This Holy Season of Lent is a time to walk after the saints in penance and fasting in order that, becoming increasingly detached from worldly goods and delighting more and more in heavenly goods, we might grow in holiness and love for God.

Last year in January, I took a month-long study abroad in the Republic of Ireland. One of the places my group visited was the historic Clonmacnoise Monastery. I prayed at length in the more recently built structure pictured below, enclosed partly by glass. Nearly thirty-five years earlier, Pope St. John Paul II had visited the same place when he had gone to Ireland. The structure was built specially for his visit. The Pope and Saint said mass where I prayed. Though our visits were separated by many years, I prayed mere feet away from where a saint had prayed. I was where a saint had been.

I was reminiscing about this on Monday because of St. Patrick’s Day and something struck me. How often does it happen that I have been where saints have been without knowing it? Quite likely, it happens more than I think. For I cannot see the grace welling up in the hearts of the parishioner next to us, who adores in loving devotion the Most Blessed Sacrament. I cannot see the soul of the parishioner who has just exited the confessional, justice restored and love rekindled. I cannot see the heart of the hardworking parent who would not hesitate to give his life for the bodily and spiritual well-being of his or her children for God’s sake. I cannot see the souls of those I pass on the street, at the grocery store, at school, at work, at church: at so many places, to whom I seldom give a second thought. I cannot see that this one or that one is a saint, no less cherished by God for not being famous among men. I daresay that I meet saints every day.

What if people go where a saint has walked when they go where I have been? There is something about this question, I realize, that feels presumptive and arrogant. It is not, however: I believe it is profoundly humble. To be a saint is nothing more and nothing less than to respond in love to the call to holiness, which is a universal and divine mandate (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, Ch. 5). There is nothing arrogant about responding to God’s invitation, nor would there be any humility in resisting the work of grace because of my own smallness and weakness.

In a certain sense, anyone with sanctifying grace is a saint, insofar as he has been truly justified by God’s unmerited gift. But this grace has the potential to grow, like a seed into a great tree. This growth occurs to the degree in which he cooperates with the grace of God. There are many ways of working alongside God in the pursuit of holiness. Fasting and penance is one such means that has been recommended and commanded by the Church and practiced by the saints. Therefore, as we continue for another month in Lent, let us remember that we walk, no matter how feebly, in the spiritual footsteps of saints.