Not so long ago we had a visit to the UK by Pope Benedict XVI from the Vatican. Part of the purpose of his Holiness visiting the UK was to beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) who, as many will know, converted from the Anglican Church to Roman Catholicism.
I read an article more recently which informed me that beatification is the moment at which the Church of Rome acknowledges that the beatified person has officially been allowed to enter Heaven. Apart from feeling a heaviness of heart that such an idea could exist, I then thought, what hope is there for anyone else, especially me?!
As if one doesn't have all the tests of Purgatory to go through first, before reaching the elevated state of beatification, according to the Roman Church, in order to actually become a Saint, two answers to prayers for miracles would have to be answered by praying to your deceased being. My, what a lot of politics that must involve in Heaven, even God's own intervention may have to be involved at some point. apart from Mary and Jesus being part of the process, or could they be bypassed in some way?
J.H. Newman hasn't been officially made a Saint yet by the Roman Catholic Church, because only one prayer for a miracle has been answered to date, the details of which I am not yet aware. In other words, he's reached the halfway stage of the process.
I was brought up to believe that any person who received Jesus into their life as their Lord and Savior became a Christian at that point and heir to eternal life. In John 1:12 we read "To all who did receive Him (Jesus), who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." Further on, in John's Gospel, Chapter 11:25-26a we read "Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." " Jesus then asks, "Do you believe this?" That is the question I would like to leave you to think about and seriously consider today, while you are still alive and able to do so.I was also given to believe that when one becomes a Christian, Christian=Saint, which is a much easier concept to grasp than the super-structure put in place by the vain traditions of men which thankfully didn't exist in the early Church. Thus, when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, which we find in the New Testament, in Romans 1:7, we see he addressed it "to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints," that is, all the Christian believers in Rome.
I can remember singing the following song at school, which underlines the fact that all those of us who believe that Jesus died on the cross to forgive us our sins and are called to follow Him, are saints. There is no hierarchy, we are just forgiven Christians, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the living God, serving together to uplift Jesus who is the answer to all our problems in today's broken world.
I Sing a Song of the Saints of God
I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew,
And one was a doctor,
And one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green:
They were all of them saints of God--and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.
They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right, for Jesus' sake,
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier,
And one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
And there's not any reason--no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too.
They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still,
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or
In lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.
