Getting It Right

Last night at Presanctified Liturgy Fr. John talked about the saints and how they "got it right".
Being someone who attended Catholic School for more then 8 years I can tell you the one thing that always interested me was reading about the lives of the saints.
Most people think that saints were always that way,right from the womb and although some were,the vast majority were not.Many spent countless years trying to "get it right".
If you were raised in a religion who believed in saints,for the most part, there is probably at least one you have chosen to admire and whose life you try to emulate because maybe he or she is allot like you.
Believe it or not saints at one time were living breathing people who for some reason caught on to the beauty and truth of God and decided they needed to be more like him. Whether through a radical or slow creeping decision they began to become more and more like Jesus.They began to embrace and follow the teachings of the Bible and lead a more chaste life.
In the Catholic Religion in order to become a Saint you must also have recorded events of healing to your credit in the Orthodox faith being above average in your faith and the possibility of martyrdom helps your chances along.
I like to think of Saints as the kid in school who was so scholastically smart he or she graduated in the tops of their class winning all sorts of awards.
Although most of us will never reach that letter of holiness it is also true that God does not make junk and our potential,like theirs,is always there for success.
God does not expect us to become who we are not.But he,like the Army,expects us to become all we can be.
You and I were created to be a certain person with characteristics and personality given to us not just from our genetic pool but from our God pool.
I am not like any other person on this earth and as such must find my own route to God which makes me saintly in his eyes and although I will never achieve what the saints I have come to admire in my own life did,that does not mean I am not holy in the eyes of God.
I pray differently,believe differently and act differently then any other being on this planet but in the same respects am also part of my religious family and because of my uniqueness I give a different perspective to my church just as each apostle gave a different perspective to each other.
Who would have thought that these 12 men,who by most accounts were not much to begin with,would become who they did and not just through their holiness but through their uniqueness.
We are who we are because of God's grace and as such need to strive to be who he chooses us to be.Through the blessings of God and if we "get it somewhat right" maybe we too can graduate at least the top percentage of our class.