Called To Be Holy

It will be 52 years ago this year that the Second Vatican Council resounded with its many shifts and insights into what it means to be a Christian Catholic. The Church, the world, still reverberates with them;  we are still absorbing them and working toward implementing them.  One of them, "the universal call to holiness," has opened a door that affects every one of us.  It's not just priests, sisters and brothers who are called to be saints, but each one of us as well.
 Our readings today emphasize this call.  St. Paul addresses his first letter to the Corinthians,'to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours...."(1 Cor 1:2),  Followers of Jesus are to be, as Isaiah writes, "a light to the nations,/ that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Is 49: 6). How do we become holy, how are we to be light?  John the Baptist points to Jesus:  "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." (Jn 1: 29). John recognized in Jesus the one who takes away our sins and makes holiness possible, for is not holiness based upon an absence of sin?  We do not cleanse ourselves, but Jesus lifts our sins from our shoulders when we ask him to do so, when we seek this will all of our heart, when we die to our selfishness and put our lives at God's disposal.  Today, may we heed our call and act upon it.
Bro. Rene