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So, what do you want to be little boy, little girl? I want to be rich, famous, thin and blonde. Yeah, but that’s getting a little tiring. What else? I want to be a saint.

I have written and spoken on a number of occasions about local saints. While I love our Catholic tradition of the great canonized saints who inspire us by their acts of heroics, it is most often the local saints who make all the difference in our lives. Check out your own life and your own spiritual growth. Is there a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor you truly looked up to and wanted to imitate because when you were in their presence, you knew there was something special. Oh, they may still have had all of their strange quirks and neuroses and sometime they could drive you crazy, but there was something in them that transcended them and showed through them. There is a certain aura (the artists paint them as halos) that could not be hidden by their average looks or even frumpy clothes.

They are the saints. We are born saints and we become saints. While we are all marked with the condition of Adam and Eve, original shame, we are also marked with the Divine Presence in whose image we were created. We will spend the first half of our life creating a persona, a self image to cover our shame but if our Divine Inoculation (Baptism) takes, somewhere in the midst of our life the Divine Presence will once more manifest itself and we will spend the rest of our lives becoming who we truly are, the daughters and sons of God, the saints.

If you look at the stories of the great canonized saints, somewhere along in their life they fell apart. They got exhausted from trying to create their own world, maintain their own image and be perfect by their own efforts. It was simply too much to maintain. And so they let go, they surrendered and ultimately let God. In falling into the hands of the living God they came to the deep realization that their life was something more than they themselves. St. Paul put it this way, “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me.” The great St Augustine could no longer hold on to his intellectual games. St. Francis in his sickness let go of the perpetual party boy to become God’s man. And if you look at our local saints, I am sure each would have a story at some point where they let go and let God. Sometimes it is traumatic, and sometimes it is just one day following another as they begin to realize that their life is the Christ, God living in them and manifested through them. They begin to understand that they are simple conduits of God’s goodness and love. And they begin to be set free.

This pattern of receiving, creating, holding on to, collapsing, letting go, and new life is, of course, the classical Pascal pattern. It is the one constant in every human life. The saints are simply those who are conscious of the process and work with it. They constantly let go of all that they cling to, to allow a power greater than them to work through them. And, if you look, you will see them all around you.

Today we come to honor and salute one such saint in our parish. A couple of years ago a graduate student came to me with a request, “I want to interview someone in your parish whom you would consider a real Christian.” He was interviewing various people from different denominations to discover what they all had in common to make them so called “true Christians.” Without hesitation, I knew immediately the parishioner I would have him seek: Brenda Scanlon. She is one of our local saints. Today she celebrates her 80^th birthday.

Now as I have said before, one of the true marks of a saint is that they are unaware that they are one. Real saints don’t know that they are. The reason for that is as we spiritually mature, the ego begins to shrink. Our ego is something we basically self-fabricate to give us a sense of importance and self worth. The operant word there is ‘self’ (the small self). The reality is that we have infinite worth but not because of anything that we do or achieve, but simply because we are connected to the Divine Source (the true self). The saint senses and knows this and is therefore able to let go of so much of their ego or false self. The saint, the true saint is the one who knows who they are in God and God in them. That’s enough. And from that point on, everything they do becomes a conduit of God’s grace. From that point on as Jesus says, “We have lost our self to find our Self.” And it is a self for others. It is the God-self.

It is this God-self that shines through Brenda in all that she does and more importantly, who she is. Walk into her presence and while you may not see an aura, you can sense it. You can sense it in a person who knows who she is as the daughter of God and she will share that Divine Presence with anyone who comes along, especially God’s little people, especially the poor. For many years she has taught God’s precious little ones the ways of the Lord as much by who she is as what she says. Here at Mary Queen, Brenda has worked with our children in the RCIC (Rite of Christian Initiation for Children). And most recently when we were at a loss as to what to do in our preschool after the untimely death of Liz Lowery, Brenda stepped to the fore and said, “I can do that.” Knowing all along that she didn’t have to do it, God would do it through her, and He has. Our preschool is alive and well because our local saint has been a conduit of God’s grace and she has enabled all of her little saints (read: the teachers) to bring out the Divine in the children. While that is not very hard to do, it is wonderful work.

Today we salute and honor Brenda Scanlon, one of our local saints. I am sure that as Brenda reads this, she is probably saying to herself, “Who is he writing about? That’s me?” From the marvelous education she received from the Mercy Sisters, she’s probably saying, “That is I?” Yes, indeed it is. And while the saints may not recognize that they are, we do. And we need to hang around them to let what they have and what they know rub off.

Brenda, God danced on the day you were born. And He is dancing with you still!

Blessings from the Community of Mary Queen
in the name of Jesus, the Incarnation of God,