Five notes of holiness, according to Gaudete et exultateThe heart of holinessA holy Church, or a Church of saints?In these intense years that we are living in the Catholic Church, at the beginning of the third millennium of our history, the Holy Father now summons all Christians throughout the world to the ordinary Jubilee Year of 2025 to revive our hope: "Spes non confundit" (Rom 5:5), which is the motto of this year of abundant graces from Heaven.
Of course, the first and most important grace that we always seek from God is that of holiness, for as St. John Paul II affirmed in the Apostolic Letter "The grace of holiness is the first and most important grace that we always seek from God.Novo Milenio ineunte"(Rome, 6 January 2001): "The pastoral care of the Church in the 21st century will be the pastoral care of holiness" (n. 31).
Holiness
Let us not forget that holiness is simply "knowing and loving Jesus Christ," which is truly a gift of God, a gift of God, for as Jesus himself forcefully affirmed: "No one comes to me unless the Father draws him" (Jn 6:41).
The question of whether holiness is possible could be the object of a detailed study. In the first place, because to ask about holiness is to recall that in the spiritual life the first step is always taken by God.
The question: "Is it possible for there to be saints in this 21st century? Basically, it would be the same question that Jesus asked the apostles: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8). To put it more clearly: "On the day of the end of the world, will there be Christians?
The answer is affirmative, since we are here and we with the example of our joy and happiness will attract many other men and women and so on. "God is love" and whoever believes in love, believes in God.
Carlo Acutis and the saints of our times
A few days ago, as an advisor to the Spanish Episcopal Conference, I had to respond to a journalist on a radio program. The journalist asked if the Church had made a mistake in canonizing a fifteen year old boy named Carlo Acutis. What sense would it make to present a teenager as a model and intercessor to the people of God throughout the world? What can a child say to a man or woman of the twentieth century?
The question is interesting because for many people, to think of sanctity is to think of a heroic struggle, to live all the virtues in a superlative degree, to do great feats and to die in a very extraordinary way. In this sense, a 15 year old young man would not have had the material time to prove anything to anyone.
Truly, next April we will receive with joy the gift from God of the canonization of this young Italian, for he is one of the great saints of the 21st century. For he has the fundamental characteristic of all the saints of all times: a life of complicit prayer. As the Acutis momThroughout the day, his son maintained a continuous relationship with God. He had and has, like all champions of the faith, an essential characteristic of the spiritual life: he prayed in complicity.
Happiness and holiness
The definition of happiness is exactly that: "happiness is the intimate conviction of doing what God wants". God wants stones to give glory to God by being stones, animals to give glory to God by swarming and trees by growing and men by being happy as they seek to give glory to God with their freedom: "to have no other freedom than to love God and those around us".
Thus, the prayer of complicity with God, the relationship of intimacy with God leads immediately to living charity with all people. For this reason, the best document of Pope Francis, the most definitive, is undoubtedly the Encyclical "Fratelli tutti" of 3.X.2020 and in it the Roman Pontiff proposes the civilization of love. If all Christians were serious about loving God and others, about living the commandment of charity, the world would change immediately and wars, conflicts and poverty would end (n. 282).
So, not only will there be Christians in the 21st century, but there will be saints in the 21st century, as there have always been in the Church. In fact, we are preparing a history of the Church based on holiness; we have collected a group of 40 saints who changed the course of history. We hope in a few years to make it known to all people in order to promote transforming saints, with the grace of God.
What is common to all these saints is that they learned to love God and others, they learned the way of holiness in their homes, whether they were Christians or not, because all Christian homes are Christian in imitation of the home of Bethlehem and Nazareth. The Christian family has always been the place of learning to love, because people mature by learning to love.
Saints of the ordinary
In turn, the nucleus of love in the family is formed by conjugal love, which is built on the daily self-giving between God, husband and wife. Undoubtedly, all Christian spouses know that if they want to love each other more, there is only one way, to begin by seeking God and treating Him in order to ask for help and advice to find details with which to continue to love one's partner eternally.
The Church's holiness proposal to the world could be summarized in the program of life proposed by St. Josemaría in 1939: "That you seek Christ, that you find Christ, that you treat Christ and that you love Christ" (The Way, no. 382). In short, the program is Jesus Christ. And the encounter with Jesus Christ is learned at home and in the ordinary activities of the Christian.
As St. John Paul II said in the "Novo Millennio Ineunte": "It is not a question of inventing a new program. The program already exists. It is the same as always, gathered from the Gospel and the living Tradition. It is centered, in the final analysis, on Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so as to live in him the Trinitarian life and to transform history with him until its perfection in the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a program that does not change as times and cultures change, even though it takes into account time and culture for true dialogue and effective communication. This is our program for the third millennium" (n. 29).
Member of the Academy of Ecclesiastical History. Professor of the master's degree in the Causes of Saints of the Dicastery, advisor to the Spanish Episcopal Conference and director of the office of the Causes of Saints of Opus Dei in Spain.
