God reveals Himself in His Witnesses, let us stop missing it!

For most of my life, if I am honest, I have found the saints to be super boring. Frankly, they look bored. A standard saint card is a picture of the holy one with their hands in prayer center, eyes closed and face pointed towards the sky. They just look sooooo…. pious. Little did I know and only later did I learn that most of the saints were amazing and have accomplished way way more than 99.9% of present and past society. I used to complain about Mary not looking very relatable to women and then someone pointed out to me that in most of her statues she looks completely serene and yet is crushing the devil. She is literally defeating evil and not even breaking a sweat. Ok, that is seriously awesome and for the feminist, very pro woman!

It is actually our fault for making the saints look so unattractive because their lives were far different from the boring nature of their statues. These were men and women who were super feisty, joyful, and fierce. They performed miracles and achieved the heights of character and virtue that many of us only dream of.

I mentioned yesterday that we have compartmentalized God out of our reality. This is due mostly to the inconvenience of worship but also in part to poor marketing. If God is a genie, Jesus is a hippie and no one wants to look like a saint statue well then what’s the point? But what if we have been cheated on the story of Christianity? What if this boring faith that many of us reject is actually a huge, global story that IS REAL. What if God was so powerful that humans would die if they saw His glory? What if Jesus Christ was so radical that He actually rose from the dead? And what if the saints were total holy bad asses who cry out to us to join them? My friends we have been baptized into this and we are missing it.

As I walked into St. Peter’s Basilica last week, I was immediately surrounded by the statues of 140 early century saints and all I could think of was Hebrews 12:1

" Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off all that hinders and sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us."

I, in 2016, stood amidst a cloud of witnesses who lived and died for the same faith that I profess. These 140 saints received a true salvation history from the faithful of the Old Testament, believed in Jesus and continued the narrative. Now, they are immortalized statues crying out to thousands of onlookers saying, “ It’s true, it’s all true! Love the Lord it is He who brings life and death”.

And it is not just the 140 saints that stand in this cloud of witnesses. It’s the good popes and saints who are buried all over the city. It is the painted faithful on the ceilings of the churches. Men and women lived as you lived and died as you will die but it was their relationship with our Lord that informed every single decision they made. They are not there so that we can be passive and think about how nice it is that they had a deep faith. They are a stark challenge. They are meant to inspire us cast aside our trivial pursuit of comfort for the sake of the living God for which our souls were made. They are so much more than art; it is in front of these witnesses that words of St. Iraneus can ring loud, “ The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive.”

It is God that makes us fully alive, it is He who has immortalized the saints who go before us and it is He to whom they point.

No matter your experience with Christianity, God is bigger, better, and more powerful than you can possibly imagine. The story of our faith extends far wider and far deeper than your most likely terrible catechesis and it is worth a second look. The saints did not reach their sainthood for Sunday school or a list of rules that many perceive as outdated. Their sainthood is for Truth and they are calling to us to join them.