Today's Second Reading warns not to make the wrong kind of distinctions among persons. St James points out that the first Christians had not shaken off the common tendency to treat those who are materially rich and well-dressed better than the poor and shabbily dressed. Such behavior is, of course, quite normal in all human societies. St James, however, reminds his listeners that the standards of the Kingdom of Heaven are different from those of the world. God often chooses those who are poor, according to the world, to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.
Nevertheless, St James' warning also raises some questions. While earthly standards for ranking persons are contrary to God's judgment, are there heavenly standards for distinguishing persons and ranking persons? In other words, are all saints fundamentally the same, like clones are supposed to be, namely, identical with one another? And are some saints, by some measure, greater than other saints? To give a concrete example, does St Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, enjoy a greater glory than many other saints, and is Mary, as the Mother of God, given a uniquely high status among the saints? Such questions might seem rather remote and theoretical, but answering these questions does, in fact, have important, practical consequences for our lives here and now.
An answer to the first of these questions can be seen from Christian art, which is the origin of much Western art. One of the first things that one notices when Christian artists have tried to paint heaven, at least symbolically, is that the saints have faces. Indeed, the very fact of this depiction of the faces is highly significant, as one can see when comparing Christianity to certain other religions. One of the first things that one notices in Islamic countries, for example, is the comparative lack of artistic depictions of the human face. Islamic art specialises in calligraphy and geometrical forms, one point that makes the cultural experience of visiting Italy very different from the cultural experience of visiting Saudi Arabia. In particular, it would be rare or impossible to see any equivalent in a mosque to what we see in this church today, namely works of art depicting saints - saints who have faces. Furthermore, the faces of Christian saints and their attire differs, one from another. The saints are not clones, but distinct persons. St Joseph, for example, is often shown with his carpenter's tools, and Mary is often depicted holding the baby Jesus, as she did at Bethlehem. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, in this life we write the title page of what we are to be in glory. So the answer to the first question is 'yes': the saints are distinct from one another and are not clones. In particular, the characters and characteristics of holy men and women on earth are glorified in their heavenly home, just as particular kinds of seeds, when buried in the ground, give rise to particular kinds of plants.
The answer to the second question can also be seen from Christian art. The saints are, indeed, ranked in Christian art, so that some saints are greater than others. In fact, some Christian art has attempted to symbolize this ranking in terms of comparative size. Quarton's painting, The Coronation of the Virgin, for example, shows a very large and beautiful figure of Mary, crowned by the Holy Trinity, in the centre of the painting. Around her there are smaller images of many saints, the heavenly city. By comparison, the people alive on earth are depicted as being rather tiny, and in the caverns of purgatory and hell beneath their feet, those being cleansed and those who are damned are miniscule. All such representations are limited and should be treated with some caution, but relative sizes of the saints in such paintings highlights an important Christian truth. The saints are equal in one sense, insofar as they are all complete, fulfilled and perfect happy. In another sense, however, the saints are unequal, because their measures or capacities for happiness differ, one from another. To use a famous comparison, a thimble and a bucket can both be full, but the capacity of the bucket is much greater than that of the thimble. This teaching on the different glory of the saints is rooted in Scripture and Tradition. Today's First Reading tells of the coming 'retribution' of God, but this translation is somewhat misleading: the Hebrew word in this text would be better translated as the recompense of God. When Jesus says, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven" (Mt 6:20), he is not merely warning us about the vanity of earthly wealth, but quite literally urging us to store up treasure in heaven, to increase our recompense and weight of glory, to increase our capacity for happiness. Furthermore, the lives of the saints highlight this kind of heavenly ambition. Even as a young girl, St. Therese of Lisieux said that she would take everything God offers, "I will not be a saint by halves."
So how, then, do we store up treasures in heaven? Well, the path to Christian greatness is not, properly speaking, by doing things for God, even though the lives of the saints are often very fruitful in good works. The way to true greatness is suggested by today's Gospel, in which the deaf and dumb man allows himself to be healed by Christ. God wants us not only to be saints, but to be great saints and bear much fruit. What limits us, however, is the shallow extent to which we surrender to God and allow him to increase our capacity for happiness, our capacity, in fact, to receive him. Indeed, in my own life, and in my experience as priest, I have found that people will do almost anything rather than surrender to God in prayer and to follow where God is leading them. People would even rather do things for God, than to take time each day to listen to God and speak to God in prayer. With regard to prayer, we are, in fact, like the man in today's Gospel whose hearing is blocked and whose speech is impeded. Yet it is first and foremost by the sacraments and by prayer, especially the Mass and regular daily prayer, that God forms the saints for glory. So let us re-commit ourselves, in particular, to the practice of daily prayer and ask God to take away whatever impedes us from hearing him, speaking to him and surrendering to him in love. Let us also ask Mary to pray for us, that we do as she did in surrendering to God, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Lk 1:38).