How does one ensure that one glorifies God with one’s life? It begins with the very first minute of the day.

The Chinese poet Lao Tzu is credited with the saying that the 1000 mile journey begins with a single step. It is an oft-quoted saying that reminds us that every successful major project, every great dream, every lofty endeavour very often has very humble and simple beginnings.  

The Catholic Christian is a person who has a very very lofty endeavor ahead of him or her.  That endeavor is sainthood.  Any other end, any other aim that is short of sainthood is a life that has not attained, or has not yet attained its fullest potential. That is because in the Catholic belief, every life that God has willed to be, which is every human person that was conceived in a female human body, has been willed for a divine purpose, and there is no exception.  Not even a life that has been conceived through a crime (as in a rape), or outside of wedlock is exempt.  As long as it is a human person (and this person exists the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg), this human person has a divine end which God wills for it.  This life is a gift by God, and the life glorifies God by giving itself over to God’s will throughout one’s entire lifetime spent as a living human being.  

Each time this human being lives not just for itself and what it delights in, but for God and God’s purposes, it tunes into and conforms to the divine potential that he or she is made for. What I just said is the nuts and bolts of the ultimate aim of the Christian life.  But one doesn't normally just jump from being a baptized person (or a baby in the Catholic scheme of things) to sainthood in one swift movement. It is a slow process, because growth, be it human physical growth or growth and maturity in godliness, is a process, and a rather long drawn out one.  It is often the length of this process or journey that is rather daunting for so many.  What is asked of in this entire process called life, is an attitude of patience and a deep love of God.  St Josemaria Escriva called this attitude one of heroism.  

To live heroically is to live with an eye cast on heaven’s eternal love that awaits every saint, while at the same time wanting to do all one can in this life to make that end a reality. It is to take on the hard task of loving God with all of one’s mind, heart and soul and one’s neighbour as oneself every moment of one’s life.  This is a lofty aim indeed, and very challenging, because the sinful self is always far more interested in doing what it wants rather than the good that it has potential for.  

It is often said of sin that “Sin isn’t my doing bad things.  Sin is knowing what God wants, but I don't care.  I want what I want, how I want, and when I want.”  Realizing this, and seeing sin this way will show that sin is something that is deeply relational.  It isn’t just me doing private and secret naughty things.  Seen this way, then it becomes clear that not only can we sin in small and rather private ways, but that we also can practice virtue and live out holiness and live heroically in small and very private ways too.

St Josemaria Escriva was very interested in encouraging Catholics to live with a deep awareness of this, and therefore to live heroically as well.  One of the things that he taught was to practice the heroic minute.  That may sound strange to many, but it makes perfect sense once we understand where this saint was coming from.

Every day consists of 24 hours, and broken down further, it consists then of 1440 minutes.  For every single person, these 1440 minutes begins with the first one the moment one wakes up, either from the cacophony of the alarm clock buzzer or the gentle (or violent for some) noise or movement by another human being.  The general tendency for most people is to want to slink back into sleep and hit that snooze button several times.  That attitude shows that a fight or struggle is going on – between the self that wants what it wants (sleep) and the self that ought to be getting up and starting the day to live in a sanctified way.  St Josemaria posits that when one absolutely refuses to give in to the temptation of sloth and laziness and instead gets right up and right there and then utter a prayer that wills one to give of one’s new day to God, it demonstrates heroism.

Doing this the very first thing when one awakes from the previous night’s sleep kick-starts the process of sanctifying one’s entire day which lies ahead.  It, as it were, charts the course of the rest of the remaining 1439 minutes left of one’s day for a life lived with an aim for holiness and godliness. It reminds one throughout the day that one isn’t just called to live life in some mindless and aimless way, but to navigate one’s life according to the north star of holiness that one began with in the morning.  

This is a very concrete way to live one’s life in a heroic way.  Does one have to do this?  Is there an absolute necessity to live one’s relationship with God and one’s fellow man in such a heightened way?  Well, no. It is not an imperative, and neither is it absolutely necessary.  

And this is why it is called heroism.  Doing a heroic deed for anyone in life is not an imperative, and neither is it absolutely necessary, and generally, people will understand it if you were to live without much heroism.  People who jump into rivers to save a drowning person are not obliged to do so. My own anonymous stem-cell donor who donated his stem-cells to enable me to overcome my leukemia back in 2013 didn’t have an obligation do to it, but he did.  This kind of living outside of what is obligatory and what is not an imperative makes such people heroes.  

The same applies when a mind and heart puts in the effort to practice the heroic minute.  But when one does it and knows that it charts his or her course of life for a holy path for the rest of the day, and can offer the inconvenience of not hitting that snooze button up heroically for souls in purgatory, or the conversion of sinners, one is practicing Christian love because one is willing the good of others for their sake.

In truth, it may not seem like a big deal – not snoozing in, and making the effort to get oneself out of bed with alacrity.  But because it charts the path for one’s day for sanctification, it is a bid deal for God because it reminds us that we have a need to glorify God with our lives.  It stretches our hearts to love in ways that are not so obvious.  

As well, it becomes our first step that we take to make that 1000 mile journey a little shorter, and the goal of holiness a bit closer.