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Question

Good morning Father Angelo,

what does it mean to be made holy? Doesn’t the Bible tell us that we are already holy? Like in the letters of St. Paul.

Thanks father.

I hope I will have an answer as soon as possible.

Thank you again

The priest’s answer

Most dear,

1. in the Old Testament the term holy indicates in an exclusive way the nature of God.

In this sense the demon will say to Jesus: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” (Mk 1:24).

God alone is Holy.

In this sense, the Church praises the divinity of Jesus in the hymn ‘Glory to God in the highest’ saying: “For You alone are the Holy One, You alone are the Lord, You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ”.

2. However, already in the Old Testament men are in some way associated with this divine holiness: “Sanctify yourselves, then, and be holy; for I, the Lord, your God, am holy” (Lv 20,7).

It is mostly about a ritual holiness, but that can in fact become synonymous with an intact moral life.

3. Only with the New Testament holiness is intended as becoming partakers of the divine nature.

Saint John says so in his Prologue: “But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12).

One becomes children of God by receiving a divine germ that transforms man inwardly: “No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God” (1Jn 3:9).

4. He cannot  sin doesn’t mean he can’t commit sin. But if he commits it, it is because he detaches himself from the divine principle that begat him as a son of God.

5. Precisely because they possess this germ of holy and divine life, Christians in the New Testament are called holy ones.

Thus, it emerges from the lips of Ananias who says of Paul: “Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man, what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem” (Acts 9:13).

[This translation, like the Greek and Latin text, does not say your faithful ones (like in some translations), but your holy ones.]

6. Precisely because with Baptism one is holy in germ, this term is not commonly applied to the baptized, but only to those who possess holiness definitively and irreversibly. And that is to the inhabitants of Paradise.

In this sense it applies to both humans and Angels.

7. By proclaiming a person holy with the rite of canonization, the Church declares itself to be certain of his or her holiness definitively and irreversibly.

In other words, it is certain of his or her presence in Heaven.

And therefore, it presents him or her as an intercessor and a model of Christian life.

With the hope that you too will always be holy here on earth and may also be holy in Heaven so as to become an intercessor and a model of Christian life, I keep you in my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo