To the men and women of our day they say aloud that we are all called to holiness, all of us without exception, as the Second Vatican Council solemnly declared in dedicating a chapter of its most important Document - chapter V of the Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium - "The call to holiness".

God created and redeemed us so that we might be saints! We cannot be satisfied with a lukewarm Christian life.

Nor can Christian life be reduced merely to a few individuals and isolated acts of piety: it must embrace every moment of our days on this earth.

Jesus Christ must be present in the faithful fulfilment of our ordinary daily duties, interwoven with details that seem small and unimportant, but these tasks acquire importance and supernatural grandeur when they are done out of love for God.

The Martyrs scaled the peak of heroism in the battle in which they gave their lives for Christ. The heroism to which God calls us is hidden in the thousand skirmishes of our life each day.

We must be convinced that our holiness - this holiness, let us have no doubt about it, to which God calls us - consists in achieving what John Paul II called the "high standard of ordinary Christian living" (Novo Millennio Ineunte, n. 31).

(Card. José Saraiva Martins, Homily for Beatification of 498 Spanish Martyrs, 28 October 2007)