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As we continue our inquiry as to what it means to be a saint, we need to answer the question: “How does someone become a saint?” The answer depends on precisely what is meant by saint. If saint is taken to refer to simply being united to Christ (and thus a Christian), then the answer is baptism. St. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.&rdqu …

The answer depends on precisely what is meant by saint. If saint is taken to refer to simply being united to Christ (and thus a Christian), then the answer is baptism. St. Paul teaches, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13, emphasis added). The one body Paul writes of here refers to the body of Christ (v. 27). Moreover, in Romans 6:3-5, he writes: Do you not know that all of us who have been …

  Having a proper understanding of joy is imperative to becoming a saint.   Joy is the arousal of some sense of good. When we malign and obscure good, we malign and obscure joy. St. Gregory the Great tells us, for example, that (a false) joy may result from another’s misfortune (CCC 2539). The unrighteous presence of envy, in this case, corrupts true joy. There’s a better means of obtaining the joy that comes from the Spirit, and a study of the life of St. Philip Neri rev …