“Saints are wild. Saints risk everything on God. Saints are lovers: in love with God (and therefore with God‘s children), on fire with God‘s fire. That fire is the Holy Spirit.
Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity. A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, p. 89
The meaning of life is to be a saint. ‘There is only one tragedy, in the end: not to have been a saint‘ (Léon Bloy). If we are not saints when we die, God will not rest until we are; that is why most of us will probably need purgatory before heaven. All heaven‘s citizens are saints.
Sainthood is the culmination of God‘s work in us, the final end of our lives. And this end – sanctification, saint-making – is especially the work of the Holy Spirit. (…) The essence of sanctity is intimacy with God, ‘knowing God‘.“
Biographies: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Throughout the years, I have, from time to time, enjoyed reading people‘s biographies. I still remember roaming through Jean-Paul Sartre’s uncharitable book about Charles Baudelaire, as well as Baudelaire‘s sensitive and benevolent remarks on Thomas de Quincey. That must have been in the winter of 2013, and it is not that easy to track down how I arrived at Sartre about Baudelaire. As far as I can recall, I read a whole encyclopedia about the history of drugs, and then Baudelaire‘s writings on hashish (Artificial paradises) and on de Quincey, who in turn had written about his experiences with opium (Confessions of an English opium-eater)…
As my next job was supposed to start only a few weeks down the road, I had plenty of time for reading books, seemingly needed some sort of topic to occupy myself with, and already back then I must have been interested in medicine, a realm bordering on the one of drugs. Those were the days before my return to Christ, and having lived through several years of student life in a bigger city, that had thoroughly strained my relationship with God, I was no stranger to the abuse of drugs myself, which might explain why, during the relative boredom of a phase of unemployment, I started inquiring into their cultural history. Actually those were the days, when my soul was so lost in darkness, that I would have probably tried out almost every other drug when offered, out of absurd curiosity like Eve, looking desperately for an artificial, self-made paradise…
Years later, I read a thick biography, well written by the German philosopher Safranski, about my favorite Romantic artist E.T.A. Hoffmann and learned a lot about the artist’s life, and alongside of it about the human psyche, about different places that were part of Hoffmann‘s nomadic journey through life, and about the times of Napoleons‘ hold on all of Europe. Biographies are an attractive blend of novelistic literature and history book – and they are not only the portray of someone who has lived and died before us, but often also sociological and psychological case studies.
The latter, Jean-Paul Sartre understood, which is why he tried to make Baudelaire‘s life story into nothing but a case study to exemplify his own atheistic philosophy of man‘s absolute freedom, even calling Baudelaire‘s life an “experiment“… yes, an experiment… Are not birth, and life, and death real, as real as a baby‘s cry, as real as blood, sweat, and tears, as real as a corpse.. and is not any philosophy proclaiming man‘s “freedom“ but denying his personhood, proclaiming man‘s power but denying his dignity, the height of all unreality…
Back then, when I read Sartre‘s book, I felt that it did a great injustice to the complicated man Baudelaire many decades after his death: everything written therein about the dead artist was slandering his reputation. This book on Baudelaire was nothing other than a libel. At least the living have laws and courts of justice on their side, whenever they are reviled. They can vindicate themselves. The deceased cannot, and therefore it feels to be even more impious to slander them than to slander the living.
This is my judgment about the words Sartre wrote and about his whole philosophy, and not my judgment about the man himself, whom none of us knows. Yet one thing is obvious, when reading Sartre‘s remarks on Baudelaire: this man Sartre did put words on pages, which judge the man Baudelaire – not his art, but who he was.
Most biographies though are not of the sort to solely expose a man‘s vices. In most cases they also honor someone‘s virtues and good qualities, at least if the author of the biography is still an empathetic human being himself, and not the captive of a philosophy that is hovering above and beyond all us fleshly creatures taken from the dusty ground and returning to it. If any one of us had known Jean-Paul Sartre, we could seek to bring to light the bright side of this man, who always wore dark black, right here and now. I am sure, there must be a biography about him somewhere out there that has already accomplished this task masterfully.
It is a sin to judge another man, as everyone‘s heart is bare and naked only before God and as He alone is Judge of the living and the dead, and we are called to bless everyone. But it is necessary unto the health of our souls to judge words, thoughts and philosophies with the dividing sword of the Word of Life, of the good instructions we are taught by the Church. We need to do what Saint Paul asked us to do:
“(…) destroying counsels, and every height that exhalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ“
2 Corinthians 10: 4-5
When we read about the life of the saints instead of the life of artists, when we turn to their biographies, we encounter the collection of the unique poems of the greatest Artist. And we encounter the stories of men and women in whose life virtues greatly won over vices – men and women who were good trees, planted by the river of life, bearing good fruit, who were grains of salt in the midst of tastelessness, lights in the midst of gloom, and pleasant roses and lillies in the midst of vileness. We may learn from them how they wrestled with counsels contrary to the knowledge of God – and how they were liberated and protected from their grasp. To encounter all of this just read The Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo, or the autobiography of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and all those many other biographical accounts of the great saints in the long line of our spiritual ancestors.
Community of the saints
While most people would probably agree, that we should not slander the dead, not everyone thinks that it is a good thing to honor them. When it comes to the memory of the saints, and of course especially to their invocation, there are among the ranks of Christianity those Protestants who think, that it is either unnecessary or worse: that it is even harmful to honor and love the saints and to invoke them in prayer.
But charity never only avoids something that is not good, but always seeks to actively do something that is good.
The bond of charity between the living and the dead has two threads: For all the deceased, who died in God‘s grace, but whose souls are in need of purification before they can behold God (“Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God“ (Matthew 5: 8)), for the “Suffering Church“ in purgatory, the “Church Militant“ on earth, shall offer prayers and sacrifices. All souls, that already enjoy the beatific vision, the whole assembly of the “Church Triumphant“ in the heavenly courts, we are to esteem and honor like successful athletes, who have finished their race well, aspiring to join them there beyond the finish line. All saints in heaven pray for us that we may indeed meet them there. The Church is one Body, one Family – currently in three places: on earth, in purgatory, in heaven. But all members of the Body, of the Family are alive to God and are enjoined to one another by an everlasting bond, which death cannot sever.
So why do we honor, why do we venerate the saints? Why do we love them, and why do we invoke them in prayer?
Honor to whom honor is due. Let us imagine an earthly kingdom that is not dysfunctional, but well ordered. Would not in this kingdom everyone be esteemed, respected, and honored according to their labours to enhance the welfare of the whole kingdom? All would, on account of being free citizens of this kingdom, enjoy a guaranteed citizenship as members of this nation, and possess a certain basic rank of honor or even of nobility, insofar as the King‘s countryman, who is a peasant, shares in the King‘s and his best men’s nobility just as the King shares in the peasant’s flesh – for they are brothers. But some brothers and sisters in this kingdom would receive special badges of honor from the King on account of their merits. If this earthly kingdom was truly well ordered and not dysfunctional at all, then all its citizens would surely rejoice whenever one of them is highly esteemed and there would be no envy among the brothers and sisters of a nation. All equally enjoy the common treasuries of the kingdom, and all agree that those men and women who have helped increase the assets of the kingdom, or who have beautifully represented the nation during their various journeys among all other nations, are to be highly respected by all. The Church is not an earthly kingdom, but she is a kingdom. And a perfect one at that.
And she is a perfect family where perfect charity rules. In a family, one family member‘s weeping makes everyone weep, and one member‘s joy makes everyone rejoice. Even earthly family loyalty spans over distant lands and continents and encompasses both good and troublesome days. In a perfect family, there is perfect solidarity. That is why the Church on earth suffers with the souls suffering in purgatory and rejoices and celebrates with the saints in heaven. Every day, every Holy Mass is offered up for the holy souls in purgatory, and the liturgical calendar knows of almost no day throughout the year, when yet another saintly man or woman is not remembered and acclaimed. There is no coronation without battle, but once the battle is fought and won, coronation follows.
Because they merited great graces for the whole Church, for the whole Kingdom, for the whole Family, through their perfected love of God and neighbor, the saints are revered and venerated. Everything they merited, they merited through and in Christ, because in Him is every blessing and from Him, and from the Father, proceeds the Holy Spirit and flow all seven sacraments given for our sanctification. Christ makes saints, saints of all kinds, like a master artist crafts various beautiful pieces of art.
Among the saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the first and greatest saint, the perfect piece of art preserved from every stain of sin. She is the immaculate Mother of Christ “full of grace“, the Queen of heaven, and the Mother of the Church and of all saints. Next in rank are Christ‘s holy apostles and the holy martyrs. But as Peter Kreeft – himself by the way a convert to Catholicism from Protestantism who had to cross the treshold from ignoring the saints to venerating them – reminds us through his words quoted in the beginning: Everyone, who is in God‘s presence in His courts, is a saint – sanctity is the wedding dress for the heavenly banquet.
And we owe all saints everything. They handed down Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, they handed down the deposit of faith to us. They were the pipelines through which God‘s grace could flow from one generation to the next. Without all the saints – that is: without every single believer throughout the centuries who already enjoys the beatific vision or will one day after a time of purification – we would still be Gentiles worshipping idols, in darkness and in vain.
Ah, idols… the Protestants from the beginning were iconoclasts, ravaging churches and destroying the statues, icons, and side altars in honor of the saints. To them the veneration and invocation of the saints was idolatry. They thought they are doing a great service to God by getting rid of them. But what is to the delight of an artist? Praising his works of art, finding beauty and the artist‘s spirit in them, or despising them, arguing that they distract from the artist, that they stand in the way of getting to know him?
“We revere all saints with dulia (human reverence and devotion) and Mary with hyperdulia (the greatest human reverence and devotion), but worship and adoration (latria) are given to God alone. There is only a difference in degree between Mary and us but a difference in kind between Mary and Christ. Therefore there is also a difference in degree between the reverence paid to Mary (hyperdulia, supreme human respect) and the reverence paid to other saints (dulia), but there is a difference in kind between our reverence given to Mary and our worship (latria) of Christ. The same is true of their work: her intercession, the saints‘ intercession, and the intercession of our friends who pray for us on earth are different only in degree; but there is a difference in kind between Christ‘s unique intercession and any human‘s. Ours – and Mary‘s – is totally dependent on him. (…) Devotion to idols does not foster adoration of God, but devotion to his saints does. For a saint is like a stained-glass window that makes us more aware and appreciative of the divine light. And the holier the saint, the better the window, the more our devotion to that saint fosters our adoration of God. Thus devotion to Mary ‘greatly fosters this adoration‘ (CCC 971).“
Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity. A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, p. 89
As the saying goes, everyone loves a lover. The saints are full of perfected love – of God and of us. They are fierce lovers. Therefore we do not only remember and honor them, but we also love them back. We love them like one loves a brother, a sister – and a highly lovable brother or sister, who loves us, too, at that. The bond binding all bodies and souls of the Church together forever is the bond of charity.
Out of love, not out of duty we revere them. Out of love we keep them in our memory with adorned statues and icons, like one would keep the photograph of a beloved family member, who dwells in a foreign land, who has already traveled back home to Jerusalem ahead of us, the ones who are still struggling in exile, and we keep the photograph in a beautiful frame. Out of love we celebrate their memorials. And because we love and trust them, knowing that they love and intercede for us, we invoke them in our prayers, we ask them to pray for us in all our general and in some of our specific needs. We ask the King‘s best men and women and above all the Queen Mother, we ask them who live perpetually inside His courts and behold His glory, to bring our concerns and requests to the King, and we trust that the King‘s best knights and soldiers will assist us and protect us upon the battleground of our earthly lives. The saints are our heavenly friends. If all goes well with us – thanks to Christ our Savior and to their intercession and help – , we will one day sit at one and the same banquet of glory with them – so we should start getting to know these our friends now.
All saints, pray for us – that our relationship with the Lord our God may never be severed beyond repair and that we may always find our way back to the Father of mercy whenever we weak children have fallen, failed, or fainted, that your example may always lift us up and encourage us, that remembering your perfected faith, hope, and charity will always spur us on, that through the course of our lives virtues may win over vices and faith may stay alive in us as “the victory that has overcome this world“ (1 John 5: 4), and that one day we may die in God‘s grace, renouncing all our sins and entrusting our soul to Him alone.
“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance, to seek Him the greatest adventure, to find Him the greatest human achievement.“
Saint Augustine of Hippo
“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.“
