Halloween aside, the Feast of All Saints is just around the corner. It’s one of those peculiar holy days where many are not quite sure what to do with it. I suggest that this year we set aside the usual crowd of traditional saints and focus our attention elsewhere. Where?
There are people, living and dead, who have helped form our understanding of what it means to be moral human beings—people who have lived with courage in a world that does not always respect or value morality. Perhaps we should spend some time reflecting on their lives and how they have exemplified for us what it means to live with integrity and respect for others.
Few of them will ever appear on an official list of saints. There may be exceptions among well-known figures whose books or public lives have influenced us, but I’m thinking more about those who have shaped us through personal relationships.
Quite a few come to my mind—my own father among them. He was the spiritual leader of our family and modeled generosity for me. Others who shaped my early years included a Lutheran pastor, a small-town police sergeant, and a high school classmate whose name I can no longer remember. Later in life there were a professor of philosophy and religion who was also a Franciscan oblate, and another professor of management who drew deeply from the Ten Commandments in his teaching. I’ve known clergy colleagues long deceased and others still living; an old-fashioned family doctor who still made house calls when few others did; a senior investment executive whose quiet faith guided his decisions; and a respected Sioux Nation chief who was a long-time parishioner.
The point is, these were ordinary people—men and women who were part of my life and helped me understand the deeper meaning of what it is to be a moral person striving to follow in the way of love, the way of the cross, and to respect the dignity of every human being. Like you, I have had times when my own failures and weaknesses left me in great need of that kind of mentorship. I am certain that each of those exemplars would say the same about themselves: there were times when their own shortcomings required the guidance of others.
Everyday saints such as these have been trusted exemplars of a better way because they have had to overcome their own struggles. They never achieved perfection—their closest friends knew better than to expect it, and their critics were quick to point out their flaws. But perfection was never their goal. Their goal was to commit their lives daily to Christ and the way of the cross, to walk with confidence amid change, hardship, and chaos.
What they all shared was a deep trust that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15–16)