Letting God Shine Through Our Lives

Recently some students from Benedictine College undertook a “Discovery Day” project in which they studied the stained glass windows and other architectural features of St. Scholastica Chapel at the Mount. As part of this project, the students helped plan a special mass that took place in the chapel and was attended by approximately 400 sisters, students, and faculty and their family members. In her welcoming remarks, Sr. Anne Shepard noted that when the chapel was being designed, the sisters asked that the stained glass windows depict female saints so that as the community and Mount St. Scholastica College students prayed, they would be “surrounded by the saints, living and dead.”

We don’t often consider the fact that the people who surround us may be saints. However, if saints are those who, in the words of Joan Chittister, “…[pursue] … the one thing that matter[s] in life—the awareness of the presence of God,” then saints are indeed all around us. We may be saints in the making ourselves!

Around the time Mother Teresa was canonized, my friend Mike Sanem was part of a panel discussion on saints that was broadcast on the radio program Up to Date. The radio host, Steve Kraske, noted that the number of saints who have been canonized in recent years has been increasing, and he wondered if that made sainthood less special. Mike responded, “It’s not that the have too many saints, it’s that we have too few saints; we are all called to sanctity, to saintliness, to letting God shine through our lives, no matter how messy or humble…we’re all called to be a sign in world of God present among us, to be an example to others of who God is and what God cares about.”

I’m grateful to be part of a community where we have daily reminders to let God shine through our lives, whether those reminders come through the stained glass windows in our chapel or the people sitting in the choir stalls next to us.