ON BECOMING A SAINT
THE BASIC INGREDIENTS
_________________________________________
YOU
March 1981
by Andrew Costello
_________________________________________
PREDICTION
In the next 10
years we will begin to notice a return to an emphasis on the Saints in the
Catholic Church.
INTRODUCTION
In this issue of
YOU the focus will be on becoming a Saint. Part I will deal with various ideas
about the Saints, the need for heroes, some reflections on why there was a de-emphasis
of the Saints and why there will be a re-emphasis. Part II will zero in on 3
key ingredients that seem to be the basis for becoming a Saint.
PART I
BECOMING A SAINT
Thomas Merton,
Dorothy Day, Tom Dooley, Friedrich von Hugel, Marianne Cope of Molokai,
Maximilian Kolbe, John Howard Griffin, Pope John XIII, Pope Paul VI, Charles de
Foucauld, Mother Teresa, you, me? Who will have been the Saints of the 20th
century?
Based on past
experiences we know that there will be many surprises -- unknown people who
struggled to love God and neighbors in small corners and neighborhoods around
the world.
We also know that
most saints are saints with a small “s”. In this issue of YOU I'll be looking
at a phenomenon of Catholic tradition, the Saint with the capital “S”.
CATHOLIC HEROES
The Saints are
Catholic heroes: Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux, Thomas More of Chelsea,
Mary of Nazareth -- and a cast of thousands more. The Catholic Church has often
proclaimed “heroic” certain people who led lives of love that are worthy of
being imitated and venerated.
And any of us who
are over 40 and who have been brought up in the Catholic faith know all about
the Saints. Names like Tammy, Jason, Todd, and Dawn were usually “no, no's” for
our baptismal certificate. We were named Mary, Joseph, Anthony, and Barbara. At
catechism and at church we were told about St. Martin of Tours and St. Monica.
When we lost things we prayed to St. Anthony. If we had a hopeless case we
prayed to St. Jude. And some even knew that St. Rita was “even better”: she was
the Patroness of Impossible Cases.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Suddenly (for most)
St. Christopher and St. Philomena were off the list. Statues of Saints
disappeared when church buildings were renovated for the “new liturgy”. Why?
What happened to our long tradition of stress, devotion, “advertisements,”
books, sermons, holy cards, and pictures of the Saints?
REASONS
The most obvious
answer would be the Second Vatican Council (1962 - 1965).
On January 25,
1959, after being in office for only 90 days Pope John XXIII announced his plan
for an ecumenical council. How's that for a surprise from a 78 year old man?
After a lot of preparation he finally started the council in October of 1962.
The council took 4 years and John's successor, Paul VI, brought it to
completion (December 8, 1965).
And all of us who
have been to meetings know that what is prepared is only that: preparation. It
helps. The real “action” takes place where people are away from their daily
priorities and put in a room to consider different priorities. The Catholic
Church put about 7,000 people in a room --2,300 who had a vote -- and obviously
things began to happen. Lots of things were discussed and lots of things were
changed.
But it is after the
meeting, after all the talk, after the paper chase and paper writing, that we
find out if anything can be accomplished. History points out that it has been
after an ecumenical council especially that the real dramatic changes take
place -- actions and reactions, changes
in stress and the stress some people feel in change.
And with the
exception of St. Joseph's name being put into the canon of the Mass (a change
made by John XXIII without consulting the council), the Saints got lost for the
most part in this public re-evaluation by the Catholic Church on its contents.
This is obvious.
The Church from time to time decides to move. And when we move we can't take
everything with us. Once this was brought out to me on a retreat. We were given
the following Values Clarification Exercise: “If your house was on fire and you
could save only 3 things, what would they be: 1) _____________, 2) __________
3) ____________,?” Well, for any group that becomes sluggish, there are times
when its members need to get together and list its values, priorities, and
goals -- i.e., if it wants to catch fire. And one of the main roles of the
church is the role of Christ, “I have come to light a fire on the earth” (Luke
12:49).
PRIORITIES
What are the 3 most
important values of the Catholic Church: 1) _____________, 2) __________ 3)
____________,? Certainly the Church's tradition about the Saints would not make
this list.
The image or
metaphor that John XXIII used to describe his goal for the council was not that
of a burning house. It was that of staying in the house and opening up the
windows. Yet both wind and fire are symbols of the coming of a New Spirit (Cf.
Acts 2: 2-3). Meriol Trevor in her biography of Pope John reports, “When
someone asked him what he expected a Council to do, he flung open a window to
let in the fresh air” (p. 254).
The key word is
“flung”. Did he? Some people at the grass roots level of the Church felt that
the Saints and a lot of other Catholic values were “flung” out of their Church.
Cardinal Gracias (Bombay) voiced what many of those uncomfortable with the
changes in the Church felt, “Pope John opened the windows slightly to let in
fresh air, illustrating thus his `aggiornamento'; others are letting in a
hurricane, so that the interested Catholic finds himself at times not only
hanging on to his hat, but to his head as well.”
How loud was the
wind at Pentecost?
QUESTION
With hindsight, 16
years later, can we say that the Church opened up its windows so that the
statues of the Saints would be knocked off their pedestals? Did the Church make
a change in Catholic practice with regards the Saints?
The answer is “No.”
They were not even on the agenda. Other things were far more important. Christ
is more important than St. Patrick or St. Joseph. We all know this. We all knew
this. But amongst ourselves, we Catholics admit that many of our brothers and
sisters had given up the practice of the faith -- appearing in church for
weddings, funerals and to take pictures of kids at baptisms, first communions
and confirmations. We all know the jokes about Palm Sunday, Christmas and
Easter Catholics. And we knew that some Catholics dropped Christ, but hung onto
some Saint (doing this of course not in word, but in practice). Superstition
was a reality.
The light of faith
can go out. The fire can die. Ashes (Ash Wednesday) can become more important
than the fire -- the burning Fire of the Spirit or the Bread of Life.
Vatican II helped
spark a long list of priorities for Catholics: a greater knowledge of Christ,
Bible reading, an improved liturgy, a new attitude toward the world, the call
to the laity to holiness and to use their powers and gifts to create a better
world, a new attitude toward other Christians and non-Christians, renewal of
the clergy and religious, etc. The Saints did not make the list!
Moreover this
ecumenical council had the added feature of trying to reach out to our
separated Christian brothers and sisters and some of them did not have our
tradition of Saints. Catholics look at Saints as 1) heroes to be imitated, and
2) people we can pray to for help. It was this second point that has often been
protested. For example, a group on the 13th century called The Waldenses
objected to the idea of praying to the Saints. And in the 16th century Luther,
Zwingli, and Calvin also spoke out against this invoking the Saints for help.
So instead of
stressing what we disagree about, we stressed what we can agree upon --
especially our faith in Jesus Christ. Moreover, since the Bible is common to
all of us Christians, the Catholic Church in the past 16 years has made an
effort to get its members to become more familiar with the Scriptures. In its
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation it repeats St. Jerome's warning,
“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
As Andrew Greeley
put it, the Church came up with a “New Agenda.”
PREDICTION
In the next 10
years the Church will place on its practical agenda a return to an emphasis on
the Saints.
The reasons are
obvious. We need heroes. We look up to people. We are interested in people more
than we are interested in ideas. “Don't talk about love, show me!” The Catholic
Church has known this all through its history. For a while, however, we
lessened our stress on the Saints, and that includes Mary, to put greater
stress on Christ. Some removed statues in hopes that people would focus better
on the scripture readings and what was happening at the altar. The eye can only
see so much. “Chase two wolves and you won't catch either,” as the Russian
proverb goes. Our Church proclaims Christ (Cf. 1 John 1:1-3; Romans 1:1-4.)
Some had turned
from Christ to Mary or a Saint because they pictured Christ as a severe judge
or inhuman. Some in practice denied the humanity of Jesus. The research, the
books, the work in the field of Christology in this century has been enormous
and we won't be receiving its full benefits in the area of popular sermons,
literature, and even works of art, till well into the 21st century. But we're
all well aware, hopefully, that Christianity is about Christ.
And now that we have dramatically re-stressed Christ,
especially in his humanity, we will be hearing more about the Saints. They
don't take away from Christ. They are ikons of Christ -- as all of us should
be. They “endorse” Christ. They endorse the values and teachings of Christ by
showing how his followers live the gospel message.
Long before TV
commercials showing famous stars and athletes walking into a tavern to endorse
a certain brand of beer, I've heard in sermons many times the story of St.
Clement Hofbauer and the day he walked into a tavern. It was in Warsaw and he
was German. He went in and begged money for his orphans. The crowd made fun of
him because he was a foreigner. In fact they accused him of being a German spy.
A cobbler named Wilszek jumped up and said, “You want something for your
orphans, do you? Here I'll give you an alms.” He took a big sip of beer and
then spat it into the priest's face. For a moment Hofbauer flushed in anger.
But he caught himself and wiping the beer from his face said, “That was for me.
Now do you have something for my boys.” It worked. What a tremendous TV
commercial it would make. It was a dramatic way of endorsing Christ's words
about forgiveness which he uttered at the Sermon on the Mount and which he
practiced on Mount Calvary.
So if famous people
can endorse beer and panty hose, why not have famous people endorsing
forgiveness, care for the poor, and turning the other cheek? This has been the
Church's tradition -- to show love in action -- to picture it -- to tell about
the Saints.
And it's the same
with statues or pictures of Mary and the Saints. We walk into shopping centers
and see al kinds of stores selling posters of Bo Derek, Loni Anderson, Robert
Redford, W.C. Fields, etc. And people buy these pictures because they project
onto some value.
People are
interested in people. We buy novels and the National Enquirer, watch the
“soaps,” Dallas, and Mash. We gossip over the phone and over coffee. We talk
inside our heads constantly about what? Most of the time it's not about the
weather and sports. No, we spend our energies and money reading, talking,
listening, admiring, envying, and thinking about other people. We love people.
We hate people. We're jealous of people. We want to be like other people. It's
people then, and stories about people, that take up much of our lives.
CHRISTIANITY
And that's what
Christianity is about -- a person and persons. It's not so much about words --
especially rules and regulations -- or teachings, abstractions, and dogmatics.
They are important (as we saw dramatically in the stories about the
personalities who were on stage at Vatican II). Words like faith, hope and
charity need to become flesh. “Don't talk about love, show me” It is beautiful
to read that God is love, but it's far more beautiful to see Jesus visiting,
touching, healing, caring, feeding and reaching out to people, especially to
children. His story showed that God knows about us and our story in particular.
And that's what
Vatican II tells us about becoming a saint (without worrying whether it's a big
or a small “s”). All are called to be Jesus in our geography. All are called to
holiness. A saint then is Christ, -- the Church, -- God, -- right here, right
now. A saint is love present in the world to other people. I heard a sermon
once where Chesterton was quoted as saying, “Men are the million masks of God.”
Behind our mis, our persona, should be God's love, God. And those who do that,
they are the saints, the heroes.
HEROES
We are living in an
age of the expose -- the taking off of masks. Our heroes are often caught in
the wrong bedroom or with their hand in the wrong cookie jar. Behind the mask
something was missing. And so we look back with nostalgia to the good old days
when we had heroes -- people we could look up to without any fear of being
disappointed. Willie Nelson sings, “All my heroes have been cowboys and
clowns.” W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Tom Mix, The Lone
Ranger, have all left the scene. John Wayne is dead. Send in the Saints.
QUESTIONNAIRE
In reality we still
have heroes -- people we admire and look up to. And becoming aware of who our
heroes are will help us become aware of who we are. They are Rorschach Blots.
Show me your heroes and I'll tell you who you are.
Who are the 5
people you admire the most: 1) _________,
2) __________, 3) __________,4) __________,5) __________? Who are the 5
most looked up to people in our world today:
1) _________, 2) __________, 3)
__________,4) __________,5) __________? Were you surprised at the way and at
the number of people who reacted to the death of Elvis Presley or to the murder
of John Lennon? Reflect for a moment about the person you admire and look up to
the most. What three qualities do you admire in that person the most: 1) _________, 2) __________, 3) _________ ? Rate yourself
on a scare of 1 to 10 (the highest) on how strong each of these qualities are
in you. Have any of your heroes ever disappointed you? Is there someone in your
family that you look up to? Do you put yourself down as a result?
What about the
Saints in your life? Do you agree with my comments about Vatican II and the
Saints? In the past 16 years did they all but disappear from your life? Have
you gone totally secular when it comes to heroes? Who are/were your 5 favorite
Saints: 1) _________, 2) __________, 3) __________,4)
__________,5) __________? Put a quality down for each of the Saints that
impress you. What does that say about you? Rate yourself once again on a scale
of 1 to 10 regarding those qualities.
LIVES OF THE SAINTS
One of the great
needs in the library of spiritual reading is first rate lives of the Saints.
Way before Vatican II we knew this. We moderns are more literate and want more
exact research when it comes to biographies and psycho-historical lives of the
Saints. Many of the pious and inspirational lives of the past are just that --
literature of the past. The new books will have to have the quality of Ida
Friederike Gorres' classic book on St. Therese of Lisieux: The Hidden Face.
Or they will have to be like Erik Erikson's book on Young Man Luther or his
book about Gandhi, viz, Gandhi's Truth. Or they will have to be like the books
that have come out about Dag Hammarskjold, e.g., Sven Stolpe's book, Dag
Hammarskjold: A Spiritual Portrait or Gustav Aulen's, Dag Hammarskjold's
White Book: The Meaning of Markings.
Because of
historical events like the Kennedy assassination, the Kent State killings,
Watergate, etc., we are used to exact investigative reporting or the desire for
it. The new lives of the Saints of the future will have to have the quality of
good secular biographies or first rate historical novels. The time and work put
in by Monica Furlong in her recent book on Merton: A Biography point out how
difficult a task it is. The older books were often easier to put together being
a different kind of literature.
Hopefully, authors
who make a living writing biographies, will move into this field and tell us
more about the Saints. The Saints are unique, profound, strange, amazing,
obsessive, real people. They can make excellent reading. And we hope that their
sins and weaknesses will not be cut out. Sin sells. Augustine because of his
sins and his struggle with a conversion impresses us far more than the story of
some Saint being fed by a raven.
BECOMING A SAINT
This leads us to
the end of Part I of this consideration of the Saints. Vatican II and the
Scriptures call out God's word to each of us to become a Saint. And the key
word is “become”. It's a process, a journey, a pilgrimage, a passage, a step by
step transformation, as all those other recent spiritual and secular words for
growth bring out.
Part II of
this issue of YOU will bring out 3 main ingredients for becoming a Saint. What
3 ingredients do you think stand out in the lives of the Saints: 1)
___________, 2) ___________, 3) ___________?
PART II
BECOMING A SAINT
I think that the
basic ingredients for becoming a Saint are three: 1) Becoming a person who
prays, 2) doing the will of God, and 3) serving the people of God. And
psychologically they develop in that order.
1) PRAYER
A Saint is a person
who prays.
In a recent article
on Saints in U.S. Catholic, James Breig gives examples of how varied in
personality the Saints have been -- noting some very odd and “mentally sick”
characters. Father Thomas Legere in his column Crossfire recently made the
point that many of the Saints would not be considered “well adjusted”
personalities. To many of us moderns, being well adjusted and having a good
self-image are most important values. They are. To the Saints, however, God
comes first.
And putting God
first comes from prayer. God is a Saint's first concern -- their top value. In
the past 10 years there has probably been more literature -- words --
communication -- books -- tapes -- about prayer than at any time in our
Church's history.
But that is not
enough. More than the words about prayer is the need to pray and to make a
choice about becoming a person who prays regularly. And that is what the Saints
and all this literature and talk about prayer is saying. We need to take time
out to pray. Sometimes the multitude of words about prayer can make us immune
and “ho hum” about actually praying. We're smart. We know that at “The Other
Side of Silence,” the other side of the light (or darkness) is God and God is
the one we are scared of. We're scared of what He might ask us to give up.
We're scared of what He might asks us to give. And so we avoid God by reading
about Him or by saying a lot of words. The words, the books, the Bible, the
mantras, the praise, the candles, the atmosphere, the music, all can be
helpful, but the moment of Truth comes when we “shut up” and listen to God.
Silence. We need silence in the presence (or felt absence) of God.
And when we are
silent before God, the first experience we often have is a recognition of our
own sinfulness. It's the basic test of prayer and our basic reaction is either
to run away or to ask God to run away from us. We're like Peter -- all mouth
(especially in our prayers) -- and suddenly we realized the transcendence of
Christ and we fall down saying, “Leave me, Lord. I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8).
If we can't understand why the Saints -- people we consider 1000 times better
than ourselves -- are always seeing their sinfulness, then perhaps we never
have gotten that close to God in prayer.
2) THE WILL OF GOD
After that initial
shock of our sinfulness God will give us a mission. Peter was called to be more
than a fisher of fish. “With that they brought their boats to land, left
everything, and became his followers” (Luke 5:11).
It always happens.
That's how God works. He has a will of His own. We know that. We know that --
but when we experience that -- we fall to our knees in awe and fear and a host
of other emotions. Prayer for many is making requests of God. From the Saints
we learn that prayer is usually God making requests of us. Prayer is more God
asking us for help than we asking God for help.
“The will of God.”
I used to hate that phrase. It always sounded so cold -- so hard to take --
sort of as if the words were made of razor blades. It always seemed to appear
along with news about suffering, cancer, or death. Or it was used in situations
where people asked me to do things I felt were their will and not God's.
Leo Dunn, a priest
and good friend, with whom I have been giving retreats with for the past 4
years, mentioned once in a sermon something that destroyed my narrow
understanding of the phrase, “The will of God.” Talking about Jesus and what
motivated him, he mentioned the Datsun commercial: “We are driven!”
All of us are
driven people.
The think that
drove Jesus was the will of the Father. And the Father is driven! Jesus spent a
lot of time alone in prayer and he came out of that inner room -- that desert
-- a driven person. “Doing the will of him who sent me and bringing his work to
completion is my food” (John 4: 34).
In prayer, after
being hit with the feeling of sinfulness, after the feeling of running away is
felt, then suddenly we realize that God is a “person” and persons have a will
of their own. Persons have dreams. Persons have hopes, visions, and an agenda.
Martin Luther King Jr. screamed out in Washington D.C., “I have a dream.” He
was dreaming the dream of Isaiah. He was dreaming the dream of God for us.
Don't I? Billy Joel
sings, “Everybody has a dream.” I have a dream of my own -- plans, hopes, ideas
about what I want to do today, tomorrow, next week, this Lent, this year. I
have priorities. They drive me. I vote with my feet. I vote with the way I
spend my time. I spend my time doing what I want to do, what I like to do. And
when I have to do things I don't like to do, I do them because of my own needs
(to make others happy, to earn a living, to gain prestige, etc.). And often I
wish and imagine I am elsewhere “doing my own thing.”
There it was, -- a
way to understand the meaning of the phrase, “The will of a person.” There it
is, a way of understanding the great wrestling match that takes place in prayer.
Christ wrestled with his will and the Father's will (The Way) all through his
life -- in the temple, in the desert, in the mountains, in Jerusalem, in the
garden, on the cross. The Saints did likewise.
“The will of God.”
The phrase sill sounds cold and sharp like a sword. But when I pray I won't
hear the phrase, “The will of God”, specifically. No, I'll hear something else
-- other words.
3) SERVICE
When I pray, I'll
hear the names of people. I'll become more aware of those around me --
especially the poor and the suffering. Prayer then is never an ego trip.
A short time before
his death, Abraham Joshua Heschel, a great modern rabbi and “descendent of the
prophets”, made a remarkable autobiographical confession on The Eternal Light
TV program. Before he began working on his profound book, The Prophets, he said
he loved to spend his time thinking, meditating, reading, and being by himself
in his study. But when he began to read the prophets he found out that God
wanted him elsewhere -- in the streets, out there doing something about
prejudice, war, peace, housing, jobs. These are the cries of the prophets. God
takes life very seriously. God takes how we treat one another very seriously.
We learn this from reading the prophets.
We learn this from listening
to the prophet, Jesus. When Jesus came out of the carpenter shop, and then out
of the desert after his long prayer, he came back to Nazareth. He became a
driven man. Luke tells us how he went to his own neighborhood synagogue, stood
up, unrolled the book of the prophet Isaiah and found the passage where it was
written,
“The
spirit of the Lord is upon me;
therefore
he has anointed me.
He has
sent me to bring glad tidings
to
the poor, to proclaim
liberty
to captives,
Recovery
of sight to the blind
and
release to prisoners,
To
announce a year of favor
from
the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19)
A phrase like “the
will of God” might not get us out of our study -- or ourselves -- but those
words of Isaiah, which announce a profound liberation theology, could drive a
person to give one's life for others.
And if we read the
lives of the Saints, we'll see just that -- people deeply concerned about the
poor -- people deeply driven by a dream -- people driven by love -- people who
have come to serve and not to be served. (Cf. Luke 22: 25-27)
Jesus washed feet.
Francis kissed the leper. Jesus fed the hungry. Frances Cabrini took care of
orphans in Cogogno, Italy and New York City. Jesus reached out to children.
Benedict Joseph Labre, the beggar Saint, gave alms he received to those he felt
were more needy. Jesus healed the possessed boy. Vincent de Paul freed slaves.
Service. Isn't that
what the Saints did? Isn't that what we all want -- from the person in the
restaurant wondering where the waitress is to the uncomfortable and sometimes
impatient patient in the hospital bed wondering where the nurse is. We all
complain about our public servants: politicians, priests, teachers, doctors,
people who repair cars and appliances, etc. We go to the public restroom hoping
it will be clean. We want service. We like good service.
God's will, dream,
plan, way for the world is a Kingdom, a place, where all will be servants. If
you can buy that then you're saying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done ....”
CONCLUSION
Prayer then leads
to service which is the will of God.
In a talk at the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, historian William Irwin Thompson, said that
people in the 1960's, who were part of the Encounter Group scene, etc., were
told to get in touch with their dark side. And when they told a group, “I have
dreams of raping women and killing people,” the others would say, “Now you're
really getting in touch with your basic human nature.” But if you said, “I have
dreams about being a Saint,” the others would say, “You got a hang up. Why are
you always holding onto this sense of perfection? Let it all hang out. Get in
touch with your shadow.”
