Saints

Copyright © Michael W. Clark, 2008. All rights reserved.

Saints in World Religions

The word saint (Latin sanctus = sacred) has several contemporary meanings. It can refer to an unusually kind person who performs good works on a local or grand scale whom most everyone can appreciate. Another meaning refers to the faithful Jews of the Bible and the body of Christian believers.

Saint is also used to denote holy persons in an assortment of world religions. Buddhist arhats, for instance, are monks who've achieved Nirvana. Bodhisattvas are monks who forgo entry into Nirvana to help others reach that threshold. The term may also describe Taoist, Confucian and Hindu sages and gurus (Skt. guru = teacher), African and Amerindian elders and the shamans of Asia, Oceania, North America and the Arctic. Likewise in Islam, the righteous departed are believed to mediate between heaven and Earth.¹ While some writers say that saints among various traditions are at core identical, we cannot really know for certain.²

A number of Protestant Christians say the Catholic saint is a manmade god or goddess and take objection to Catholics worshiping lesser gods and manmade idols. But for Catholics this is a misguided critique. Catholic teaching explicitly states that saints are helpful servants of God, not God. Moreover, Catholic images are venerated for what they represent, not for any intrinsic value. Although non-Catholics and Catholics alike could rightly ask here if the aesthetics of a particular image might prompt a person to engage in a fantasy love affair. Sort of like Narcissus falling in love

This possibility aside, Catholics also point out that Protestant Christians pray for other people yet object to the idea of interceding saints. This Catholic rebuttal makes a lot of sense. After all, if someone on Earth can pray for us, why not someone in heaven? From a Jungian influenced Catholic perspective, one could say that Protestants who get all fired up over images are really projecting their own shortcomings onto others. Such souls haven't mastered certain areas of the personal or ancestral unconscious; thus they feel threatened and overreact to objects and practices which activate their own shadow. That's the Jungian view, at any rate.

Catholic Saints

In Catholicism the canonized saint leads an unusually holy and humble life serving God, is often persecuted, may be martyred and performs at least two miracles as a conduit for God's power. An important dimension of Catholic sainthood is intercession. Intercession is the mediation of God’s divine power and grace to souls in the world, purgatory and hell. Just as a firefighter pumps water from a truck to a fire, a saint helps to direct spiritual graces from God to a "burning" soul. In both instances, the worker knows full-well that the source of his or her saving action lies beyond the self.

Since Catholics believe in a communion of saints, the notion of souls experiencing a kind of spiritual communion isn't necessarily something of the occult (although some spiritually immature Catholics might see it that way). In fact, souls mediating for one another through vocal and especially contemplative prayer³ is essential to Catholic doctrine. All saints, recognized or not, are said to cooperate with the Divine Plan of salvation. Again, a true saint never claims to effect salvation through his or her own power. For Catholics all saving power comes from God.

Sometimes when I meet a soul that is not in a state of grace…the suffering is terrible (p. 304).

She says solitary "heroic souls" are misunderstood and hated by the world but nonetheless receive strength from God as they prayerfully assist others with humility and courage:

They not only carry their own burden, but also know how to take on, and are capable of taking on, the burdens of others (p. 329).

This essentially spiritual connection with other souls often occurs at a distance:

During the night, I was suddenly awakened and knew that some soul was asking me for prayer, and that it was in much need of prayer. Briefly, but with all my soul, I asked the Lord for grace for her (p. 319).

And again:

This evening, I felt in my soul that a certain person had need of my prayer. Immediately I began to pray. Suddenly I realize interiorly and am aware of who the spirit is who is asking this of me; I pray until I feel at peace (p. 326).

I feel vividly and clearly that spirit who is asking me for prayer. I was not aware that souls are so closely united, and often it is my Guardian Angel who tells me (p. 325).

While some may wonder if St. Faustina was just fantasizing, she was concerned with verifying her interior perceptions.

Especially now, while I am in the hospital, I experience an inner communion with the dying who ask me for prayer when their agony begins...since this has been happening more frequently, I have been able to verify it, even to the exact hour (p. 326).⁵

Again, distance seems to have little effect on interior perception:

For the Spirit, space does not exist. It sometimes happens that I know about a death occurring several hundred kilometers away (p. 327).

Saints Among Us

Is it possible that spiritually achieved souls aren't quite as rare as St. Faustina says? Not to minimize the saint's great example of holiness, but her total experience was severely limited to that permitted by her Catholic superiors. St. Faustina died young and didn't encounter too many people beyond the world of her convent. Had she strolled down a busy city street, we can only wonder if she might have encountered other kinds of spiritually aware souls, each with diverse gifts and abilities, like hardy wildflowers instead pampered hothouse flowers—but flowers all the same.

This brings us back to the Catholic view of the saint. Apparently numerous saints throughout history remain unrecognized among their peers. These unsung heroes of the spirit achieve a great degree of spiritual purity without ever setting foot in a convent or monastery. This is important to remember lest we unfairly judge those individuals in contemporary society who don't ardently pursue the so-called 'normal' goals of riches, sexual gratification and material consumption. Of course, a saint may use these things for the greater glory of God. But it's doubtful that he or she would find satisfaction in them alone, divorced from God.

If we can draw any kind of conclusion here, it's that God created diversity, not uniformity. And to insist on a strict formula for sainthood seems unwise, just as it's unlikely that genuine saintliness ever comes from mimicking some lesser teacher or teachers.⁶ As Shakepeare put it in Hamlet, "To thine own self be true."