In a world increasingly obsessed with accumulation, permanence, and self-promotion, Father José Júlio Rocha offered a radically different vision of what it means to live well, to believe deeply, and perhaps even to become holy.
Speaking at the twenty-fifth edition of the Conversas na Sacristia, organized by the Pastoral da Cultura of São José Parish in Ponta Delgada, the priest, theologian, and Episcopal Vicar for the Clergy invited his audience to reconsider one of Christianity’s oldest and most misunderstood words: holiness.
His answer was neither nostalgic nor triumphalist. It did not depend on miracles, extraordinary gifts, or unattainable perfection. Instead, it rested upon something deceptively simple and profoundly demanding: the ability to leave oneself behind in order to serve others.
Throughout the centuries, the Church has proposed many faces of holiness. The martyrs of the early centuries offered their lives rather than renounce their faith. The desert fathers abandoned the comforts of society in search of God. Benedictines sanctified labor and community life. Franciscans embraced poverty as a protest against excess. Missionaries crossed oceans and continents. Mystics sought union with the divine through silence and contemplation. Social reformers dedicated themselves to education, justice, and the defense of the poor.
Different ages produced different saints because every age confronts different temptations.
Yet Father José Júlio Rocha identified a thread running through all of them.
“The common element,” he suggested, “is the desire to go beyond oneself.”
Holiness, then, is not a matter of spiritual achievement but of spiritual generosity.
The saint is not the person who has conquered every weakness. The saint is the person who refuses to allow selfishness to become the center of life.
Perhaps the most striking image of the evening was the one that inspired the conference itself: the backpack.
For Father José Júlio Rocha, the backpack symbolizes a spiritual nomadism that remains as relevant today as it was in the Gospel. A Christian, he argued, cannot build a permanent home in possessions, status, power, ideology, or even personal comfort. The believer walks through history carrying only what is necessary, always ready to move toward God and toward others.
“The Christian heart must remain nomadic,” he said.
It is a powerful image for our times.
Modern society encourages precisely the opposite. We are taught to acquire, to secure, to settle, to build walls around our interests and identities. Success is measured by ownership, influence, visibility, and personal fulfillment. The language of sacrifice often appears outdated. Service is frequently subordinate to self-expression.
Against this backdrop, Father José Júlio Rocha’s reflection sounded quietly revolutionary.
Everything truly holy, he argued, stands against the logic of possession and self-centeredness. Holiness challenges the culture of consumption because it insists that human fulfillment is found not in what we accumulate but in what we give away.
His remarks also carried an unmistakable ecclesial dimension. Echoing the vision of Pope Francis, he spoke of a Church that must be less concerned with power and more concerned with service; less clerical and more communal; less focused on authority and more focused on accompaniment.
A Church in which priests walk among the people rather than above them.
A Church in which faith is measured not by prestige but by proximity.
The discussion of contemporary saints naturally touched upon Carlo Acutis, the young Italian soon to be canonized, whose devotion to the Eucharist and use of digital media have inspired many young Catholics. Yet Father José Júlio Rocha resisted the temptation to reduce holiness to any single model. What matters, he suggested, is not age, fame, or historical circumstance, but a heart available to God and available to others.
That availability remains the essential challenge.
In the end, the evening offered something increasingly rare in public discourse: an invitation not merely to think differently but to live differently.
The saints of the future, Father José Júlio Rocha implied, may not be those who possess the most influence, knowledge, or visibility. They may simply be those who travel lightly through life, carrying a nomadic heart, refusing to settle for themselves alone.
For only God, he reminded his listeners, deserves a permanent dwelling in the human heart.
Translated and adapted from a Story in Igreja Açores. Photocfrom Igeja Açores.