This coming weekend there is going to be an activity in our parish called Christ Light beginning on Friday evening and ending on Sunday afternoon.  Talking to those parishioners who have done it in the past I noticed it had a tremendous impact on their lives and there are many places available for this coming weekend.  And, those who have organized the weekend have put a tremendous amount of work into it and we’d like to have a few more people on board so, during the Mass, ask yourselves, could you benefit from this experience and if you think you would, you can either talk or actually enroll with someone from the Christ Life team after the Mass.

You’ve surely heard that Gospel before, the Gospel of the eight beatitudes, beginning with Matthew’s Gospel and I’ve heard them and read them countless times.  But, this week something struck me about them and, you know, they were chosen for this Feast of All Saints.  Something struck me about that Gospel reading that never had before, and that is, that the virtues that Jesus said we would be blessed for are not very extraordinary virtues.  They’re quite ordinary. 

Yet the Saints are extraordinary, let’s face it.  Whether we think of Mother Theresa of Calcutta spending and dedicating her life to the people dying on the streets of Calcutta; Saint Damian of Molokai who was canonized on the 11th of this month spent his life caring for the lepers on Molokai, eventually contracted leprosy and died.  Saint Theresa of Avila who wrote more eloquently about the mystical heights of prayer perhaps more than anyone else ever has.  Saint John Vianni, the French priest who was the patron saint of priests (as this is the Year of the Priest), who use to spend up to 16 hours a day in the confessional.  All extraordinary, extraordinary people whom I look up to and respect and admire and venerate but honestly, I think they’re out of my reach, all of them.

And so I am somewhat comforted that the virtues that Jesus says we are blessed if we possess them, I think I can aim at them and I think you can too.  Blessed are the poor in spirit, the humble, people who are not too much of a “hot shot,” I can aim at that…those who mourn, allowing ourselves to be sad when it’s a season to be sad; the gentle, that’s not impossible.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice—I think that a very attractive virtue, I can go there.  Those who are merciful, they will obtain mercy--maybe the most difficult of them all.  But we can all aim at that, to be merciful.  The peacemakers, they will be called “children of God.”  And what about all those who are persecuted?  I don’t know whether we are going to or Governor Swartzenegger is going to start persecuting any of us because of our religion, but perhaps we can take it as whenever difficulties or sickness or sorrow comes along in our life, can we greet it with serenity?

Those are the qualities that Jesus says will make us blessed, will make us Saints.  So, three comments that I would make about that:  The first is that I think the qualities of being a saint are within the grasp of each one of us.  In fact, the early Christians use to refer to each other as Saints and that is when the letter of Saint John says, we can all reach the height of virtue because we are the children of God.  And I believe he is referring to baptism.  Baptism, the day which we forget about so often, the day in which we became members of a faith community, when we had the seed of faith planted in our hearts and in which we became followers of Christ—the day in which we received the tickets for the journey to holiness.

Secondly, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Saints are not easily perceptible, you can miss them.  They don’t stick out a mile like the great Saints that are being canonized.  I use to notice that when I lived in religious order, and I would be going to a new community, people would say to me, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you’re going to be in community with Father so and so who is a wonderful preacher, or you’re going to be with Father so and so who is a wonderful spiritual director, or your going to be with Father so and so who is the best social justice Priest in Ireland…”  And, yes, they were all wonderful, but I noticed that each time I left those communities, the man who had struck me and influenced my life most deeply was someone much more ordinary—someone with much more the ordinary virtues but who made a deep impact on my life.

Thirdly, I’ve also noticed that the people who influenced me, and this is just me, as well as being people who were searching for God and the things of God, they also have a great deal of humanity going for them; and they are outstanding servants of God who also loves this life passionately.  So I’m going to give you an example of one of the people who really influenced my life deeply.  His name was Father Paddy Doyle.  He was a Jesuit Priest, and a very short man.  He had been a second vocational, a late vocation, he had been a physicist and felt equally at home with everybody when it came to talking about science of philosophy or theology. 

But we lived in a very humble little community in Northern Ireland, his great delight was to go into the simplest house and talk to the people about their every day concerns.  This was in a little town in Northern Ireland called Portadown, and we lived on a street called the Garvaghy Road, which eventually became the most noteworthy flash-point in Northern Ireland, I would say.  And, Paddy was an amazingly hopeful man—I don’t say optimistic, because I think hopeful is more a theological virtue.  He could see hope where nobody else could.  I use to say, “These troubles are going to go on for 500 years forward.”  Paddy would say, “Oh no, no, no, no, I think they’re going to sit down and talk any day now.”  And, British Government at the time were saying, “We would never ever ever sit down and talk with terrorists.”  And we’d be seeing that on the news and he would just puff on a cigarette and say, “Oh, they will, they always do.”  And, of course, he was right, in 1998, they sat down the Good Friday Agreement and the beginning of peace in Ireland.   

He was someone who not let me criticize the Irish weather.  I’m not a fan of the Irish climate—it’s one of the reasons I’m here and not there.  I really need some of that commodity called sunshine in my life and when there is none I get very down.  So I would come down to breakfast in the morning and I would look out and I’d say, “What a deplorable, appalling, catastrophic day.”  And he would say, “Oh no, no, no you mustn’t talk like that.”  And he would go over and pull the curtain and he’d say, “Look, I think I can see a little patch of blue.”  Sometime after that, he had a stroke, which really ended his ministry—he wasn’t able to do ministry and more, his memory began to go, he couldn’t drive a car, he couldn’t do a lot of things.  So, he went to a retirement home in Dublin.  But people use to go there on a kind of a pilgrimage just to see him because he had such serenity in his heart despite everything being taken away from him, really.  And he had such a smile and such graciousness.  It was obvious that he was at peace and that he was tremendously happy. 

So, he is one of the people who had a deep impact on my life.  He went to God about six months ago, he has now taken his rightful place among the Saints in Heaven and I was very happy when the Irish Jesuits asked me to write about his life because he had made such a deep impact on me.  But, his virtues were ordinary.  I could aim at them, so could you.  And, wasn’t it the same of Jesus of Nazareth, weren’t his virtues in a way ordinary?  Wasn’t he an ordinary man?  Wasn’t that the problem?  People said, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?  Don’t we know his father Joseph, and his mother, Mary?  Hasn’t he lived here among us?  What’s everybody talking about?  He’s just an ordinary man.”  For almost everybody his divinity was imperceptible, it didn’t stick out a mile. 

And, so I’ll finish with another little story.  There was a sixth grade religious education teacher and she planned a teacher-talk about Jesus.  And she introduced the topic by saying, “Today I’m going to tell you about someone who is merciful and forgiving, who tries to get fair play for everybody, who is patient and gentle, and a peacemaker, who is cheerful and who brings comfort to people who are sad.”  And a little boy put up his hand and he says, “Teacher, I know that man.  He lives on our street.”  I am sure there is such a person who lives on your street too.  Someone who exudes ordinary everyday sanctity—, who knows, perhaps that person is you.