Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
It's a kind of applause
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
November, 2003"I hear she wasn't a very nice person." Similar words greeted me with some regularity when I pointed out what a good thing it was that the Roman Catholic Church had put Mother Teresa on the track for the status of saint.
I have no personal knowledge of Mother Teresa, but my guess is that someone who gave her life to advocacy for the poor and got her hands dirty caring for the poorest might not be likable in the conventional sense, any more than Jesus was nice.
That is something in our culture that is willing to idolize recording stars and sports heroes but rebels against the idea that there are heroes of virtue. We tend to express contempt when someone's virtue makes us fear that they think they are better than we are. How many young spiritual heroes have been squashed by well-meaning folks telling them not to be better than other people?
Mother Teresa practiced her game and developed her art, becoming a star in compassion and advocacy. It takes nothing away from us to recognize her focus and accomplishment. It takes nothing away from us to recognize her discipline and energy. It takes nothing away from us to contemplate the ways in which, in fact, she is better than we are. Or does it?
November brings Christians of my ilk the question of sainthood, of heroism and holiness of life. None of the saints were perfect - the New Testament does not attempt to disguise this about Peter and Paul, and twice Jesus had to rebuke his mother.
Imperfect as they were, the saints revealed enough grace and virtue to be called "saints," a word meaning holy, that is, devoted to God. In each there was a flame that burned brightly for God and humanity.
Devoted to God: that is the major inconvenience presented by holy people, whether they are focused on the poor of the earth or transported in mystical contemplation. They are the people around us who are not in life for themselves, who have a cause from which they do not profit and from which they are not looking to retire in comfort. Builders of great institutions and communities or servants of the lowest, they knew why they were alive.
The heart of the problem is that holy people remind us how often our own lives lack a sense of mission or direction, how often we go through the day with no thought given to improving the planet or deepening our vision. Some of us stay busy in order to avoid deepening our vision.
When we think too long about holy people, we risk losing comfort with spiritual laziness. We Protestants say we know we are saved by God's grace. We are tempted to let it go at that, content with trying to stay out of trouble and occasionally helping a good cause. Contemplating the saints challenges us not to receive the grace of God in vain, and invites us to let God really make something of us.
Those of us who lift weights know that humans are all given the same number of muscles as a gift. What we do to develop them and keep them healthy is a matter of personal commitment, discipline, and focus. Gifts are to be used.
Unlike rock stars and sports heroes, each saint holds a record he or she hopes will be broken, and soon. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews uses the image of the sports stadium, imagining the assembly of saints cheering us on, praying for us, encouraging us.
In movie I like, Robin Williams plays a defrocked psychiatrist who tells a man struggling with smoking to find out whether he is a smoker or not, and then simply to be what he is.
To think of the saints, each with their particular virtues, is to look deep inside for our own passion or focus, and to be what we are with a certain ruthlessness.
There will be people who will react to that much focus by thinking we are not very nice: but that, after all, is a kind of applause.Return to the index of Bishop Paul's columns for the secular press
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