SAINTS I ADORE, ESP. FLAWED ONES

There are so many saints in the Catholic arsenal that it is hard to tease out those who are a shining light for me--

people I can learn from and wish to follow--and those who are so human that they bless and remind me of my own deeply flawed humanity.

 I. Thomas Merton is not a saint yet and may never become one due to his pacifism and later embrace of Buddhism. He once wrote, "For me to be a saint means to be myself." (The steps for sainthood start with: 1/ Servant of God, having a holy life; 2/ Venerable, having a life of Holy Virtue; Blessed, with 1 miracle verified; Saint, with a second miracle verified.) But for so many of us lurking in Christianity and our rather tattered Catholicism, he is a shining light.

 

1/ First off, he is a masterful writer and poet.

2/ Secondly, he fought for civil rights and peace all of his time in the Gethsemani Monastery. The Abbot forbid him to publish some of his articles urging peace activism for awhile, which was truly foolish.

3/ He was a contemplative, had his own small hermitage build on monastery grounds, and lived there in silence for several years; praying, conversing with God, and writing.

 His famous prayer starts with: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in face please You....Therefore I will trust You always although I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone." (from "Thoughts in Solitude," page 79.)

4/ In his past, before conversion (Read "The Seven Story Mountain" for this), he was somewhat dissolute, a drinker, and fathered a child while at Oxford. This could be preventing his sainthood, just as Dorothy Day's early abortion slowed her path to sainthood. I do not know of any miracles attached to Merton's name, but I bet this will happen.

 So--as someone who probably drank a bit more than she should have in my early years, and who did not know that her body was holy and the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit--I identify with Merton and take hope from his journey. 

II. Dorothy Day.  

 She is finally, finally on the road to sainthood after many years, with the collection of massive documentation in 12 boxes sent off to the Vatican earlier this year. The Vatican will have to examine these papers, think about them, and move slowly as only the Holy See can. She has already been called "Servant of God," so the next step will be Venerable. She already has at least one miracle attributed to her, the curing of brain cancer in a woman converting to Catholicism.

1/ Day apparently had a prodigious capacity for alcohol in her early years and could drink people under the table, although she eschewed that after her conversion to Catholicism.

2/ She had a long affair with Forster, an anarchist and atheist, bearing a child from this union. Since he did not believe in marriage, and after her conversion she insisted on it, they broke off their relationship with much grief and loss on her part.

3/ Day was a social activist of the highest order, starting the Catholic Worker with the French peasant and intellectual, Peter Maurin in the 1930s. You can still get a subscription to the C.W. at 1 cent per copy, just as in the beginning (and it is a wonderful paper). She marched for Civil Rights and for Peace, was jailed many, many times, went on hunger strikes, and always opened her heart and wallet to the poor.

4/ Day had an interesting relationship with the Catholic Church, a bit like my own. She said she did not rely on either priests or bishops to do the Christian thing, but she was a devout Catholic, attending Daily Mass during her life.

Her funeral was simple, as her life had been, with a plain wooden coffin, people from the C.W. and many others, and her grandchildren carrying her coffin. It is fitting that she supported the gravediggers' strike in 1959, going up against Cardinal Spellman.

I identify with her early, rambunctious years, then her conversion to Catholicism in her late 20s. She had a close relationship to God and would pray with intensity, sometimes upbraiding God to do more.

III. St. Teresa of Avila.   From a wealthy family in Seville, Teresa was a rather high-liver in her early years, apparently vivacious, loving music and good food, and having a wide, vibrant circle of friends in the convent she had joined. But then she saw the poor. In fact, I think this is the first criteria for sainthood--seeing the poor and the disadvantaged, wanting to help. She then began her lifetime of reform. 

1/ She started the "Discalced Nuns", women who went  barefoot. The Carmelite Convent resisted her reforms at first, but then became part of them, and she founded a number of other convents dedicated to prayer and the poor.

2/ She knew St. John of the Cross, also in the 16th century, himself a saint, both of them stripping themselves down to their essential souls. St. John of the Cross wrote the inspiring, influential spiritual classic, "The Dark Night of the Soul."

3/ St. Teresa had a great sense of humor. It is said that during a rainstorm she slipped and fell down a muddy embankment. She looked to heaven and said, "If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them!" (From "Aletia".)

 I identify with her love of life, her early love of ease and pleasure, and then her utter commitment to God and wherever She led her. Her book, "The Interior Castle," is a spiritual classic and worth reading. Also, see the Bernini statue of St.Teresa in St. Peter's,

 with a look of ecstasy on her face and a golden arrow piercing her heart. It was said that after she died, they found holes pierced in her heart. She also was said to levitate during prayer, although that would seriously freak me out.

IV. Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  Edith Stein was a brilliant Jewish philosophy student in Germany before World War II. She could have been a philosophy professor at one of the universities, she was so highly regarded. But then--

1/ She had a conversion to Catholicism, based at first on her rational reasons for God's existence. But that deepened over time as she became closer to God with a fierce intensity.

2/ She converted her sister, Rosa, as well, and they both joined a Carmelite Convent in Germany. When it became apparent that Hitler might catch them in his net, they fled to a Dutch convent, but there was no safety there. She and Rosa were captured and sent to Auschwitz. On the train she is reported to have said to her sister, "We are going for our people, Rosa." She always valued her Jewish roots and heritage. 

 

I identify with Edith Stein for the depth of her intelligence, her faith no matter the cost, and her devotion to Mary and to God. She kept a diary which can be read, and her entries are so tender. Another bright light snuffed out by a madman. As a Martyr to the faith, she automatically becomes a saint, and a miracle has been attributed to her in the curing of a 2 year-old girl who overdosed on Tylenol.

I could, of course, put down St. Francis as I love him and try to embody his love of creation. Although I expect I could not kiss a leper as he did after his conversion.

Once, when Thomas Merton was walking in New York City with Robert Lax, Robert asked Thomas what he wanted to be. He replied, (loosely remembered), "Well, a good Catholic I suppose." Robert countered with, "You should want to be a saint! We should all try to be saints1"

So, whatever that means for you, it certainly is a bright light to follow. I do not think I have it in me to be a saint, but I do believe that some of my actions and faith might qualify for occasional "saintliness." I expect that as someone who loves cooking and spends SO much time in the kitchen, I might follow St. Lawrence in his humble, "The Practice of the Presence of God," 

talking about the pots and pans in the kitchen, how he looks out the window at the earth and its marvels, and how he humbly asks to be part of God's heaven.