(Prefect of Congregation for the Causes of Saints,
Vatican City)
I speak for myself in the presentation of some brief considerations on what, to me, seem to be the end and the climax of inculturation: holiness.
Saints are not only examples of Christians but for all men, because Christian holiness implies the exercise of supranatural and human virtues. The saints are models of humane behaviour, of faithful accomplishment of their familial, professional, social duties, in the situation and circumstances in which Providence has placed them. Within the Church, they accomplish a pedagogical function. The veneration of those who have fully lived Christianity and have practised virtues to the point of heroism, may be found in the whole history of the Church. The history of the Church cannot be explained without the influx of those who, through martyrdom or not, have consumed their lives in witness of faith. The glorification of the Servants of God participates in the glorification of Christ and prolongs it in the centuries. This closely calls upon the mysteries of death and the resurrection of Christ.
First in the Church are those saints who, with the witness of their lives, become signs of the Kingdom of God. "God shows to men, in a vivid way, his presence and his face in the lives of those companions of ours in the human condition who are more perfectly transformed into the image of Christ. He speaks to us in them and offers us a sign of this Kingdom, to which we are powerful attracted?" (LG 50).
Saints become such, in every climate and in every land, in the same way: through the heroic exercise of the theological and cardinal virtues, or through the effusion of blood for Christ. "The evangelical moral can only perfect and elevate a moral dimension which already exists in human nature which is what the Church worries about, knowing that this is the heritage common to all men as such" (Congr. for the Doctrine of Faith, Human Liberty and Liberation).
In this way, Saints are the perfect inculturation of the doctrine of Christ, of the Gospel, in the cultures of all people.
The Saints are signs within the Church which recall Christ in an exemplary way. The Church in Africa has developed a great deal during this century. She will have accomplished a dimension ever more perfect, "to measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4,13), how many more saints she will give us.
Original text: Italian
