Do Not Be Afraid to Be Saints A Reflection By Don Kenobi

 I think I’m a nomad.

I saw graves from the 1780s — two and a half centuries back — in a quiet cemetery on City Road in Luton.

I declined to take pictures; it felt like I would be disturbing their eternal rest.

But one grave caught my attention — the inscription mentioned that the husband was buried somewhere in Tottenham, while his beloved wife, who died first, was buried in the church grounds.



We are all going to die (apologies to those whose pastors tell them otherwise) - and we will spend vastly more time dead than we ever spent alive…..Vastly more…..

…..and the best we can do, as Christians, is to live in strict accordance with the New Testament — to make our lives new testaments of the power of the Holy Spirit to transform in the present time.

Who knows?

Perhaps someday, a Gospel will be compiled about these times.

What will be said about us?

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Pope John Paul II said it best:

“Do not be afraid to be saints!”

I read that he made this exhortation in Toronto, during a World Youth Day.

Interesting that the age at which he became Pope was the same age at which Julius Caesar died.

And that — coincidentally — is the age of a certain watchman sitting at the back of a Molue, thinking:

What a glorious gift life is!

Not just our own lives, but the lives of everyone we know.

Without them, life would have no meaning.

Even those who have spitefully used or wronged us — those who paid evil for good — they too are part of the process.

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In spite of the temptations we face, St. John Paul II still calls out to us:

“Do not be afraid to be saints.”

And he hit the nail squarely on the head when he said:

“A saint is a sinner who never gave up (trying).”

Jesus made it clear — He came for sinners.

So perhaps we might rephrase it this way:

A saint is a person for whom Jesus died — who never gave up trying to be worthy of that sacrifice.

As Dedan Kimathi Ohji, the protagonist in a certain book, once said:

“Life, I love you.

You keep coming back for me — as though I were clothed in raiment of gold.”

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I rest.

#dk