wife, mother, Catholic convert, educator and later a founder of a community of women religious.

Yes, these saints are different in many ways. But there are many threads that tie them together. Ultimately, their lives were all marked by their common love for Christ and his Church.

That common love binds the saints in all times and places into one family of faith who find a home in this life in the Church, and who are destined to enjoy a joyous and eternal reunion at the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven.

What is true of the Church as a family of faith in general is also true in individual families, the building blocks of the Church.

I’ve gained a greater appreciation for how this mystery of the Church is embodied in families as my own family has changed through the years.

When my five sons were all young, their differences weren’t as marked. They all had the same basic physical and emotional needs of toddlers and young children. They all played pretty much with the same toys and enjoyed reading the same children’s books.

They naturally began to develop their own unique personalities as they entered their teenage and young adult years.

Michael, at 23 and my oldest son, enjoys computer programming and gives lessons in it online to young people. Raphael, 20, works as an apartment complex maintenance technician and has developed great skills in cooking and baking. Victor, 18, is investigating various career possibilities, including working in a skilled trade and enjoys playing chess and following his favorite basketball and football teams, an interest his older brothers don’t have.

All of my sons are also on different points in their own personal journeys of faith. My wife Cindy and I pray for each of them daily, asking God to draw them ever closer to him and his Church. It’s wondrous to see holiness come to life in them in ways unique to each of them. The challenges they sometimes face in their faith can lead Cindy and me to redouble our prayers for them.

As they grow into adulthood, we sometimes see that the most important thing that we can do at this point is to help them become saints through prayer and fasting. Just as the saints became holy by choosing daily to cooperate with God’s grace, so our sons will have to do the same to become saints.

It’s not the only thing we can do, though. God also calls all parents to witness to the faith to their children in the way they daily seek to become saints themselves with the help of his grace.

The back and forth flow of that grace between parents and children help them all and the Church as a whole, along our path to holiness in this life and for eternity in heaven. †