But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly offered to God, is a life growing up in God day by day.  It is our Lord’s life, summed up from this point of view in the “I come to do thy will, O God.”  Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed Mary with her acceptance of God’s will:  “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord.”  But it is the life expression of all sanctity; for the saint is such chiefly by virtue of his sacrificial attitude.  It is the completest account of the life of sanctity that it “leaves all” to follow a divine call.  It is the response of the Apostles who, as James and John, leave their father Zebedee and the boats and the nets and the hired servants, to follow Jesus.  It is the answer of Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom at the Master’s word.  It is the answer of all saints in all times.  Sanctity means the abandonment of all for Christ:  it means the embracing of the poverty of Jesus and Mary.

Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the narrow limits of a poor life?  Well, even if it were, the limits would not be so very narrow.  By far the greater part of the human race at any time has been poor, as poor as the Holy Family.  Unfortunately, Christianity is forgetting its vocation of poverty and becoming a matter of well-to-do-ness.  But we need not forget that the poor are the majority.  However, the fact is not that economical poverty is automatically productive of spirituality, but that accepted and offered poverty is the road to the heart of God.  It is not denied that the rich man may consecrate and offer his goods to God and make them instruments of God’s service; but in the process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and of attempting to deceive God—­the risk of quietly substituting for the spirit of sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting to buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a well-calculated tribute.  It is not so much our possessions as the way we hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the inner motive of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be rich.  “They that desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,”

These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches are counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which holds all things at the disposal of God, and views life as opportunity for the service of God.  And in so estimating life, we must remember that money is not the only thing that human beings possess.  As I pointed out the vast majority of the human race have no money:  it by no means follows that they have no capacity or field for the exercise of the spirit of sacrifice.  There is, for instance, an abundant opportunity for the exercise of that spirit in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that may be ours.  Probably many, indeed most, poor are only economically poor;