The following is an excerpt from my book Surviving Catholic Ministry, pgs. 10-11.
I often reflect on Joseph Ratzinger’s teaching about sainthood. By “sainthood,” Ratzinger means something like St. Paul’s reference to the Christians of the early church. For Paul, the word did not denote only those canonized, or even canonizable Christians. The word “saint” does not refer to “a headlong leap into heroism,” or “adventurous achievements of virtue.”1 Instead, the word refers to Christ’s own sanctifying initiative and action that sanctifies the church and her members. It refers to those “saints” who “with Jesus receive a ray of his brightness” and who are “called to use their experience of the risen Lord to become a point of reference for others that could bring them into contact with Jesus’ vision of the living God.”2 The saints are witnesses; they are reference points or living windows that allow the light of Christ, the living God, to reach others. We are all called to be saints. I am called to be one. You are, too. You and I are called to radical transformation in Christ, such that when we encounter others, they encounter Christ.
The image of a stained-glass window captures all of this magnificently. Stained glass consists of thousands of fragments fitted together. Without light illuminating it, stained glass is unintelligible. When you’re in a church at night, the jet-black panels are portals of darkness. Hard. Cold.
But, in the morning, the sunlight touches each of those pieces of glass—suddenly illuminating the whole of it and fitting each piece into a mosaic of color. Suddenly the window makes sense. The stained-glass window itself is a testimony to the light that illuminates it—it refers to the light, so to speak. So it is for the saint. So it is with us. We need the light of Christ to touch the fragments of our lives and make us whole. We need the light to bring the whole thing into focus. When this happens, we become capable of being reference points to that light everywhere we go. This is what it means to live our identity (as sons and daughters of God) and to allow the source of it to shine for all to see (cf. Matt 5:16).
Ratzinger, Yes of Jesus Christ, 104–5. See also Benedict XVI, “The Holiness.”
Ratzinger, Yes of Jesus Christ, 30–33.