by the Rev. Michael F. Dogali
Most people are shocked the first time they visit Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. They cannot believe their eyes when they see what the great master had painted. The colors are so vivid, so stunning! The blues, the deep, deep blues, the reds and pinks, the brilliant flesh colors.
Michelangelo's great masterpiece, from Creation to Last Judgment was unveiled on All Saints Day of 1541. I think of this great masterpiece on All Saints Day 1996 in all of its vivid brightness as but a shadow of God's own creation of the human soul leading through faith to an appreciation of God himself. And how grateful I am for my Catholic faith: faith that makes it possible for me, for the me that I so often hate with such good cause, for so many sins of commission and omission, so much that is repulsive in one who is supposed to be a "man of God" and a leader of others, it is possible for me to be a saint.
What a marvel, what a mystery, what a joy that to be a saint is never more than a step away, a step into the Sacrament of Penance, a step into total reconciliation, into perfect sanctity. And if that is possible for me, is it not wonderfully possible for millions who are immeasurably better than I, even though many think they are far worse?
Just as with the saints, God constantly offers his grace to us. And grace seldom comes in a form we might welcome. It demands the abandonment of every security to which we cling. Grace rarely comes in the shape of a gentle invitation to change. More often than not it appears in the form of an assualt - something we are at first tempted to flee. That was the prophetic experience of Jonah and Jeremiah. Receiving God's grace is more like being hit in the head with a book and called a warthog from hell, Ruby Turpin's disconcerting experience in Flannery O'Connor's story, Revelation. Grace takes on as many forms as there are people and times and human events.
Grace cannot always be "nice". Sometimes only in harshness can it heal. O'Connor tried to explain this to those readers (including her own mother) who thought she ought to write pleasant things that people would like. O'Connor despaired of the idea that good Christian stories should offer instant uplift, happy endings and easy transitions that leave the reader undisturbed and feeling good. Is that not the same with our spiritual lives?
The saints teach us that the spiritual life is seldom a matter of painless, uninterrupted growth. And sometimes we do not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace because God's grace bursts forth from absurd sources. Sometimes we have to reconsider the way we have come to picture God. God does not replace personality. He works through it. Grace takes on a thousand different faces, but the unifying element for the saints, for us is a generous loving God who created the world, sent the gift of himself in Jesus and who continues to be present and active through the Holy Spirit.
O'Connor wrote, "To the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures." Repeatedly with the saints we discover men and women dealing with a God who makes himself accessible in pathos and tears. God is never what Peter, Augustine, Martha or Teresa expect. This is God as mystery.
On this Feast of All Saints, we remember that grace is thanks, grace is assualt, grace is real, grace brings us to sainthood