During his September visit to England, Pope Benedict boldly asked the young (indeed, all of us) to consider becoming saints and not to settle for something less than what we are made for. The value here, if you want to speak in this way, is that holiness is not for plastic people, people who have no sense of relationships, no concept of community, no understanding of the value of good friends. Holiness means taking ourselves seriously as loved people and worthy of friendship with the Lord and with another person; holiness is means setting aside distractions, sinful tendencies and the lack of attentiveness of God and what Jesus did for us. That is, Jesus’ death and resurrection for love of us personally. It’s taken me a long time to understand this point, and what the Pope has invited to, but there is solid, reliable truth in that God alone satisfies me. Which means, other things and mediocre relationships do not. Here is a portion of his homily:<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n What God wants Perhaps some of When I invite you to become saints<\/b><\/u>, I am Pope Benedict XVI<\/span><\/p>\n Greeting to Catholic Pupils of St Mary’s College, Twickenham<\/span><\/p>\n 17 September 2010<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the day since the time of Pope Gregory III that the Church has observed a day for all the saints ever recognized officially, and for those who are in the process of becoming listed saints in the martyrology, and certainly all those holy men and women who ever lived. Looking at the Roman … Continue reading All Saints<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1800],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Saints](\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/Saints%20Buoninsegna.jpg\")
\nmost of all<\/u> for each one of you is that you should become holy<\/u>. He loves you
\nmuch more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for
\nyou. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness<\/u>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nyou have never thought about this before. Perhaps some of you think being a
\nsaint is not for you. Let me explain what I mean. When we are young, we can
\nusually think of people that we look up to, people we admire, people we want to
\nbe like. It could be someone we meet in our daily lives that we hold in great
\nesteem. Or it could be someone famous. We live in a celebrity culture, and
\nyoung people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world
\nof sport or entertainment. My question for you is this: what are the qualities
\nyou see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What kind of
\nperson would you really like to be?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n
\nasking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue
\none limited goal and ignore all the others. Having money makes it possible to
\nbe generous and to do good in the world, but on its own, it is not enough to
\nmake us happy. Being highly skilled in some activity or profession is good, but
\nit will not satisfy us unless we aim for something greater still. It might make
\nus famous, but it will not make us happy. Happiness is something we all want,
\nbut one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find
\nit, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple
\n– true happiness is to be found in God<\/b>. We need to have the courage to place
\nour deepest hopes in God alone<\/b>, not in money, in a career, in worldly success,
\nor in our relationships with others<\/u>, but in God. Only he can satisfy the
\ndeepest needs of our hearts<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/blockquote>\n
\nthe United Kingdom<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n