The Saints Show the Way
What is a successful life? How can I get my bearings in my own life?
In all cultures, stories are told about famous people’s lives to encourage reflection on what is important for a good life. In Sweden, there is currently much interest in Dag Hammarskjold that can be seen in the ever-growing number of new books and articles that discuss his spiritual path and political achievements. Hammarskjöld literature can be said to fulfil a similar function to the one that stories of the Christian saints filled throughout the centuries. We humans seek and find examples of other people – living and dead. Every village and every town tells in speech and writing about their ‘saints’ or anti-saints – about those considered to have led a memorable life and of those whose life is judged as a failure. We interpret our life and life challenges in light of the lives of others. We need such stories to orient ourselves in this world.
Very early in the Christian tradition, there was an interest in relating to the men and women who sacrificed their lives for their faith. Before the Christian faith was accepted in the Roman Empire, martyrdom was interpreted by many Christians as life’s fulfilment in God. Even if the world was thinking just the opposite and denounced those who rebelled against the official faith tradition in the Roman Empire, Christians interpreted Jesus’ death on the cross as a counter-cultural event, likewise the actions of the people who faithfully and devotedly followed him through the death and resurrection. These ‘blood witnesses’ were regarded as God’s closest friends, who, through a perfect life and the resulting closeness to God, were able to convey His blessing to living Christians. Gradually, famous ascetic Christians came to be seen as ‘honour martyrs’ and the crowd of saints grew rapidly in the Christian church. The mixture of different ancient and local conceptions of Christian practices led to the saints in some parts of the church also fulfilling the function of ”patron” – a person with authority and decisiveness. A patron’s tomb was venerated publicly in accordance with specific rules and traditions and their memory was held sacred in expectation of some favours, such as protection against diseases, help for the weak (women and the poor), prosperity for various professional groups and more. Often churches were built on or by such ‘sacred’ burial sites.
Even today, Christian churches are consecrated in memory of one or more saints. In Catholic churches relics are immured in the altar to make a physical contact between the saints and the church: both the building and the congregation are, in this way, in a kind of sacred contact with the church’s patron saint.
The desire for physical contact with a saint is not only a phenomenon from a past piety. The remains of the Blessed Therese of Lisieux (1873-97) have recently been shown in over forty countries and attracted millions of people, such as in the U.S. (2000), and England and Wales (2009). Therese was Carmelite, and became his spiritual life and his writings a successful mentor for countless people today. She was canonised in 1925.
In medieval times, affiliation with a patron meant that one felt like a member of a larger family with specific rights and a clear social status. Such patronage could be interpreted as an ideal counterpart to the worldly power constellations, with their unjust order and ongoing exploitation of the weak in society. Saints’ stories and saint veneration were thus developed in a context of power and need, of social, political, economic and cultural structures and gender structures as well as personal and political expectations and ambitions. Of course, this is not at all surprising, because religion in all its forms and expressions is related to people’s real life experiences and expectations.
Every era chooses its saints. But while the Catholic Church today follows a developed legal process, no such procedures exist within Protestant churches. But this does not mean that the saints have vanished from Protestant life. The Swedish Church’s calendar, likewise any diary from ICA, offers a detailed list of Swedish saints and their feast days. Pictures and sculptures of Mary, the apostles and other well-known Christian saints are to be found in many churches in Sweden. In addition to these public and official saint lists are a number of people who, through their life works, are considered ‘saints’ outside a religious context; Dag Hammarskjöld, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero, Anna Lindh are among those who can inspire our lives today. What are their characteristics? All showed great integrity and fidelity to their convictions regardless of criticism, hatred, intimidation, ridicule, torture and murder.
In a religious context, a saint is expected to have a harmony between the inner attitude and outer deeds. Here one can study how the development of an intense life of faith is present throughout the person’s character. For the Christian saint, this means that a living relationship with Jesus Christ not only leads to an intense prayer life, but also to life in the Christian community, in the service of the world and of creation. Christian saints bear witness to God’s ongoing creation and project of reconciliation. A Christian saint’s life thus points always to God’s project and the large community to which God has called all people. Basically, every human being is called to live a life of this Holy Communion. Sanctification is therefore not only a task of particularly virtuous spiritual and religious people, but also an invitation to all. Jesus’ mother, Mary, represents all people called to faith in God when she, according to Luke, answers the angel who conveys God’s call to her: ”I am a servant of the Lord”. The biblical road to holiness begins by a ”yes” to God’s call. A Christian saint is one who says yes to participating in God’s great project in concrete and, for the most part, ordinary conditions. A holy life is not characterised by the greatness of the circumstances, but of a person’s internal motivation to respond to life’s various challenges in the spirit of love.
In the Catholic Church certain people will be officially canonised. Only a person who is entered in the official list of the saints or the blessed (canon) may be revered in public. The church’s judicial process (canonisation) of course requires that a deceased person is admired and honoured by many people. Then, through that person’s intercession, a miracle must have taken place, which must be proved in a separate process. The pope always has the last word in determining whether a man is blessed and canonised. Of course, discussions often ensue about whether a particular person should be canonised because he/she represents virtues that one – either from church management’s side or from a certain lobby group’s side – wishes to proclaim (recent examples include the Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, and popes Pius IX, Pius XII and John Paul II). But there are also canonisations that actually please most people (such as Mother Teresa and John Henry Newman). There is also a difference between Catholics appointing a saint because of their qualities as a role model, and if the church’s leadership proclaims someone a saint because of what it regards as essential characteristics in a certain era, or whether such a process is conducted jointly by the congregation and church leadership.
At the same time, it is interesting to observe how saints’ status differs depending on the time and place. Many Catholics love Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. One asks that Anthony, through his intercession with God, quickly re-find the forgotten and missing things that one so desperately seeks. Here we see an example of a saint who has been associated with a specific mission. In my home region in southwest Germany, Saint Florian performs the function of the protector against fire. Therefore, he is also the patron saint of all firefighters.
The young Martin Luther happily called on Saint Anna – Mary’s mother and the grandmother of Jesus. However, the reformer later condemned all of the worship of saints as a clear case of Christian abuse. At his baptism, he received the name of Martin Luther, in memory of Martin of Tours, who lived in the 300s and was made famous by the story of the split shell. It is said that the soldier Martin shared his cloak with a poor man at the city gate of the French town of Amiens. Then he saw in a dream that it was Jesus himself who had borne the half-cloak; the story is thus an interpretation of the Bible passage: ”Indeed, whatever you did for one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it for me.” (Luke 25: 40) The celebration of St. Martin with games, songs, stories and processions has helped countless children (and adults) to understand what it means to share with the poor. Martinståg (a celebratory procession) happens each year, even in the University of Glasgow’s church with participants from many cultures and diverse faith traditions.
Saints’ stories have thus the potential to create moral change in society far beyond the original story’s local history. But they can also be used for ideological purposes. I was baptised after Saint Werner. Werner lived in the 1200s but, in the 1960s, he ceased to be a saint when it became known that the blame for his violent death as a 16-year-old vineyard worker was, without any evidence, laid on the Jews in the area, with ??violent pogroms occurring as a result. The ruins of the church that was built in 1289 in Bacharach (in the German Rhine Valley) in Werner’s honour, and to attract the pilgrim crowds to the village, can still be seen. They stand today as a symbol of how a saint’s story led to religiously motivated persecution and genocide. Like all stories, even those of saints need to be examined critically. And, as a result of such a critical examination, I am today without my given name day.
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Saints’ stories are important bearers of culture – for better or worse. They are able to disseminate compelling experiences of people’s moral conduct to new generations, preserving memories of large and small efforts for the good, the human and the true, encouraging civil courage and a responsible religious conduct in the imitation of Christ and the service of the church. Like other stories, saints’ stories can fill an important educational function when they tell of good and fair people who remained true to themselves and their values, ??even in adversity. But the stories all occur in a concrete context and with specific aims and perspectives. No story can be claimed to be wholly innocent. Rather, every story is related to more or less transparent interests and with personal as well as systemic expectations and attitudes.
The theological critique of saint worship by Martin Luther and other reformers does not automatically affect the cultural and religious value of the saint stories. Rather, we need a critical and self-critical attitude towards any attempt to exercise religious power through saint stories. A good criterion for such a review could be: to what extent does a saint’s story promote religious freedom, theological insight, moral responsibility and a call to service in church and society?
The story of Martin, and his spontaneous support for the poor in Gaul during the 300s, can still touch and inspire today, while the story of the Jews’ alleged murder of Saint Werner is part of the Christian history of systematic oppression of Jews and Judaism. But even Martin’s story can be dangerous if it reduces support for the poor to merely spontaneous actions, thus undermining the necessary reflection of how we today can better fight poverty in our world. Stories of saints can thus be morally inspiring, but they can also be very telling about ourselves, about how we actually talk about our own and everyone else’s saints.