What is your vision of a saint? Some time ago on the Solemnity of All Saints Day, during my homily, I was asking the children from our school ‘who is a saint?’ I also asked if they could name any of them. As you can imagine, the children gave wonderful answers like: a saint is the one who helps other, who prays, who follows the commandments; the saint gives his or her life for Jesus; the saint is the one who is in heaven because they lived a holy life and didn’t sin. And after that they started naming some of the saints: St. Paul, Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Teresa, St Thomas, St Faustina and many others, all good and correct answers. But there was one answer missing: nobody said that a saint is the one who is like a child, humble like a child. The disciples in the Gospel for today asked Jesus who is the greatest of the saints, and what did Jesus do? He called over a child and told them: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” For Jesus, the quality of a saint is humility. If you want to be a saint and great in the Kingdom of God, you need to be humble like that child.


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