Episode Transcript  

One

What God Created Us For

God created every human person to participate in his own divine life. This means infinitely more than simply being a good person. It means God dwelling in our soul, uniting himself to us in love, healing, elevating, and perfecting our human nature. We actually become children of God, sharing in his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

Scripture tells us we will be like God (1 John 3:2), sharing in his knowledge, desiring what he desires, and loving as he loves. Holiness is not merely becoming a better version of yourself. It is becoming like God.

Two

Holiness Is the Secret to Happiness

Everyone wants to be happy. In fact, everything we do, we do because we believe it will make us happy. Yet many people think holiness means giving up happiness. They imagine that becoming a saint means a life of restrictions, sacrifices, and giving up everything they enjoy. But the opposite is true. Holiness is not the enemy of happiness. Holiness is the fulfillment of our deepest desire for happiness because holiness is union with God, the infinite source of everything good.

This is why Jesus begins the Beatitudes, the Gospel for All Saints Day, with the word Blessed, which can also be translated as happy. Jesus is revealing the secret to happiness: union with God. Now imagine what your life would be like if God so thoroughly transformed you that you began to think, desire, and love as God does.

You would be prudent, seeing clearly and making wise decisions. You would be just, giving God and others what is due to them. You would be temperate, no longer enslaved by disordered desires, addictions, or vices. You would be courageous, doing what is right even in the face of great fear. You would be humble and confident, no longer controlled by what others think of you, seeking only to please God. You would be free from unhealthy attachments, at peace even in the storms of life. You would be zealous for what is good and uncompromising in your hatred of evil. You would be generous, disciplined, and self-controlled, yet delighting freely in everything good and beautiful. Above all, you would love as God loves, seeking the good of others, never using anyone to get what you want.

This is what holiness looks like!

Three

God Became Man so that Man Might Become God

We cannot make ourselves holy because we cannot make ourselves divine. No amount of human effort, discipline, or determination can give us the life of God. Only God can give us his own divine life. This is why the Son of God became man: so that by sharing in our human nature, He could make us sharers in his divine nature. As St. Athanasius declared, “God became man so that man might become God.” Not God by nature, but God by participation in His divine life. The Church calls this divinization or theosis.

God does not merely command us to become holy and leave us to accomplish it ourselves. Through Baptism, the Holy Trinity comes to dwell within us, giving us His own life and the power to become saints. Becoming a saint is not fundamentally what we do for God. It is what God does in us when we freely cooperate with His grace.

Holiness is not merely imitating God from a distance. It is God himself dwelling within you, transforming you from within, so that you begin to think as God thinks, desire what God desires, and love as God loves.

Four

The Saints Are Proof That God Can Do This in You

Today the Church celebrates all those who allowed God to accomplish this transformation in them. They were not born perfect. They struggled with weaknesses, temptations, fears, disordered desires, and sin. But they cooperated with God's grace.

Think of Peter, who denied Jesus; Augustine, who struggled with lust and ambition; Francis of Assisi, who had to surrender his dreams of worldly glory; and Thérèse of Lisieux, who discovered holiness in little acts of love. God transformed them.

The saints are not merely people to admire. They are living proof of what God wants to accomplish in us. The Church holds them up and says: Look! This is possible. God did it in them. He can do it in you.

And that is the good news of All Saints’ Day. You do not have to remain the person you are today. You can be transformed.

Five

Jesus Gives Us a Simple Way to Become Saints

In Luke 6:47–48, Jesus gives us a simple plan to become a saint. He says, “Come to me; listen to my Word; and then do it.”

Three simple steps: Come to Jesus in the Eucharist. Listen to His Word in meditation. Do what He told you in your resolution.

Now, someone might object, “Isn't that too simple?” But imagine what would happen if you practiced these three things every day. After one year, your life would begin to change dramatically. After five years, you could be a profoundly different person. After twenty years, imagine how deeply God could transform you. And after a lifetime of cooperating with his grace, you could become a saint, not because you accomplished it by your own power, but because you consistently opened yourself to God, allowing Him to transform you.

God wants to make you a saint. He has the power to do it. Only you can prevent Him if you refuse to persevere in this simple process. So, as a resolution, come to Jesus, listen to His Word, and act on it today.

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