When I was a boy holiness was a mystery to me. I knew\u00a0Jesus, Mary and the saints to be holy because they prayed\u00a0a lot and never did anything wrong. As far as I could understand it this special way of life was the privilege of priests\u00a0and nuns. For the rest of us we simply had to struggle\u00a0along as best we could in our efforts to be good. If clergy\u00a0and religious were all gold medal contenders, we were very\u00a0much the \u2018no hopers\u2019 who struggled to make the final.\u00a0But what is holiness? Perhaps this is one of the things we\u00a0can pray about and read up on during Lent. In my adult life\u00a0I have realised that holiness is for everyone to strive for.\u00a0\u2018Be holy, as I am holy,\u2019 God tells his people (Leviticus\u00a011:44). Jesus instructs his followers in the following way,\u00a0\u2018Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect\u2019 (Matthew\u00a05:48). The Catechism tells us that all are called to holiness.<\/p>\n
I began by saying how holiness was a mystery to me when\u00a0I was younger because it was beyond me, but the more we\u00a0desire to be close to Christ, the more we are drawn into\u00a0intimate relationship and mystical union with Him and then\u00a0into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Everyone’s invited, everyone can be a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a boy holiness was a mystery to me. I knew\u00a0Jesus, Mary and the saints to be holy because they prayed\u00a0a lot and never did anything wrong. As far as I could understand it this special way of life was the privilege of priests\u00a0and nuns. For the rest of us we simply had to struggle\u00a0along as best we could in our efforts to be good. If clergy\u00a0and religious were all gold medal contenders, we were very\u00a0much the \u2018no hopers\u2019 who struggled to make the final.\u00a0But what is holiness? Perhaps this is one of the things we\u00a0can pray about and read up on during Lent. In my adult life\u00a0I have realised that holiness is for everyone to strive for.\u00a0\u2018Be holy, as I am holy,\u2019 God tells his people (Leviticus\u00a011:44). Jesus instructs his followers in the following way,\u00a0\u2018Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect\u2019 (Matthew\u00a05:48). The Catechism tells us that all are called to holiness. I began by saying how holiness was a mystery to me when\u00a0I was younger because it was beyond me, but the more we\u00a0desire to be close to Christ, the more we are drawn into\u00a0intimate relationship and mystical union with Him and then\u00a0into the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Everyone’s invited, everyone can be a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3418,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions\/3418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/saintedmunds.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}