This week’s Gospel
is about ‘sanctification’, a concept that the great John Wesley, founder of
Methodism and an Anglican priest all his life, took to be the key to Christian
discipleship. But what does it mean? In
contemporary English ‘sanctified’ sounds uncomfortably like ‘sanctimonious’, hardly
a flattering description, and surely one that Christians want to avoid.
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| The disciples cast lots to replace Judas |
Yet it is a
widespread church practice to commemorate the ‘Holy Women, Holy Men’ who have
been shining examples of Christian faith across the centuries. Sanctification
just means ‘being made holy’. While sanctified people are holy, sanctimonious people
are ‘holier than thou’. The difference is immense.
In the Gospel Jesus
declares that those called to be saints ‘do not belong to the world’. But
equally, he does not ask God to ‘take them out of this world’. This dual
relationship to everyday life is crucial. Saints live in the world, often very
actively and energetically. But they do so for
God and in Christ. This commitment brings
with it the danger of being despised, or even hated, by ‘realists’ because true
saints cannot just go along with the ways of the world. Their holiness, though,
does not rest on rejecting the world, but being committed to living in it ‘sanctified
in the truth’. To be sanctified in the truth means being a Christian witness, someone
whose words and actions present a perpetual challenge to a false faith widely held -- that
economic prosperity, political success and social prestige are the
indispensable elements of a life worth living.
In the
reading from
Acts, Matthias is called to be a disciple, not directly by Jesus, but by
the
other disciples. This simple episode shows that sainthood is not
confined to
ancient times. Each of us can be called to sanctification now.
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