I used to think...

that Saints were some kind of aberration, a once in a generation event where holiness met physicality and produced theosis. Things have changed.

Saints are, in fact, the only normal people around. All the rest of us spend our time trying as best we can to get to normal, to get to what we are supposed to be and for most of us this normality will elude us. We'll have moments of it, of course, but never experience the permanency of it and those moments will leave us simultaneously desolate and hopeful.

On a good day we will feel the presence of God within us, the sense that we are connected to something, someone, so much larger than ourselves. It occurs to us in different ways, in different times, and in different stages in our life but it does happen. When it does there is a sense of rest and calm within, a kind of understanding that heaven and earth are aligned even if for a moment. Precisely when this happens is the moment we are also most human, most like what we were supposed to be, most alive in the best sense of the word, most normal.

The great agony of being human is that we are always aware we spend most of our existence at odds with the truth of who we are. We were meant to be so full of the presence of God that those who encounter us would recognize our form, know that we are human, but see only God. The Saints, alive with the presence of God, are a reminder of what we were created to be.

Now most of us may not get there in this life, at least like the luminaries we call Saints. But we will have our moments, those places in our lives where time seems to stop and we understand we are in the presence of the Holy One. Hold on to those moments because they tell us that despite our struggles we are still on the journey and that one day we will, like the Saints, find our way home.