What is a saint?

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines a saint as a “holy person.”

However, we’re already hearing a lot of baloney about Mother Mary from people keen to play down her holiness.

Yesterday a chappie on the South Australian Catholic Church payroll told the media: “The thing about Mary is she’s a bit more vibrant, she’s not a goody-two-shoes type figure . . . .”

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Cringe.

Are we so afraid of the notion of holiness that we must pretend that even true saints — who have given their whole lives to sacrificial devotion in the hope of becoming holy — are not really holy at all, but are, in fact, just a little bit like us?

Are we determined to domesticate even this greatest and holiest and most God-centred and prayer-centred Australian of all time, and make her ordinary – so that we, in our state of personal decay and feeble compromise, need not feel embarrassed or challenged to change ourselves?

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Pope John Paul II warned against this: “Dear friends: Mary MacKillop cannot be understood without reference to her religious vocation . . . Mother Mary of the Cross did not just free people from ignorance through schooling, or alleviate their suffering through compassionate care. She worked to satisfy their deeper, though sometimes unconscious, longing for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’.”

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Here is a prayer that Mother Mary MacKillop used in her personal devotions:

“I resolve, with the help of God’s grace

to die any kind of death,

or to suffer any kind of pain,

either of mind or body,

or any other affliction that can befall me,

sooner than for one moment to commit a deliberate and known sin

against God’s love,

and the claims he has upon my duty and service. 

Hitherto I have sadly forgotten my great end . . .

I will come back to thee, my Eternal Father . . .

Let me not prove a coward in thy service. 

Let me love to be humiliated and persecuted,

so that I may, during the remainder of this short life,

remain as near to thee, my Jesus,

in the thickest of the strife,

as in thy Divine Wisdom thou art pleased to permit.  Amen.”

* * *

Holy Mary MacKillop, Saint Mary of the Cross, traditional Catholic, please pray for us.

Sometime in the next 24 hours Pope Benedict will announce Mary MacKillop’s recognition as officiallybeing a Catholic saint.

The formal canonisation ceremony will be later this year.

Then what?

Will Australians then suddenly change their ways and start living by the principles which Mary MacKillop lived by?

* * *

What principles did Mary MacKillop live by?

(1) Mary MacKillop believed in poverty — always ensuring that she had as little of this world’s goods as humanly possible.

Will we copy that?

(2) Mary MacKillop opposed government funding of Catholic schools.

She raised money, instead, by begging. All her nuns, including herself, begged — both in the streets and door-to-door.

Today’s church schools accept government money. Catholic teachers demand pay equal to government teachers.

(3) Mary MacKillop believed in obedience — expecting her Sisters to give absolute submission to the Rule of their Order, and to herself as their Superior.

Do Catholics today obediently submit to, and live by, Church teachings — or only to those teachings compatible with their worldly lifestyle?

(4) Mary MacKillop believed that God wants everybody to be a Catholic.

She requested prayers for her friends and relatives who weren’t Catholic, that they should convert.

So-called “ecumenism”, popular in today’s Catholic Church – the notion that God is happy with any religion so long as we’re sincere — was unknown to her.

* * *

So why is Mary MacKillop popular with Australians — most of whom have no intention whatever of living as she did?

We think we like her because we have created a FAKE Mary MacKillop.

A “feminist”, a “rebel” — that’s what we like to think she was.

But she wasn’t.

The “Mary MacKillop” we admire is a fraud of our own invention.

* * *

Do you want to learn what Mary MacKillop was really like, and to seek after God in her spiritual footsteps?

Then read about her — study what she herself actually said, wrote and did.

Don’t read just any old book about her, or you’ll end up misinformed.

What you need is a book about the REAL Mary MacKillop.

Saint Valentine was a Catholic priest, first clubbed almost to death — and then beheaded — by Roman Emperor Claudius, apparently on February 14, in about the year 270AD.

Claudius had ordered all Romans to worship the Roman pagan gods.

The alternative was execution.

Valentine had been famous for his real love for mankind, giving from his heart and assisting the poor, the needy and widows – and encouraging the well-to-do of his time to be generous to the less privileged in their communities.

* * *

In Saudi Arabia, celebrating Saint Valentine’s Day is prohibited.

The nation’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is supposed to enforce bans against “pagan holidays”.

Virtue Commission spokesman, Sheik Ali Qarni, defends this ban, saying that Muslims know the true meaning of love — the love of God — and behave accordingly throughout the year.

Of course, wherever there is a ban there is a black market. Some Saudi florists are supplying bootleg bunches of red roses (at over three times the regular price) to those who will pay.

* * *

Meanwhile, polls are reporting that 40 percent of Muslims in the United Kingdom want Sharia Law introduced in Britain – more so young British Muslims than their elders.

Muslims now number 1,591,000 in the UK — 2.7 percent of the population — a proportion said to be rising 10 times faster than rest of society.

What about Australia?

At the 2006 Census there were 340,000 Muslims in Australia. In early 2010, WikiAnswers estimates it is now 446,500 (about 2 percent of the population).

How many Australian Muslims want Sharia Law? Nobody seems to know. Perhaps we don’t want to know.

* * *

This year, Melbourne’s Latrobe University is offering an 18-month course in Master of Islamic Banking and Finance – described as a “cutting-edge program built around a defined body of knowledge of proven relevance to the Islamic finance industry”.

The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps?

Certainly, it’s a long way from amputation for thieves, stoning for adultery etc. . . . .

And a long way from being clubbed and beheaded for being a Christian . . . .

But you have to start somewhere if you want “change”, as President Obama might say.

On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued a decree accepting the validity of the second miracle needed to clear the way for Mary MacKillop to be canonised (declared a saint).

An amazing amount of media coverage followed — self-appointed experts pronouncing about why miracles can or cannot be believed in — and why doesn’t God prevent all sickness, pain etc., instead of just a few miracles now and then etc.

The focus on the miracle was overdone.

The most essential prerequisite to a person being accepted as a saint is not their miracles, but their holiness.

* * *

Right from her death in 1909, Mother Mary MacKillop’s holiness was recognised.

People touched her body with their rosary beads — others took home samples of soil from around her grave — signs of awareness that she was a saint.

Even before her death . . . .

Four days before she died, Cardinal Moran, head of the Australian Catholic Church, visited Mother Mary for the last time. On leaving the building, he said, “I consider that I have this day assisted at the deathbed of a saint.”

Yet 100 years later she isn’t officially a saint. Why so long?

The Church required unhurried investigation of everything known about Mary’s life, to ensure that she was truly a holy person — before considering any matters regarding miracles.

* * *

Some words Mother Mary wrote in a letter to Monsignor Kirby in 1873 sum up her life and thought: “To me the will of God is a dear book which I am never tired of reading, which has always some new charm for me. I cannot tell you what a beautiful thing the will of God seems to me.”

That’s what makes Mary MacKillop a saint – her desire, above all else, to accept God’s will, and live in obedience to his will.

That’s what God asks of everybody.

Being holy isn’t something God requires only of a few — priests, nuns or certain people that way inclined — no, God wants every person be holy.

That is God’s will for you, too, dear blog-reader — that you, also, should be holy, a saint.

Yes, you.

If you doubt whether that it is possible, then you are doubting God.

Or perhaps you are doubting whether you are willing to give up your favourite sin?

Today is, for Christians, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary — also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple – also as Candlemas.

It commemorates the day, 40 days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph took their little Son to the Jerusalem Temple to be “presented” to God.

In those times Jewish mothers were also expected to undergo a ritual “purification” bath [Mikvah] forty days after childbirth.

* * *

February 2 is the end of the Christmas season for Christians.

If you have been to Mass since Christmas, you’ll have noticed the continuing theme of Our Lord’s birth in the Bible readings and songs.

But today is the day to take down your Nativity Scene and Christmas decorations.

If you already did it weeks ago, it means the commercialisers got the better of you this year.

There is always next year, however.

Next year leave your Nativity Scene up for the whole 40 days.

Don’t let them sell you short.

* * *

On the first “Presentation Day”, Saint Simeon, an old man at the Temple, ready to die, took Baby Jesus in his arms, and prophesied concerning the child’s future:

“Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word:

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

Which you have prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.

And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother,

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yes, a sword shall pierce through your own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

* * *

All this is recorded in your Bible, in the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter 2.

Mrs Kathleen Evans of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia had been a cigarette smoker from the age of 16 to 46.

Then she gave it up. But it was too late. Three years later she was diagnosed with lung cancer and told it had spread to her brain and that she would be dead for sure in a matter of months.

Now, 17 years later, she is still alive and disease-free.

She had no medical treatment, but attributes her cure to praying daily to Mary MacKillop (Blessed Mary of the Cross) and wearing her picture plus a piece of cloth which had been part of Mary M’s clothing.

After much investigation and scrutiny, the Catholic Church has endorsed that this cure was a miracle.

Last month, Pope Benedict announced the fact, and yesterday Mrs Evans went public, identifying herself publicly for the first time, telling the media, “I do believe in miracles.”

So what are the skeptics going to make of this?

* * *

We live in a society where believing in that kind of thing is considered superstition.

But Christians believe in miracles anyway.

They say that the big miracle, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after being crucified, also has the evidence of eyewitnesses and compels belief.

The eyewitnesses to that event certainly didn’t make the story up. Most of them persisted in proclaiming what they had seen in the face of persecution and death, and several were themselves crucified. Others were thrown to the lions etc.

* * *

To those who doubt, we say, “Do not close your mind. Do not rule God out. Remember, the one true joy in life is to know that God lives and that God is love.”