Becoming a Saint

    “Holiness is not the luxury of the few but the simple duty for you and me so let us be holy as our Father in heaven is holy….

    Our progress in holiness depends on God and on ourselves—on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. “I will be a saint” means I will despoil myself of all that is not God. I will strip my heart of all created things, I will live in poverty and detachment, I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God….

Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your own weakness….

We must not attempt to control God’s actions. We must not count the stages in the journey he would have us make. We must not desire a clear perception of our advance along the road, nor know precisely where we are on the way of holiness. I ask him to make a saint of me, yet I must leave to him the choice of that saintliness itself and still more the choice of the means which lead to it.

Make sure that you let God’s grace work in your souls by accepting whatever he gives you, and giving him whatever he takes from you. True holiness comes in doing God’s will with a smile.

Lord, make me a saint according to your own heart, meek and humble.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta Life in the Spirit