A saint is a fully repentant sinner who can no longer backslide because he or she is no longer alive. This is the simplest definition of a saint. One who is absolutely sinless from the cradle to the grave and needs no repentance is no mere mortal, but an angel.

A saint is not an extraordinary person performing extraordinary tasks, but an ordinary person performing ordinary tasks in an extraordinary way. 

Indeed, it is not what a person does, but the manner and extraordinary consistency of doing it that qualifies him or her for sainthood.

For instance, if you choose to attend the morning Mass, not sporadically, but every day for 365 days without fail, come rain, come shine, or you choose to visit orphanage homes every week for 54 weeks in a year, or you choose to forgive every single person that has offended you without exception, or you decide to put a smile on the face of one person every day unfailingly for a whole year, you are already on your way to sainthood.

The only other qualification is for you to die in that state of potential sainthood and make it to heaven, because there are no living saints. 

For you to be a saint, you ought to have completed your task on earth, and no more in the position to commit sin, or backslide. For, you can live a saintly life all your life, and spoil everything on the last day by some careless sin of commission or omission. 

To qualify to be a saint, you have to finish the race, and finish well. You do not have to wait to be pronounced a saint; you automatically qualify as one by the quality of life that you have lived.

There are milliards of unannounced saints in heaven who are no less valuable than the proclaimed ones, and who are enjoying the companionship of the Almighty God in Paradise.

You should witness to Christ by your exceptional exemplary life, but you do not have to die or be killed on account of Christ to be a saint. At least one of the disciples of Christ did not die a martyr. 

John, the youngest of the apostles, lived to old age and died of natural causes, having survived a lot of persecution. Religious persecution comes in different ways.

The daily sacrifices you make, the persistent rejection you face because of your faith, the regular discrimination that you are confronted with at your place of work, in politics, or in other places because of your stand against corruption, nepotism, and other vices, all these amount to acts of persecution. 

A saint is one who voluntarily carries his or her cross, and follows Christ all the way without looking back, as he who puts his hand on the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). The task may look simple, but the toughness lies in the regularity and consistency by which it is carried out. 

The first group of saints who died for Christ were the Holy Innocents - the male infants, several thousands of them, two years and below, that Herod the Great, the King of Judea, ordered to be killed in Bethlehem, in the attempt to destroy the Infant Jesus.

Meanwhile, through an angelic vision, Joseph had fled to Egypt with Mary and the Baby Jesus to preserve his life (Matthew 2:13-16). The Holy Innocents died so that Christ might live to die later for mankind.

They were faceless and unnumbered, but none is faceless before God who knows us all individually. God knows those babies one by one, and they have become the Patron Saints of Babies, especially those babies who are daily confronted with premature death through abortion or infanticide.

Their Feast Day is December 28, three days after Christmas, commemorating the birth of Christ, in remembrance of those infants who died for the Infant Jesus. 

Since then, several known martyrs have witnessed with their lives. One of them is St Stephen, the earliest adult Christian martyr, who boldly witnessed before the Sanhedrin, who were so enraged by his pronouncements that they drove him out, beyond the city, and stoned him to death, with the consent and connivance of young Saul before he became the converted Paul.

Stephen’s last moments are reported in the Acts of the Apostles as follows: “But he, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and gazing intently toward heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:55).

And as they were stoning Stephen, he said: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit…Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” echoing the very words which Jesus had used at his crucifixion (Luke 23:34). And when he had said this, he fell asleep in the Lord (Acts 7:58-59). The Feast of St Stephen is normally celebrated on December 26, a day after Christmas. 

Another notable Saint is St. John the Baptist who was beheaded by Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, at the request of the daughter of Herodias, who was instigated by her mother to do so. John had preached against Herod taking over Herodias, his brother’s wife, and John had been arrested and put in prison.

Having been impressed with her dance on his birthday, Herod Antipas had promised Herodias’ daughter, on oath, anything she might ask for. But Herodias instigated her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist. Jesus was informed of the death of John the Baptist by his disciples, who went ahead to bury his remains (Matthew 14:1-12). 

In Nigeria, and all across the world, thousands of faceless people continue to suffer persecution and death in the name of Jesus Christ, and only a few of them have made it to the point of being beatified or canonized.

So far, Nigeria has only one beatified person, still waiting to be canonized. He is Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, who was a Nigerian priest in the Onitsha Archdiocese, and later became a monk at Mount Saint Bernard Monastery in England. He died on 20 January 1964, at the age of 60.

On 22 March 1998, upon the recommendation of Cardinal Francis Arinze, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II, and his Feast Day is January 20, the day of his death. It is hoped that his canonization will come sooner than later, and that more Nigerian saints should emerge. 

Nevertheless, heaven is awash with a huge number of unknown saints, because whoever makes it to Heaven is a saint already. Beatification or canonization is a formality for the consumption and encouragement of the living.

Apart from those who lose their lives on account of Christ, sainthood does not come by sheer accident. It is the ultimate reward for a life of full, unwavering commitment to Jesus Christ. There is no shortcut to sainthood.