Bishop Robert Barron Comments on All Saints' Day

Here is Bishop Robert Barron's beautiful commentary on the Solemnity of All Saints. If you have ten minutes to spare, His Excellency's cogent insights are worth your time. Explaining that the greatest tragedy in life is not becoming a saint, Bishop Barron urges us to seek out Christ's friendship. He states in part:

"At the very beginning of the 20th century, there were two young Parisian students, intellectuals. One was called Jacques Maritain, and his girlfriend was called Raïssa. Raïssa was a poet. Jacques Maritain was a student of philosophy. They were agnostics, more or less, and they decided that life was meaningless. One day in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris, they made a vow, and they said unless we can discover by the end of the school year the meaning of life we will commit suicide.

[W]hile they were waiting for the school year to come to an end, Jacques Maritain read a statement by Léon Bloy, who was a French spiritual writer. Léon Bloy said, 'There's only one real sadness in life, not to be a saint.' … That had a huge impact on young Jacques Maritain. Bloy was insinuating that there’s all kinds of sadness. I mean, I didn't become the success I wanted to be, I didn't achieve this and that, I didn’t get the money I wanted, there’s all kinds of sadness, but they don't matter. At the end of the day, there's only one real sadness; not to become a saint — not to be the person that Christ wants you to be."