“A Saint Through the Atonement of Christ the Lord” | Jeffrey R. Holland | January 2022
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explains how, throughout life’s adversities, we can keep the faith and become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord.”
Trigger Warning: The speech discusses the death of a child.
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In general conference of October 2016, I told the story of my friends Troy and Deedra Russell of the Dutchman Pass Ward in Henderson, Nevada. No one will remember the talk, but it dealt with their experience when Troy pulled his pickup truck out of the garage on his way to donate goods to the local Deseret Industries. As he did so, he felt his back tire roll over a bump. Thinking some item had fallen off the truck, he got out only to find his precious nine-year-old son, Austen, lying face down on the pavement. The screams, the priesthood blessing, the paramedic crew, the hospital staff—all, in due course, were engaged in trying to save this beautiful boy’s life, but to no avail. Austen was gone.
Over time, Troy and Deedra found peace in their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the comforting presence of the Holy Ghost, and in the scores of loving friends and neighbors who helped them, especially their then “home teacher” John Manning.1
My purpose today is not to repeat that message but to tell you in your university years that some of life’s lessons will be difficult, and you may be asked to face more than you think you can—and certainly more than you want.
In Brother and Sister Russell’s case, one might think that losing a child in the nightmarish way that they lost Austen would be enough of a parental test for any young couple to face. But there is language in the very heart of one of the greatest of all Book of Mormon sermons that implies trials and tests may come to us often in life. In his farewell address, King Benjamin taught that a fundamental purpose of mortal life—perhaps the fundamental purpose—is to become “a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord,” which will require us to become “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”2
What does that mean for us? It means that struggle and strife, heartbreak and loss, are not experiences that come only somewhere else to someone else. It means that moments in which faith feels frightfully difficult to hold on to are not reserved for our bygone days of persecution and martyrdom. No, the times when becoming a saint through Christ the Lord seems almost—almost—too much to achieve are still with us. And so it will be until God has proven His people for their eternal reward. We will be asked to submit, to obey, and to be childlike. For some of us that is difficult now, and it will be difficult then.
My plea today, in this university that I love with all my heart, is that we practice now and be strong now for those times of affliction and refinement that surely will come. For some of us they come now, in university years. That is when faith in God, faith in Christ, and faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will really count. That is when faith must be unwavering, because it will be examined in the refiner’s fire to see if it is more than “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”3 For some, the severity of the test might seem like a marathon-length final exam in Mortal Life 101. It is then, sailing in what Hamlet called “a sea of troubles,”4 that it may take all the faith you have just to keep your little craft afloat.
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