Saint of saints

Do we count Jesus among the saints?

Hmmm…

On the one hand: No. Because He is God. God is not a saint; God makes saints. The saints are human beings filled with the holiness of God. Ergo, Lord Jesus, eternal God, does not count as a “saint.”

On the other hand: A saint = a “holy one.” Jesus is the holiest holy one. Everything about Him qua human being courses with holiness. He rules heaven as the human King, the Saint of saints. From His human body and soul flows all the heavenly grace that makes saints saints.

I bring this up to highlight the following:

The triune God is heaven, has always “inhabited” heaven. The eternal Son has dwelt with the Father in approachable light from all eternity.

But He took our human nature to Himself, in time. He lived among us, as a man on earth, not for the fun of it, but to benefit us. He has shown us the meaning of life, and has made the fulfillment of that meaning possible for us. The meaning of life is simple: to reach heaven.

In other words, the meaning of life is not to leave a venerable legacy. It is not to go down in history as some kind of phenom. It is not to pile up trophies or pleasures.

Jesus lived on earth as the Saint of saints. But He also became a saint—by reaching heaven as a man. He fulfilled the union of God and man in Himself, by doing the will of the Father to the end of His pilgrimage. And thereby inheriting heaven.

The Holy Mass expresses all of this. Every Mass.

The way that we pray at the altar makes this clear: The Trinity is our God. We pray in Jesus our High Priest, the first of the saints in heaven. The Mass demonstrates that we Christians understand life in one way. Namely, that we want what Jesus has–and what all the saints in heaven have. Our desire, our goal, the meaning of our lives: to find ourselves among the saints of Jesus Christ.

What do Jesus and the saints have? We don’t kid ourselves imagining that we know the answer to that question. What they have is God. They have the one and only “thing” that can make a human being truly happy.

We do not “know” what Jesus and saints have; for now, we simply believe. And we pray at the holy altar, with all our hearts, that someday, we will find out.