Saints: The Slaves of Christ

Bishop Sheen opens by addressing a profound spiritual crisis: the loss of reverence and the failure of Christians to be true saints—that is, people who are holy and set apart from the world. He laments a growing familiarity with the sacred that breeds contempt, noting that many Christians have become indistinguishable from the secular world. Using a powerful anecdote about a visitor to New York who couldn't find a Christian because no one lived differently, Sheen challenges the very notion of a mediocre faith. He argues that we are not called to be "with it" in the world, but rather to be taken out of the world by Christ, transformed by a radical, visible holiness that marks us as His own.

To explain this calling, Sheen lays out the magnificent, three-fold history of our sanctity. First, he describes the eternal dimension, where God chose us and loved us "before the world was founded," giving us the right to call Him "Abba" (Daddy). Second, he moves to the historical reality of our fall into sin and our redemption through the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the cross, emphasizing that forgiveness is not cheap but was bought at a great price. Finally, he explains the contemporary stage: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which allows Christ to live in us, transforming us from within rather than merely serving as an external example to be copied.

Building on this foundation, Bishop Sheen outlines the practical steps to achieving this sainthood through a deeper love for Christ. This love, he explains, follows a clear progression: it begins with knowledge of Christ through scripture, matures into love expressed as active obedience to His will, and culminates in a new, intimate knowledge where we become "slaves in Christ's triumphant procession." He concludes that to be a saint is to be utterly His, and this transformation does not require a great amount of time, but rather a great amount of love.