Getting serious about holiness

The life of soon-to-be Saint Carlo Acutis proves that we are all called to be saints.

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

When I was young, in my grammar school days, I remember reading many stories about the lives of the saints. A few of them impressed me in particular. I’m sure we all have our favorite saints. Our go-to’s, like St. Anthony, St. Francis and the Little Flower (St. Thérèse de Lisieux). Some of them we might keep a little statue of. Or place them on the dashboard of our car. Like St. Christopher. Is he still a saint?

I remember some who really made an impression on me. Maybe they weren’t all canonized. Like Maryknoll missionary, Bishop Francis Xavier Ford, MM, whose cause has been introduced. Maybe it’s that he was born in Brooklyn that in part got my attention, but the story of his torture and martyrdom really gripped me. I think his story — and the visits my family made to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville — were the likely triggers for my foray into seminary. Once I realized that I was not going to become an airline pilot.

Many others captured my attention and imagination during my adolescence. Like Don Bosco, the patron of altar servers, and St. Philip Neri, who had a wicked sense of humor. You can imagine my joy when we learned on May 23 that Carlo Acutis is going to be canonized. For those who do not know of him yet, he is the teenager who spent lots of time on the internet. But instead of wasting his youth on the wrong websites, he stayed focused on using this instrument as a means of exploring miracles. That’s right. He took advantage of this wonderful technology to explore and catalog the Eucharistic miracles over the past nine or ten centuries. You may have seen the exhibit on his short life and work in our Diocese recently at Immaculate Conception in Glenville. Yes, he died young, on Oct. 12, 2006, at the age of 15. Of leukemia. And now he is going to be canonized a saint!

You will find plenty of information about him on the internet and on our diocesan website (RCDA.org). I will not deprive you here of the fun of discovering it on your own. You see, Carlo Acutis is the patron and model of the internet, of what it can be used for, like all gifts and powers given to us. Because of his prayerfulness and attentiveness to God’s presence in his life, Carlo allowed his faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament to feed his hunger to know more about its effects in real people’s lives. It led him to discover that throughout history people who took seriously the invitation to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, which Jesus gives us at every Mass, lived lives of tremendous joy and fulfillment.

Holy people are happy people! When we think of holiness at times and unfortunately, we often fall into the trap that it’s for people who are a little weird and unreal. Like some of the funky statues and “holy pictures” we have seen that do not depict people like any we know. As if they lived their lives surrounded by a shiny glow and actually had halos on their heads. Saints are not made of plastic and water colors. They live real lives, like Carlo did, with all of the challenges and temptations that we all face. The only difference — does it have to be a difference? — is that they trusted God loved them and followed their better instincts. They weren’t afraid to go with them, even if it meant they would be holy.

I doubt that Carlo Acutis gave much thought to whether the way he was living his life was making him into a saint. He just kept going with the graces God was sending him and not allowing himself to get distracted by illusions. Maybe he sensed his time was short, but he never gave into the thought that sanctity was just for old people (like me). He did not waste his youth on looking for love in all the wrong places, which is what the internet has become for so many. Instead, he listened to where God was inviting him to discover his Presence and now becomes for us a great example of what a young life can accomplish in such a short time. Through his example — and now his intercession — many young people will be discovering that God is calling them to a life of courageous holiness and the joy that comes from putting Jesus Christ at the center of their lives.

I have heard some oldsters say that youth is wasted on the young and that you can’t put an old head on young shoulders. It may be true that so many of us have had to learn from so many years full of mistakes and the regrets that we wasted so much time frittering away our years on things we finally come to learn are inanities, worthless pursuits and deaden streets.

The short life of Carlo Acutis is both a practical and possible model of how youth does not have to be wasted on things and preoccupations that, sooner or later, fall apart and often take us down with them. If we become serious about getting holy, every day can be an opportunity to rise to the moment of grace that God showers us with at every dawn. If I rise each morning with the acclamation, “Lord Jesus, I trust in you” and open my heart to hear his voice in everything happening around me, I may just find myself on the same road that led Carlo Acutis to sanctity. It is not beyond the reach of any of us. We are all called to sanctity.

It would be neglectful to forget to mention that for all the great work Carlo Acutis did through his dedicated internet research, his practical everyday life followed the pattern of all the saints who preceded him. Quite simply, Mass every Sunday and weekdays where possible, frequent Confession, the Rosary, morning and evening prayer and grace before meals. These are the basics of Catholic life and, as simple and routine as they may seem at times, they are the regular practices that, when taken seriously, lead sinners to become saints. Carlo Acutis lived the ordinary life of all saints. Not with clouds under their feet and trumpets ringing around them, but daily devotion to prayerful consciousness of God’s presence and fidelity to the ordinary sacramental means of grace. Staying the course, God will do the rest. Saint Carlo Acutis, pray for us!