On holiness

In his General Audience yesterday, the Holy Father reflected on the lives of Barnabas, Silas and Apollos, three collaborators of Saint Paul.

Furthermore, and this is what the media has picked up on, Pope Benedict XVI noted:

Hence, also among saints there are oppositions, discords and controversies. And this is very consoling for me, as we see that the saints have not "fallen from heaven."

They are men like us, with complicated problems. Holiness does not consist in not making mistakes or never sinning. Holiness grows with the capacity for conversion, repentence, willingness to begin again, and above all with the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Too often we simply forget that the saints are human beings, too.

His Holiness concluded his reflections saying, most beautifully, "We are all humble ministers of Jesus. We serve the Gospel in the measure that we can, according to our gives, and we ask God to make his Gospel, his Church grow today."