All Saints: Freedom and Grace

As the Red Army approached Hitler's bunker in Berlin in 1945, he decided to end his life. He called his staff together to say farewell and shook each person’s hand. The last to receive his handshake was his personal valet, Heinz Linge. Linge asked him, “For whom should we fight on?” Hitler answered, “For the coming man”. No one knows exactly what Hitler meant.

The phrase the coming man was used in the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nazis borrowed some of their ideologies from Nietzsche, who believed that Christianity and belief in a God kept human beings from rising to their true potential. Nietzsche said that when human beings could be freed of these trappings, a new man would emerge: the coming man, which he also referred to as the ubermensch. In his last moments, Hitler may have been referring to this notion, or he may simply have been referring to his enemy at the door of his bunker. But for Nietzche, the uberman was the human person living at peak potential.

For Christian believers, we believe that two things are at work that make for true human greatness: freedom and grace. In freedom, I desire God’s grace, and dispose myself to receive it, but then also in freedom I cooperate with that grace, allowing it to not only transform me, but to become manifest in my living.

Today we celebrate examples of those who have so radically opened themselves up to this grace and have allowed it to flow through them: the Christian ubermensch, if you will. We call them saints. Unlike Hitler’s master race, which narrowed the goal of humanity to a select group and one social construct, the uberman that we call saints represent the spectrum of humanity and its cultures.[i]

Among these is Mother Josephine Bakhita, born in Sudan in 1869, who at age nine was kidnapped by Arab slave traders. She was sold and resold five times, before eventually winning her freedom as an adult. At age 20 she asked to be baptized and eventually entered religious life as a Canossian Sister. When asked what she would do if ever she met her captors, she replied, ”If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today". Mother Josephine Bakhita shows us the grace that comes through forgiveness, allowing joy to overcome pain and resentment.

Then there’s Katharine Drexel, born in Philadelphia in 1858. As one of four daughters of a successful investment banker, they all inherited a fortune when their father died. She also inherited her father’s compassion for the poor. While much work was being done to respond to the needs of the population of European immigrants, Katharine recognized that there were two other groups in the U.S. whose needs were being ignored: Native Americans and the black population.

After establishing a religious community, Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, she poured every drop of her financial resources, influence and energies into establishing missions and schools to serve these two marginalized groups. Many denounced her efforts, declaring that she was wasting her time and money on an undeserving population, but she remained undeterred. Mother Drexel died in 1955 at age 97, having lived through eras that included slavery, wars waged against the Native Americans and the beginning of the civil rights movement.

Another is Chiara Badano, born in northern Italy in 1971. At age 16 she was diagnosed with bone cancer. A 2-year battle that included harsh chemotherapy that caused her beloved hair to fall out. While undergoing a painful medical procedure, Chiara was visited by a mysterious lady: "She came up to me and took me by the hand, and her touch filled me with courage. In the same way that she arrived, she disappeared…But…all fear left me…” 

When 18 year-old Chiara realized that she was not going to get better, she began to plan for her "wedding", as she called it—her funeral, seeing death as the moment she would become the bride of Christ. Her infectious joy, expressed in her radiant smile, never waned.

Most recently, there’s Carlo Acutis. Born in London in 1991, into a family that could be described as culturally Catholic, but otherwise religiously disengaged. While being an avid fan of video games and regarded as a computer-geek, he also responded to the stirrings of faith within and developed a strong devotion to the Eucharist. As a means of this devotion, he created a website dedicated to cataloging every Eucharistic miracle. When he contracted leukemia, he offered his suffering for all of us, the Church. He died at age 15 in 2006 and was laid to rest wearing his hoody and sneakers. Carlo was beatified only three weeks ago.

Each of these were, otherwise, ordinary people, who simply opened themselves up to grace, becoming the uberman, if you will. Beautiful and heroic stories of countless others show us in various ways—great and small—what heroic virtue looks like. But they are only models. We are each called to our own path to sainthood. For all the ways, sainthood seems daunting and perhaps even, joyless, let us reconsider—besides the alternative to life in heaven is not a good option.

It is in opening ourselves to the infusion of grace that we become most fully alive, even on this side of death, but certainly beyond it. This grace comes through orienting ourselves to Christ—in prayer, in his sacraments, in our engagement of the living Word of God, and in the life of service to others. It’s all there and it’s entirely free—and we’re free to choose it.

[i] Msgr. Joseph Pollard, Fresh Light, Year B; Hillenbrand Books.