Saintly Living

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Silence and solitude are my preferred companions in the morning. At work I am inundated with phone calls, emails and in-person interviews that require my complete focus, so it’s nice to have peace and quiet before I get to the office.

Catching the early TRAX train usually permits me to maintain this cone of silence. My fellow commuters typically are immersed in their electronic devices, dozing or reading books. The 30-minute ride into Salt Lake allows me to slowly shift gears from the peaceful atmosphere of home to the frenzied tempo of work.

So you can imagine my annoyance last week when, at 6 a.m., two men stood next to me, talking in what at most times would be normal conversational tones but in the silent car sounded almost like shouting. They disembarked a few stops down the line, but were replaced by a little boy who chattered in the way of 2-year-olds, including the requisite “NO!” at intervals.

As I struggled to control my irritation, I reminded myself that I was after all on public transportation. I told myself that other people did in fact have the right to talk, regardless of my preference for silence. And finally, Pope Francis’ most recent exhortation, which I had read only the day before, came to mind. In Guadete et Exsultate, the pope says he likes “to contemplate the holiness present in the patience of God’s people: in those parents who raise their children with immense love, in those men and women who work hard to support their families, in the sick, in elderly religious who never lose their smile. In their daily perseverance I see the holiness of the Church militant. Very often it is a holiness found in our next-door neighbours, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence. We might call them ‘the middle class of holiness’” (a paraphrase from Joseph Malegue’s “Pierres noires. Les classes moyennes du Salut”).

With this in mind I looked again at the tanned hand holding the post a few feet from my head. That man and his friend both were dressed like working-class men, and at that hour of the morning it’s safe to assume that they were headed to a long day of toil. The little boy, on the other hand, was accompanied by both his parents, who worked to keep him occupied. Viewing them in the light cast by the pope’s words, I saw the everyday holiness of people providing for their families.

It is precisely these signs of holiness that Pope Francis calls attention to in Guadete et Exsultate. He asks that we be inspired by them, so that each of us will become holy by “bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.”

Those words, and the examples I saw on the train, make me look at myself to see just how I can begin on the path toward sainthood, as Pope Francis reminds us that our baptism has called us to do.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic.