Saints As They Really Are: Voices of Holiness in Our Time

Chapter One: Bringing Saints down from the Walls and Pedestals

15 c ha pter one Bringing Saints down from the Walls and Pedestals Dorothy’s Lament It was Dorothy Day who lamented that we seldom know holy women and men in their authentic humanity, in the actual context of their lives as women and men, but rather according to their miracles, the extraordinary feats they performed, or their “heroic virtue.” The passage quoted at the start of the introduction is but one instance of her point of view. In her recently published diaries as well as in her columns in The Catholic Worker paper, there are many similar passages recognizing the universal call to holiness and the need to see the human sides of holy people.1 Robert Ellsberg has also edited her letters and the same holds true for them.2 Dorothy was on to something. It came out of her faith, out of her daily praying the liturgy of the hours and participation in the Eucharist , not to mention her reading, which was prodigious! Official recognition of people as saints often requires the demonstration of out-of-the-ordinary achievements, both during their lives and after death, upon their invocation by the faithful. Miracles during the saints’ lives abound in their “official” biographies—walking on water, bilocation, floating in the air, astounding healings of the sick, existing sometimes on nothing but holy communion. 16 å S a i n t s a s T h e y R e a l l y A r e Dorothy Day, of course, knew better. Her reading told her that great saints suffered doubt, depression, and all kinds of eccentricities. They could be nasty, impatient, forgetful, and clueless when it came to the people around them. Saints could be arrogant in self-confidence and learning or illiterate and out of touch with their worlds. They could also be quite normal, ordinary, and flawed. She saw this in great figures from the past such as Augustine and Francis of Assisi but also in a modern saint like Thérèse of Lisieux. Dorothy knew the singularity of sanctity in her brilliant but eccentric collaborator Peter Maurin . She also recognized the spirit of holiness in nonbelievers from her past.3 Even when she tangled and strongly disagreed she saw the flame of the Spirit in her co-workers and correspondents.4 Dorothy’s own life was a weave of contradictions and affirmations . She never let go of the radical vision of social justice that was ignited in her youth as a political journalist. She criticized the indifference , the political conservatism and clericalism of her Catholic Church. Having had an abortion, several affairs, and a child who she raised by herself as a single parent, she found the sexual openness and rebelliousness of the young people who flocked to the Catholic Worker houses in the 1960s and 70s repulsive. She seemed at times to cling to her faith and devotional practices almost irrationally. And yet as one hears her taped interviews and reads her columns , diaries, and letters, there were still other sides to this fascinating , amazing woman. Her diaries confirm what is also there in several filmed interviews—a rich, deep, sometimes contradictory personality. The closer one gets to Dorothy the better one comes to know a generous soul, a stunningly passionate woman emerging. What is telling is that many conservative Catholics find her objectionable, think her official cause for canonization misguided and inappropriate.5 But it is precisely the clash of characteristics, the flash of radicalism and traditional piety that reveals Day’s singular character. Her complex personality and rich life, focused however on love for God and for the neighbor, make her very much a saint for our times. The same I think is true of a number of others, including Thomas Merton. In Merton’s case, twenty-five years after his death in 1968, when his literary estate opened his unpublished writings for study and publication, an intricate, surely not typical image of Merton emerged. Audiotapes of his classes at Gethsemani monastery reveal a profound grasp of the B r i n g i n g S a i n t s d o w n f r o m t h e Wa l l s a n d P e d e s t a l s å 17 sources of not just monastic life but the wider Christian tradition— the scriptures, the entwining of prayer and contemplation...