Have you ever hesitated to ask for a promotion at work, not because you weren't qualified, but because you didn't want to seem presumptuous? Or perhaps you've downplayed a compliment about your talents, deflecting praise with an uncomfortable laugh and a quick change of subject. We live in a culture that has made an art form of false humility—that peculiar dance where we make ourselves smaller, not out of genuine modesty, but out of fear of appearing arrogant.

This same dynamic often creeps into our spiritual lives. We might pray for patience, for wisdom, for strength to endure trials. But pray to become a saint? That seems like spiritual overreach, doesn't it? Like walking into God's throne room and asking for the corner office. Yet what if this hesitation reveals not our humility, but our profound misunderstanding of what sainthood actually means—and more troublingly, what God actually wants for us?

 

The Scandal of Universal Calling

All of this touches on something revolutionary that most of us miss: God desires that we all become saints.

This isn't hyperbole or motivational speaking. This is the consistent testimony of Scripture and the lived experience of the Church throughout history.

The apostle Paul, writing to ordinary people in Ephesus—not to clergy, not to monastics, but to regular folks with jobs and families and mundane concerns—declares that God "chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Ephesians 1:4, ESV).

Notice the universality of that calling. Not that some of us should be holy. Not that the particularly devout or naturally virtuous should be holy. But that we—all of us—should be holy. The Greek word used here, hagios, is the same word translated elsewhere as "saint." To be holy is to be a saint. They are not different categories of Christian existence; they are synonymous.

This reframes everything. When we pray to become saints, we're not asking for something beyond God's intention for us. We're actually aligning our will with His primordial desire, His original blueprint for human existence. As Irenaeus wrote in the second century, "The glory of God is the human person fully alive." To pray for sainthood is simply to pray to become fully alive in the way God always intended.

The Pride Paradox

But here's where it gets psychologically complex. The very act of recognizing our calling to sainthood can trigger our pride alarm systems. We've been so conditioned to avoid anything that might seem presumptuous that we've created a new form of pride: the pride of refusing to accept what God freely offers.

I'm not sure the origins of this quote, though it's been mis-attributed to C.S. Lewis and was popularized by Rick Warren. Regardless, it's a good quote: "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

When we refuse to pray for sainthood out of fear of appearing prideful, we're actually still focused on ourselves—on how we appear, on our own spiritual reputation, on managing our image before God and others. This is pride wearing the mask of humility.

True humility accepts reality as it is, not as we think it should appear. And the reality, scandalous as it may seem, is that God wants to make us saints.

To refuse this is not humility; it's a form of rebellion dressed in religious clothing. It's telling God, "I know better than you what I should become."

 

The Misunderstanding of Sainthood

Part of our resistance comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what sainthood means. We imagine saints as spiritual superheroes, people who levitate during prayer, perform miraculous healings, and never struggle with the same mundane temptations we face daily. We picture them born with a special spiritual gene that made holiness come naturally to them.

But Scripture paints a different picture. Consider Peter, who would become one of the greatest saints in Christian history. This is the man who, even after witnessing countless miracles and hearing Jesus's teaching firsthand, still denied knowing Christ three times out of fear (Luke 22:54-62). Or Paul, who wrote with startling honesty, "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19, ESV). These were not spiritual superhumans. They were people who struggled, failed, repented, and kept pursuing God's will for their lives.

Augustine of Hippo, whose journey to sainthood included years of hedonistic living and intellectual pride, famously prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." Even in his Confessions, written after his conversion, he doesn't present himself as having achieved some state of effortless virtue. Instead, he shows us a man continually dependent on God's grace, continually turning back to God after failures, continually choosing to align his will with God's will.

This is what sainthood actually looks like: not perfection, but persistent pursuit. Not the absence of struggle, but the presence of surrender.

 

Thy Will Be Done: The Heart of Saintly Prayer

If God desires you to become a saint, then it follows that the prayer to become a saint is fundamentally the same as praying "Thy will be done." When Jesus taught His disciples to pray these words (Matthew 6:10), He wasn't giving them a prayer of resignation, a spiritual shrug of the shoulders. He was teaching them to actively desire and pursue what God desires.

The Greek verb used in "Thy will be done" (genēthētō) is in the imperative mood—it's a command, a plea for action. It's not passive acceptance but active alignment. When we pray "Thy will be done," we're asking God to accomplish His purposes in and through us, whatever those purposes might be. And since God's purpose for every human being is sainthood—full transformation into the likeness of Christ—then praying for sainthood is simply making that general prayer specific and personal.

Thomas Aquinas argued that grace perfects nature rather than destroying it. God doesn't want to erase who you are and replace you with a generic holy person. He wants to bring who you are to its fullest, most glorious potential. The prayer for sainthood isn't asking God to make you someone else; it's asking Him to make you fully yourself—the self He envisioned when He knit you together in your mother's womb (Psalm 139:13).

 

The False Humility Trap

I have to admit, the first time I heard someone say, "I pray everyday that God would make me a saint," it struck me as a little bit self-centered. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction since speaking that way wasn't really the way we talked in the church where I grew up, or even where I used to serve as a pastor. But as I reflected deeper on the significance of that prayer, I realized that I was wrong. While one can certainly pursue sainthood for vainglorious reasons (a desire to be "known," remembered, and the like), a sinful motive doesn't negate a genuine holy desire. It only means our desire is imperfect, and isn't that exactly what we pray would be perfected when we ask to become a saint?

In our very desire to have our prayer for sainthood answered any mixed-motives or prideful "underpinnings" are surrendered.

Refusing to pray for sainthood out of fear that we might come across as "self-centered" or "prideful" can itself become an issue of pride, a false humility. This deserves careful attention. False humility is perhaps one of the most deceptive forms of pride because it masquerades as virtue.

When we say, "Oh, I could never be a saint," what are we really saying? Often, we're saying one of several things:
- "I know better than God what I'm capable of becoming"
- "I'm too special in my brokenness to be transformed like others have been"
- "I prefer the comfort of low expectations to the challenge of God's high calling"

Each of these is a form of pride. The first elevates our judgment above God's. The second makes our sinfulness more powerful than God's grace. The third prioritizes our comfort over God's glory.

Teresa of Ávila, the 16th-century Carmelite mystic and doctor of the Church, wrote extensively about false humility. She observed that Satan often uses false humility to keep souls from pursuing deep union with God. By convincing us that we're "not worthy" of such intimacy, the enemy keeps us from the very relationship God died to make possible.

 

Practical Steps Toward Saintly Living

So how do we move from understanding this intellectually to living it practically? How do we pray for sainthood without falling into either pride or false humility?

First, reframe your understanding of sainthood. Instead of seeing it as achieving spiritual celebrity status, see it as becoming fully who God created you to be. You're not competing with Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa. You're called to be the saint only you can be, with your unique personality, gifts, struggles, and circumstances.

Second, pray specifically and boldly. Don't just pray for "holiness" in the abstract (though you may do that, too, since God tends to have better insight into our particular spiritual ailments than we do). Also pray for specific virtues you need to develop. Ask God for insight into the particular vices or virtues that plague you, that are a barrier to your holiness. Pray for the grace to respond to specific situations in your life with supernatural love. Pray for the courage to make decisions that align with God's will even when they're costly. As you pray, remember that you're not convincing a reluctant God to make you holy; you're accepting an eager Father's invitation to become what He's always wanted you to be.

Third, embrace the ordinary path to extraordinary holiness. Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower," became a saint not through dramatic gestures but through what she called "the little way"—doing small things with great love. Make your bed with intention. Respond to that irritating email with patience. Choose to really listen to your child's long story about their day. These mundane moments are the building blocks of sainthood.

Fourth, accept failure as part of the process. When you fail—and you will—don't use it as evidence that you're not meant to be a saint. Use it as an opportunity to experience God's mercy and begin again. Every saint has a past filled with failures. What makes them saints is not that they never fell, but that they always got back up.

Finally, embrace community. Sainthood is not typically a solitary achievement. Certainly, there were exceptions to this rule (e.g. St. Anthony the Great, St. Benedict, etc.) but most of us are not called to long periods of solitude. In fact, both of the above only endured solitude (the former in a desert, the later in a cave) temporarily, the work they did after their period on the desert/cave was intensely focused on communal holiness. We need others to encourage us, challenge us, and remind us of our calling when we forget. Find people who take holiness seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Share your struggles and victories. Pray for one another's transformation.

 

The Glory of Becoming

The great paradox of praying for sainthood is that it's simultaneously the most humble and the most audacious prayer we can pray. It's humble because it acknowledges that we cannot transform ourselves—we need God to do what only He can do. It's audacious because it takes God at His word when He says He wants to make us "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4, ESV).

When we pray to become saints, we're not asking for halos or statues in our honor. We're asking to become love incarnate in our small corner of the world. We're asking to be so transformed that our lives become a living gospel, making God's love tangible to everyone we encounter.

This is not pride. This is purpose. This is not presumption. This is promise. God has already declared His will for your life: your complete transformation into the likeness of Christ, your full flowering into sainthood. The only question is whether you'll dare to want what God wants for you.

So pray it boldly: "Lord, make me a saint." Not for your glory, but for His. Not to be remembered, but to remember whose you are. Not to parade your piety, but to participate in the divine nature. This is not a prideful prayer. It's the prayer God has been waiting to hear from you since before the foundation of the world.

After all, "Thy will be done" means nothing less.