Today we celebrate All the Saints of the Church. This is quite a tall order! All of them? Surely there are far too many to be known. This is undoubtedly true but for the sake of memory, example and teaching, the Church identifies those who stand out in history as being very close to God. The Saints are a great blessing to us because by their prayers and the witness of their lives it becomes easier for us to become Saints as well. Becoming a Saint is not an optional extra in Christianity. It simply describes what it means to be saved, to stand in God’s presence, to be united with him and glorified. We may not end up being glorified by the Church and venerated in her worship but we shall be Saints nonetheless. This calling to sainthood is challenging, but only because the gospel is itself challenging. God never sets before us an impossible task and becoming a Saint is both necessary and achievable for us all. How then do we go about becoming Saints?

It is helpful to start with a simple question. “How should we describe failing to become a Saint?” This is actually the same question as: “what is sin”? The answer given in the New Testament, no less than 221 times, is the little Greek word “hamartano”, in English, “to miss the mark“. This is a phrase taken from the sport of archery. The bowman aims for the target with his arrow, he or she draws back the bow and he fires. However, at the time of failure the mark is missed, the bull’s-eye at centre.

Sin, generally in the New Testament, is this “missing the mark”, not becoming the person God had in mind for us from the moment of our creation. Sin is not becoming a Saint. Becoming a Saint is not missing this mark, in effect becoming so skilled at hitting the target that we never miss. We may spend a lifetime getting to this point, and there will be many failures along the way, but by God’s grace, and with His strength and wisdom, the misses will become our tutor, our coach, so that we learn from our mistakes rather than tragically repeating them. In other words if we are being made holy, if we are well on our way to becoming Saints, it is sufficient to say that we are making progress, day by day, week by week, year by year, until that is we die.

Without any hint of pride, we need to know whether or not we are making progress rather than slipping backwards. We do not need, nor should we seek, the praise of men but we do need to know whether or not we are hitting the target for it is so easy to delude ourselves. Sometimes we may think that we are on track when in fact we are not. Our misses, our mistakes, can only teach us if we recognise these as failures. Our hits, our victories can only confirm us in our dedicated lives if we can spot these as well. How then shall we see the misses and the hits, the failures and the victories without another coach to guide us?

This coach is the Holy Spirit and it is no accident that the Church’s commemoration of the Saints today and over the next few weeks comes hard on the heels of the Feast of Pentecost when we celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the people of God in times past and times present. Without the empowerment and guidance of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to hit the mark and become Saints. At the beginning of each and every act of worship in the Orthodox Church and in the Trisagion Prayers we pray the hymn to the Holy Spirit “O Heavenly King” by which we implore Him to come and dwell in us, cleansing us from every stain.  In each and every Liturgy at the epiklesis we pray that the Holy Spirit will come down, not only on the Holy Gifts, but also on us who receive them. Do you pray at that point that the Holy Spirit will come down upon you? You should, -every time - and praying thus you should expect results, provided of course you are working hard through faith and ascetic effort to present yourself to God as a holy reasonable and living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). It is absolutely necessary that we both receive and depend on the Holy Spirit day by day in order that we might become Saints, to hit the mark and be saved.

Many Christians, even Orthodox Christians, however, at this point make a serious error of judgement. They think that being baptised in both water and the Holy Spirit is simply a matter between them and God. Although God is our Teacher He knows, having created us, that we best learn from each other and especially from those who have a direct and mature experience of walking the same path that lies ahead of each one of us toward the Kingdom of God. That is why we all need a spiritual father or mother, more experienced than ourselves to help us in our faith, our ascetic life and our attention to the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. There is an old Christian saying which goes something like this: “he who guides himself is tutor to a fool.”

Okay, so let us say now that we have the Holy Spirit, we have our spiritual guide and parent, we have the Holy Mysteries of the Church; do we lack anything else in order to become a Saint? Only one thing we need if tragically we have not realised this from the outset, that is, love. Love is both the crowning fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work and a way of life that at every point on our journey enables us to hit the target and become a Saint, the person that God wants us to be. Without love we are nothing, we are still in sin, we have lost sight of the resurrection. This love is not weak and sentimental; it is both strong and purposeful. It is kind and patient, enduring all things, just and sacrificial (1 Corinthians 13).

Love will keep our vision clear and our eyes on the target. Love will give strength to our arm as we draw back the bow. Love is everything including the Target itself, or rather Himself, God. The love of God is how we become Saints. Love is why we are here, indiscriminate total sacrificial love. Love deifies us so that at the end God may be all and in all, the very God who is Love, the Philanthropos, the Lover of mankind.