Counting the five beatifications scheduled for November 9, 2003, John Paul II will have proclaimed 1320 blessed and 473 saints; the vast majority of these being martyrs. This amounts to more beatifications and canonizations than all of the previous popes put together. The people he has beatified and canonized represent the broad range of the vocation and lives of the people of God: married, single, widowed, priest, religious, intellectual, worker, student, slave and so forth. How do we interpret this determined thrust of the 25 year pontificate of John Paul II?

John Paul II provides the hermeneutical key in his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte. In article 7 he notes that holiness, embracing all the vocational states of the Church, all times and places, ‘has emerged more clearly as the dimension which expresses best the mystery of the Church. Holiness, a message that convinces without the need for words, is the living reflection of the face of Christ.’ Here we can hear the echo of Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi when in 1975 he wrote that "modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."

In article 30 of Novo Millennio Ineunte John Paul situates this ecclesial, and thus missionary, dimension of holiness and witness in the great pastoral program of the Second Vatican Council. Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium declared the ‘universal call to holiness’ as an intrinsic and essential aspect of the Church. This is rooted in the baptism of each of the people of God. John Paul puts forward the pastoral challenge of the living out of the consequences of baptism ‘since baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity.’ He goes on to note that the Council explained that this holiness is misunderstood if it is taken to mean the living out of some kind of extraordinary existence, ‘possible only for a few "uncommon heroes" of holiness.’

He then arrives at giving the reason for the abundance of beatifications and canonizations during his pontificate: ‘The ways of holiness are many, according to the vocation of each individual. I thank the Lord that in these years he has enabled me to beatify and canonize a large number of Christian, and among them many lay people who attained holiness in the most ordinary circumstances of life. The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.’

Pope John Paul II has systematically over the years of his pontificate raised up before the eyes of the world the high standard of ordinary Christian living in its witness to love and unity in the 141 beatification and 50 canonization ceremonies. This is an invitation to all the baptized to renounce mediocrity and live the ordinariness of life to the full in Jesus Christ; for the unbaptised these ordinary men and women saints can continue to salt, leaven and enlighten humanity with the hope found in Jesus Christ, for it is only in him that humanity is fully revealed to itself.