Definition of the Saint - a quote by Raimundo Panikkar


"The saint--'sanctus'--is, thus, the man God has taken specially for Himself, the man He has 'reserved' and 'segregated'. God calls everybody to be divinely perfect, i.e., holy.  Each person receives his personal vocation to sanctity. But only the saint answers fully to that divine call and freely accepts, wills, loves to be this living Temple of the Holy. Each saint is, in consequence, a kind of Revelation of God, he has a message to deliver, though not always with words, he is an instrument of the Divine, he is the Man (and Woman) in whom God, who is Love, finds not only His resting but also His acting place. True sanctity is not so much God-realisation on Man's part, as Man-realisation on God's part.  The saint is the ontological full human personality in spite of our rational concepts about human perfect, and notwithstanding the objective shortcomings in his pilgrimage towards God. We cannot forget that sanctity is a concept-limit, only attainable here on earth as far as the everlasting life of Union has already shattered all human limitations." - pp xii & xiii from the Preface of "Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle" - The Classics of Western Spirituality, 1979.

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