I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying. Nelson Mandela

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul. Douglas Mac Arthur

We human beings are a motley crew.  We have our quirks and fancies, our passions and pain, our dark spaces and spaces of hope and redemption.  We laugh and cry, cheer and chortle, extend a helping hand, do our best, fall down, get up, try again and keep going.  Some of us have grand plans, others have modest ambition and some leave life to chance and serendipity.  Some people network furiously, others do the hard yards conscientiously, a few are charismatic and prodigious.  We are simply walking each other home as we navigate the trials and triumphs of our lives.  We are trying to be good people; ordinary, decent human beings who take comfort in family, friends and faith.

I am a trying woman.  Just ask my husband!  I’ve always been something of a tryer, mainly a team player, but with spurts of singular independence on occasion.  The first thing I do each day is to thank God that I have the day ahead of me to try again. 

Walking to the bus stop in the morning, I see the stars disappear and the soft blush of dawn burnish the distant Dandenongs.  I am alive and in the world and can do some good.  It’s a sort of mini-mission.  It’s not that I set out with some sort of saintly to-do list, but I do have the daily interactions with many young people who may take their cue from my attitude.  I do look out for small wonders and minor elations, the hundreds and thousands on the plain bread of the daily, the moments of glad grace. 

Yesterday, it was noticing the rainbow lorikeets bustling in the banksia trees at school.  We have to have our eyes wide open if we want to see the marvellous sideshow we so often miss if we are trapped by the demand of our digital devices.  We need to see where we are going, both literally and metaphorically, making conscious decisions not to be importuned by algorithmic temptations which can take our time away.  (That’s not to say there isn’t room for this occasionally.)  I have spent a recent Saturday night listening to old songs and B sides and songs that were great but not stupendous hits.  Ol’55s Looking for an Echo comes to mind.  Maybe I am just looking for echoes and being nostalgic for the dizzy years of youth where …

Today, I am a trying woman.  Sometimes this trying works out and sometimes all my effort counts for naught.  But I persist.  I am probably similar to many of the women who have peopled the Church over the centuries.  Generally good-hearted, occasionally slipping into venality because I am human, but with a desire to be good.  Beyond this being good is doing good which perhaps is even more important because it moves one on from something of a self-serving sanctity to the muck and mess of real life where our hands get dirty and our prayers are desperately needed.  

At the Synod in Rome it was recently stated by German theologian, Professor Thomas Sodïng, that if the Church is to move forward ordinary lay men and women must be involved in this universal mission.  We must try to shape the Church we want to be – compassionate, inclusive, loving and forgiving.  The hierarchy have their role and we have ours.  Together, we are a pilgrim people journeying, heading for the world to come.  However, in the here and now, we have much to do.

I love it that our Church is made up of so many groups who each work towards different ends.  There are groups who campaign and advocate, groups who pray and contemplate, groups who dialogue within and without the Church reaching to people of other faiths, people who write and talk, those who educate and those who care, all of us people of good will.  There are groups like Vinnies and Caritas and Jesuit Social Services and groups of parish volunteers, the meeters and greeters at Sunday Mass, the readers and collectors, those who present at meetings and have new ideas to share and enrich who we are. 

There are people invested in the work of certain charisms, the animating spirit behind the Faithful Companions of Jesus, the Jesuits, the Marist Brothers, the Loreto and Brigidine Sisters; people who understand that the world is changing and secularising and that traditional ways need to be renewed and refreshed for the next generation.  Many of my friends are doing something extra now that they have more time; visiting nursing homes to be a listening ear to the same old story, co-ordinating all sorts of Catholic groups to do with prayer, meetings and retreats, discussions and debates; people earnestly involved in a practical way, living out their faith daily in an unremarked way, living it well.  For me, this is the communion of small Saints – ordinary people making God central to their lives, seeing Jesus in the face of others, letting the Spirit dwell in their efforts.

Trying is about offering yourself, time and time again.

It is about what you have in reserve, the second wind, the umpteenth time.  And it has nothing, ever, to do with age.

For me, Robert Browning expresses it most evocatively.

Man’s reach must exceed his grasp
Or what’s a heaven for?  

God loves those of us who try, try and try again.  

So I am a trying woman with some small successes along the way.  I’ve been a trying child and will become a trying old lady, not content to retire sedately, but rather to get involved with others of a similarly hardcore mindset.  Trying means you are alive and kicking and have something to contribute.  And age doesn’t even come into it.  I love seeing people trying and not being diminished by failure or lack of obvious success.  The 19th century English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, wrote that by perseverance the snail reached the ark. 

So, as we pray for those who have lived and loved and been part of our holy Catholic and apostolic Church over the centuries, we remember all those who did their best, who kept the faith and kept on trying.  Of course, we will acknowledge the named Saints, but let us also acknowledge all those who are unnamed, people like us, who did their best to love God and love neighbour whilst sojourning here. 

May we join them in the world to come.

By Ann Rennie

Published: 1 November 2024