The Wizard of Oz is one of my top ten movies of all time. (not that I watch that many movies…)  As you know from the story, each of the main characters lacked something – a brain, a heart, courage and a way to get home. The wizard wisely sends them on a pilgrimage, because you learn all kinds of things about yourself on pilgrimage.  And when they meet the wizard after completing their quest, each was given an external token that signified what they already had deepest inside.  A medal, a diploma, a heart clock, and eventually to Dorothy, the knowledge that all she had to do was click her heels three times and she had all she needed to get home.  In each instance, it wasn’t the external sign that made them complete, it was what they already carried inside of them that made them whole and brought them home.   

   Today we celebrate all the men and women who, like the characters in Oz, are lacking one thing in the life of the church.  They all lack the ‘official title’ of “Saint” in front of their names.  And though that title signifies much in the church, we have always held that there are countless men and women who have washed their robes in the blood of the lamb.  What they lack is that official process of canonization – like the diploma given to the scarecrow or the medal to the cowardly lion or the ticking heart clock of the tin man.  Yet the church tells us that they always carried inside of them what made them whole and holy, what made them saints with a small “S” even if they never were put forward for the process of canonization.   

  So here is the gospel question that is the point of this feast day and homily.  If it is true (and it is) that each saint is known for a particular passion, a particular virtue, a particular path that marked their journey home to God for which they are canonized, then what will YOU be canonized for?  What will you be canonized for?   

Perhaps some examples might help focus our thinking.

• I would canonize my uncle, Fr. Wally Boul, for the gracious dependency on God he learned through his struggle with alcoholism.  I have never met a kinder, more compassionate man, but with an edge of steel for the deception and lies that come from addiction than my uncle Wally.  He’d walk to hell with you, but not for you if you weren’t willing to face your demons.  But he’d be at your side through the toughest parts and all the other parts if you did…
• I’d canonize Grandpa Kempf for his steadfast faithfulness to grandma Kempf during her 13 year battle with a slow cancer – he was by her bedside every day of his life in those nursing homes (unless the snow was 6 inches deep.)
  
• I’d canonize Grandma Kempf for her long patient suffering.  I was a reluctant visitor, with mom having to drag us along weekend after weekend.  Yet in all that time I never heard her complain or lament: “Why me?”  I did overhear her saying something about offering it up on time – and though I didn’t know then what it meant, I understand now that it was her way to continue to love the world in and through her suffering.

 

And so it goes for the men and women in my life who are among those saints without name. 

 So, if the Wizard was right, in proclaiming to those pilgrims to the Land of Oz – that they already had within them all they needed on the journey – then you and I also have some work to do on our pilgrimage.  For we already have within us what it means to be poor in spirit, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be meek, to mourn, to be merciful, to be peacemakers.  This is who Jesus describes us to be at our best in the Beatitudes.  And when we live from that place within, when we carry, like Dorothy and Scarecrow and the Lion and Tin Man, that which we need on our journey, not to Oz, but to the kingdom, then we’ll live the cause of our own canonization in all the decisions and moments of our lives.   

What will they canonize you for?