“In reading about the lives of the saints, the idea of sanctity that seemed like a difficult uphill climb reserved only for a rare group of people, became a common heritage, and I began to understand why Jesus invited all his disciples to reach perfection, in the same way as the Father: the perfection of God himself!

It all seemed old but also totally new. It was a new method, a new spirit, like discovering the key to a mystery: one that opened out to love that had been locked up, but which now broke out like a flame and spread until it became a blazing fire.

The ascent towards that remote God now seemed easy and possible for all, since all could now find the way home together, as brothers. Those terrifying acts of penance (hair shirts, chains, dark nights of the soul, renunciation) became effortless since all was done together, with the help of our brothers, with love for Christ.

It was the dawning of a a “socialised” sanctity (terms used by the Second Vatican Council and which would become popular) no longer individualistic, where you think of sanctifying yourself and meticulously cultivate your own soul, instead of forgetting yourself. A religiosity, an interior life that issued from the ranks of religious institutes, from a sort of elitism of the privileged classes –at times so distant and even against society, in reality formed by the major part of the living Church. This sanctity now reaches out to the squares, workshops and offices, the houses and fields, as also to the convents and Catholic Action associations, since in every place, one meets people who are all candidates for perfection. In short, asceticism has turned out to be a universal adventure of divine love – love that generates light.»

«Life is a unique occasion to be lived on earth which is one with eternity. And we can make the earth a foretaste of heaven, and insert it into the life of God, to bring heaven on earth. Do not spoil it with ambition and greed and do not ruin it with wrath and hostility: deify it – extend it within the heart of the Eternal – with Love. And God is where love exists. And where every moment is used for love, giving God to others: which also means absorbing God for oneself and for the others.

This means experiencing the freedom of the sons of God, for whom the spirit is not immobilized by prejudice, divisions, oppositions, and barricades to the spirit of God. Those who live this way do not focus on sanctifying themselves but on sanctifying. They are not self-centered. They sanctify by sanctifying, given that we love through loving, and serve by serving. In this way, sanctification itself takes on a social dimension: a continual giving and giving of oneself brings about the sanctification of souls, which becomes a communitarian reality.

“Be perfect as my Father is perfect,” Jesus exhorted: and we become perfect in God’s will, united as one in order to be one with Him, through Christ.”

Source: Igino Giordani Centre