Turn on your television and you will see program after program that deals with the supernatural. Go to church, and in far too many places the supernatural aspect of Christiany is gone. Jesus is reduced to a moral philosopher. Let me be clear. By supernatural I am not talking about ghosts and haunting. By supernatural, I am referring to things like the real power of grace.
When we speak and sing of the grace of God we are not simply speaking about God's forgiveness. Grace is something real. Grace is powerful. And we receive it in the sacraments.
In our profession of faith we proclaim our belief that the Church is holy, and it is precisely the grace of God that transforms and makes the Church holy. It why St. Paul is able to refer to the memebers of the Church as "saints," holy ones.
Some talk as if we are still slaves to sin, and the best we can do is hope that when we die God will be merciful. That is not our faith. As the Catechism says, "By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God’s grace the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors."
The Second Vatican Council reminded us of the universal call to holiness. The saints we venerate in the Church, the statues and icons of them, are constant reminders to us that heroic virtue is possible, living in fidelity to God's covenant is possible. No matter how strong the pull of sin is in our lives, we believe that the power of grace is stronger. We never give up the struggle.
We venerate Saints like Augustine to remind us of the words of the Letter to the Hebrews
We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.
It is not old-fashioned, outdated, or superstitious for us to reach out to the great cloud of witnesses for help. On this feast of St. Augustine let each of us renew our belief that we are called to be holy, and let us renew our belief in the power of grace in our lives.
