All Saints and sinners 

On this All Saints' Day, we remember all those who are already in heaven: the saints of the altar and the unknown saints or "next door", as the Pope calls them. To speak of their virtues is nothing new, but why don't we speak of their sins? 

I have told many times that one of the driving forces of my life of faith is the call that St. John Paul II made to us (then) young people at the European Meeting in Santiago de Compostela in 1989. "Do not be afraid to be saints," he told us, and he remained so calm.

But how can we be saints? -asked the thousands of us who heard it and who understood holiness as something reserved for special people, whom God marked with stigmata and gave the ability to levitate.

We began to understand then that wanting to be a saint had nothing to do with the song of Alaska and Parálisis Permanente, which highlighted the most gothic aspects of what tradition has handed down to us, but rather with the life project of those who have known Jesus and his message and want to follow his path of truth and freedom in order to be transformed into Him.

From the first centuries, the Christian community has treasured the memory of those who have borne witness to this faith. A testimony that, as the Apostle James reminds us, is composed above all of works. Works such as those put into practice by the martyrs, confessing the faith unto death; the first missionaries, carrying the Word of God to the ends of the earth; the servants of the poor, giving their lives for the needy, and so on and so forth.

In the beginning, when Christian communities were small, the saints were known to everyone. They were people "from my parish". Their tombs were visited and everything they had done was kept in memory. They were venerated because, despite their faults, which everyone knew, grace had been stronger. It was no longer they who acted, but Christ who lived within them. But, little by little, the first-hand testimonies were lost, and the stories of the lives of the saints became legends to which, with the legitimate aim of extolling their figures, extraordinary anecdotes were added.

Let's not hold our heads in our hands, any self-respecting parent or grandmother has literarily embellished a family story to make children proud to feel part of the clan. Yes, you too.

And this, which happens in the best families, has also happened a bit in the history of the great ecclesial family, to the point that many texts of saints' lives are as credible as the adventures of any Marvel superhero. 

Perhaps for another time, in a society accustomed to myths, extraordinary stories would be valid; but in a disbelieving society like ours, what people need are real stories. And the real story of any Christian, the real story of any saint, is full of lights and shadows; of moments of clear faith and dark rebellion; of falls, of mistakes, of weaknesses, of humanity!

Talking about the sins of the saints, far from scandalizing the men and women of today, brings them closer, makes them real and, therefore, and most importantly, imitable. Because a perfect saint is a perfect invention, since it would not be compatible with the human condition.

And I am not talking about saints who, like St. Paul, St. Pelagia or St. Augustine had a life of public sin before their conversion, I am talking about saints who, throughout their life of faith, had to fight with their pride, their greed, their anger, their gluttony, their lust, their envy or their laziness.

How much I miss more chapters in the lives of the saints in which these struggles of those who wanted to let themselves be helped by grace, but were surely often defeated by their fragile nature, were explained! A saint is not the one who does not fall, but the one who keeps hope in the final victory in spite of his partial failures and gets up again for the next battle.

What good are the stories of physical battles against the devil that many hagiographies tell me, if they do not tell me first how they dealt with his subtle suggestions, his daily temptations, his everyday deceptions, the same ones we all suffer from?

Certainly, many saints tell their obscurities in their autobiographies, but their followers and spiritual children insist on covering them up, making their stories not credible. How much damage puritanism has done and continues to do! Rigidity generates frustration in those who practice it, because it turns the Christian life into a checklist impossible to complete; and it provokes scandal in those who contemplate it, because sooner or later the whitened sepulcher ends up letting its stench escape. 

Please, let the saints be saints; let them be divinely human; let them be earthen vessels containing a treasure; let them show that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more; let them boast of their weaknesses because, when they are weak, then they are strong; Let them show us that we should not be afraid to be saints, for the Lord has not come to sanctify the just but sinners; and let them show their heroic virtues, but putting in the first place that of humility. Happy All Saints' and Sinners' Day!