Christians are used to thinking of the saints as holy people, those who are somehow raised above the rank and file, the run of the mill Christians: folk who are especially holy. The feast of All Saints itself originated as a commemoration of the unnamed and uncounted martyrs of the early Church who died during the Roman persecutions; in other words, in remembrance of particularly holy people.

Yet the earlier conception of sainthood is that all Christians, not just a special few, are saints. This is the vision of the Revelation to John, where the saints, those with palm branches in their hands, are "a great multitude that no one could count". The image is of many, not of a few; of all the Christian People gathered together before the throne as saints.

St Paul confirmed this notion of sainthood when he wrote to the Church in Corinth as to those "sanctified in Christ Jesus", to those "called to be saints" (1 Cor. 1.2). In fact, Paul commonly recalled to the minds of those hearing his letters read at the Eucharist on Sunday, which is of course the purpose for which they were originally written, that they were hagioi, holy people or saints. "To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints" (Rom. 1.7); "To... all the saints throughout Achaia" (2 Cor. 1.1); "To all the saints who are at Ephesus" (Eph. 1.1). Paul kept constantly before his listeners in all the Churches the fact that they were saints.

Preachers, of course, often make this exact point when they have to preach about the saints; usually coupling it with an exhortation to the holy living and good works that will make average Christian people like us saints in fact as well as name. Lesbia Scott's wonderful hymn, "I sing a song of the saints of God", captures this attitude perfectly. "They loved their Lord, so dear, so dear, and his love made them strong; and they followed the right for Jesus' sake, the whole of their good lives long... for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too." The message is that anyone, by following right and living a good life for Jesus' sake, can be numbered among the saints.

Yet this is not exactly the same as the New Testament idea of sainthood. When Paul wrote of his fellow Christians as saints, he was not referring to any accomplishment, good work, or virtue of their own. For Paul, Christians were saints because they were baptized. "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6.11), he writes a bit later to the Corinthians. It is the washing of Baptism that makes clear what Jesus Christ does for Christians: makes them holy, a holy People, the saints of God.

For Paul, being a saint is an objective fact: we are saints because of what God has done for us through the outward and visible sign of water in Baptism. It is not that we, having been baptized, now have the opportunity to become saints by living virtuous lives. Rather, we are now saints because of what God has done in making us a part of the Church. Being a saint doesn't depend on us and what we do; it depends on God and what he has already done for us.

If being a saint to Paul did not rest on either sentimentality or good works, but on baptismal grace, the fact is that for Paul God is still working out in each one of us the full measure of that grace. God is remodeling each one of us into the fulness of the life he has already given us in Baptism. The original to which we are being remodeled is Jesus Christ himself. "You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator" (Col. 3:9-10). That work begun in us cannot be frustrated because we really are saints. God, who is passionate and relentless, will not be finally satisfied until we have all been done over in the image of his Son.

God is not challenging you to become a saint; he is announcing his intention of making you one! The process, some of us suspect, will be a long and difficult one in our own instances, but it is God's purpose to sanctify us and restore us to unity with him and with one another. That is the intent of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Mt. 5.4-6, 8). The awesome hope for redemption, the human longing for wholeness that we have, will not be frustrated.

It is God's purpose to make each one of us hunger and thirst for righteousness; to make each one of us pure in heart. In the end, God will not be satisfied with anything else. Or to put it another way, nothing else is capable of entering into full relationship with God and with one another, which is a good definition of blessedness, the happiness we enjoy in the kingdom of heaven.

The good news is that it is not up to us alone to become pure in heart. God, who has made us saints, holy people through the washing of baptism, makes us fit to join the company of all the saints in his kingdom. As Christians, our destiny is to live and reign with Christ in glory; and the God who has done a good work by making us members of his Church will bring that work that he has begun to perfection in each one of us.