The Vocation of the Saint-Maker

Have you ever poured yourself into helping someone, only to watch them surpass you? Maybe you taught a younger colleague everything you knew, and then one day they received the promotion you had been hoping for. Maybe you coached your child through years of piano lessons, and now they play with a fluency and feeling that your own fingers could never produce. Maybe you mentored someone in faith, praying with them, walking alongside them through their doubts, and then watched as they developed a prayer life so rich and radiant that it made your own devotional habits look threadbare by comparison.

What did you feel in that moment? Be honest. Was it pure joy? Or did something else flicker through you first, something hot and quick, something you would rather not name?

Most of us know that feeling. And most of us are ashamed of it. But what if I told you that the very place where that envy burns is the exact place where God wants to do His deepest work in you?

 

A Prayer Most People Cannot Pray

There is a prayer attributed to Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val, the early twentieth-century Vatican Secretary of State, known as the Litany of Humility. It contains a series of petitions that read like a checklist of everything the human ego refuses to surrender. But its final line is perhaps the most devastating of all:

”That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should. Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.”

Read that again slowly. Let it settle. Notice what it asks for. It does not ask God to make you holier than everyone else. It does not even ask God to make you as holy as everyone else. It asks for the grace to want other people to outpace you in holiness, while you simply become what you were made to be.

This is not false modesty. This is not spiritual self-deprecation. This is one of the most radical reorientations of the heart that any prayer has ever proposed. And the fact that the prayer ends with “grant me the grace to desire it” tells us something important: we cannot even want this on our own. The wanting itself must be a gift.

 

The Economy of the Kingdom

Why is this prayer so difficult? Because it cuts against the grain of how we think the world works.

We live inside an economy of scarcity.

There are only so many seats at the table, only so many awards to be given, only so many people who can be “the best.” In this economy, someone else’s gain is your loss. If they are holier, you are less. If they shine brighter, your light dims.

But the Kingdom of God operates on an entirely different economy.

Jesus made this clear in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16, NRSV). Workers who arrived at the eleventh hour received the same wage as those who had toiled since dawn. When the early workers grumbled, the landowner replied, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15).

The Greek word translated “envious” here is ponēros, which literally means “evil.” Jesus is pointing to something profound: in the Kingdom, to resent another person’s blessing is not just petty. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is. God’s generosity is not a zero-sum game. When He pours holiness into another person’s life, He does not drain the reservoir. The reservoir is infinite. There is no scarcity of grace.

Paul understood this when he wrote to the Philippians from prison. Other preachers were proclaiming Christ out of rivalry, trying to increase Paul’s suffering. His response is breathtaking: “What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18). Paul could rejoice even when others surpassed him with impure motives, because his eyes were fixed not on his own standing but on the advance of the gospel.

 

The Vocation of the Saint-Maker

There is a beautiful and largely forgotten vocation in the life of faith: the vocation of the saint-maker.

This is the person who pours into others not to build a following, not to be remembered, not to be thanked, but to see those others become everything God intended them to be, even if “everything God intended them to be” is something far greater than the saint-maker will ever become.

Think of Andrew. In the Gospel of John, Andrew is one of the first two disciples to follow Jesus (John 1:35-40). But what does Andrew do almost immediately? He goes and finds his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus (John 1:41-42). And from that moment on, Andrew virtually disappears from the narrative while Peter becomes the rock upon which the entire community of faith is built. Andrew brought Peter to Jesus, and Peter eclipsed Andrew in every conceivable way.

Did Andrew resent this? The Gospels give us no indication that he did. Andrew seems to have understood something that most of us struggle to grasp: his calling was not to be Peter. His calling was to bring Peter to Jesus. And in fulfilling that calling faithfully, Andrew became exactly as holy as he should have been.

Consider also Thomas à Kempis, the humble Augustinian monk and priest whose masterpiece, "The Imitation of Christ," has served as a primary tool for the sanctification of others for centuries. It is recognized by the likes of St. Therese of Lisieux as one of the most valuable books she read in her pursuit of holiness—a woman who herself has been called the greatest saint of the modern era and a doctor of the Church. Even though Thomas has never been formally canonized as a saint, his life’s work was to vanish into the pages of a guide that led others to the heights of glory.

Or consider John the Baptist, who said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). This is often quoted as a statement about the relationship between the believer and Christ, and rightly so. But it also reveals a posture of the heart that applies to how we relate to one another. The Baptist’s entire ministry was preparation. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, not the Word itself. His joy was made complete not by his own prominence but by the arrival of the One he had announced.

 

The Hidden Sin of Spiritual Comparison

Let us be honest about something. Spiritual envy is one of the most corrosive and least confessed sins among people of faith. We would readily admit to struggling with lust or anger or greed. But how many of us would admit that we felt a sting of resentment when someone in our small group shared a powerful experience of God’s presence, and our own prayer life felt dry and distant? How many of us have felt threatened by another person’s spiritual gifts rather than grateful for them?

Paul addressed this tendency directly: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21). But the inverse is equally true and perhaps more insidious: the hand cannot say to the eye, “I resent that you can see.” Each member of the body has its own function, its own glory, its own calling. And the health of the whole body depends on each member embracing its own role without coveting another’s.

The Litany of Humility addresses this sickness at its root. It does not merely ask us to stop comparing. It asks us to actively desire the flourishing of others, even when that flourishing seems to come at the expense of our own recognition. It invites us into a posture where another person’s holiness is not a rebuke to us but a cause for celebration.

 

“As Holy as I Should”

Notice the precision of that phrase: “as holy as I should.” Not as holy as I could in some abstract, theoretical sense. Not as holy as the greatest saint who ever lived. But as holy as God, in His particular and unrepeatable love for me, has designed me to be.

This is liberating. It means that your path to holiness is not a competition.

It is a conversation between you and God, shaped by your unique history, your particular wounds, your specific gifts, and the irreplaceable place you hold in His heart. No one else can become the saint that you are called to be. And you cannot become the saint that someone else is called to be. The moment you stop trying to be someone else’s version of holy, you are free to become your own.

As Paul wrote, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Paul did not say, “I am what Peter is.” He said, “I am what I am.” And it was enough, because it was grace.

 

Living It Out

So how do we begin to live this way? Let me suggest three practices.

First, pray the prayer even when you do not mean it. The Litany of Humility ends with the honest admission that we need grace even to desire humility. Start there. Tell God you do not yet want others to become holier than you. Ask Him to change your wanting.

Second, invest in someone else’s spiritual growth with no expectation of credit. Recommend a book that changed your life. Pray for someone daily without telling them. Share a practice of prayer that has deepened your relationship with God. Pour yourself into another person’s holiness the way a gardener pours water into soil, knowing the flower that blooms will not bear your name.

Third, practice rejoicing in another person’s spiritual growth this week. When someone shares an insight from Scripture that you had never considered, resist the urge to one-up them. When someone describes an answered prayer, let your first response be genuine gladness rather than a quiet inventory of your own unanswered prayers. Train your heart, one small act of celebration at a time, to see another person’s holiness as a gift to the whole body rather than a threat to your own standing.

The goal of the Christian life has never been to prove yourself a saint. It has been to become the particular, unrepeatable reflection of God’s love that only you can be, and then to spend yourself helping others do the same. The highest calling may not be to stand at the front of the procession. It may be to stand at the door, pointing others toward the One who waits inside, and to find in that self-forgetful service a joy that no amount of recognition could ever provide.

Jesus, grant us the grace to desire it.

 

P.S. This is a GREAT musical version of the Litany of Humility. When I find myself gravitating toward self-centeredness, or seeking recognition or praise, I often put this on repeat and pray with it. You can also find the Litany Humility written out in text form HERE.