A Poor Model of Saintliness

A number of the acknowledged saints seem to have acquired their status through suffering.  They offer a history of tears and distress.  By the lives they endured (and in some cases seem to have enjoyed or even provoked) they are canonized.  It is a poor model of saintliness.  To equate it with pain or endurance is to offer a limited definition.  Saintliness should rather be founded in goodness, happiness and love.  Even if suffering is very real and part of every life, it is not what makes us most like God, and it is about God that we should be.