(Luke 6: 17-26)
3 November, 2019 – Sarah Bachelard
As you know, Neil and I have a practice of pilgrimage, and in particular we love the Way of St James, the Camino. Twice now for me, and three times for Neil, we’ve walked hundreds of kilometres to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain where the bones of St James himself are said to be housed. Across Spain, through Portugal and France, in the company of people from all over the world, we’ve journeyed on this great pilgrimage network whose lines have radiated out across Europe for over a thousand years. Along the way, we’ve encountered a vast host of the saints of the western church – not only St James, but also St Colette, St Vincent de Paul, St Michael and the recently canonized St Teresa of Calcutta, to name a few – their lives, their love for humanity and for God venerated in countless chapels, cathedrals and wayside shrines.
The concept of ‘sainthood’ has a mixed history in the Christian tradition. In Roman Catholic devotional practice, and particularly in mediaeval times, officially recognized saints were venerated enthusiastically, if not extravagantly. By way of statues and paintings, sometimes improbable stories and collections of relics, the saints have been commended to the faithful as edifying examples of courage, obedience, vision and service. There’s much that’s strengthening about this practice of remembering our spiritual forebears and exemplars – including our remembering of St Ninian – although historically it has been vulnerable to a certain ‘over-heating’ and even manipulation by church hierarchies. The process of canonisation has at times (maybe still is?) been highly politicised and there’s also a risk that putting a designated few on this kind of spiritual pedestal ends up disempowering the many.
In reaction to these excesses and dangers, the Reformation tradition tended to emphasise something like the sainthood of all believers. I’ve sat through many an All Saints Day sermon whose theme was that all the faithful, all of us, are saints or at least proto-saints. And there’s something important here too, in the insistence that sanctification, holiness, is the vocation of all Christians – although a danger is that when all are said to be saints, then none are. We’re left with no strong understanding of what sanctity really is, apart from a vague sense that saints are long-suffering (‘she’s a saint to put up with him’), and probably shouldn’t be having too much fun.
Well, what I’d like to suggest today is that the possibility of sanctity, sainthood, is deeply significant for human life. The call to sanctity can orient our whole human journey, if we’ll allow it. And if that’s true, it means it’s worth pondering what it’s really about. Every spiritual tradition recognizes some as saints or elders, those who embody particular wisdom and whose very presence communicates peace and a kind of power. So what’s involved in being, in becoming a saint? And if this is indeed part of the vocation of every Christian, the fulfilment of every life, what might it mean for us?
Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk writing in the 1960s, answered this question in a very striking way. ‘For me to be a saint’, he says, ‘means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity … is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self’.[1] This insight is very deep – but I think it needs quite a bit of unpacking. Particularly in our day, when the exhortation to ‘just be yourself’ is everywhere – from dating websites, to career coaching, to lifestyle advertising. One critic has described this slogan as ‘the [hollow] motto … of late-capitalist Western individualism’.[2] And he goes on to say that it promotes anxiety and self-consciousness about cultivating an identity, especially for the young (after all, what is this elusive ‘self’, I’m supposed to be?). Even worse, it’s a slogan that gets used to justify uncritical indulgence of my every emotion and reaction. If I get unreasonably angry or anxious – well, I can’t help it – that’s just ‘who I am’. But if that’s all it means to ‘be myself’, it seems unlikely to enable us to grow in wisdom, compassion and maturity, an unlikely formula for sanctity. So what does Merton mean?
The key notion, for him, is ‘true self’. ‘The problem of sanctity’, he says ‘is the problem of … discovering my true self’. But what … who … is that? Well, perhaps it’s easier to say what it’s not! My true self is not just my ego-ic identity – the sense of self I’ve been given by my parents or my upbringing, or by my role in life as mother, father, carer, breadwinner, victim, success, failure. It’s not the part of me that’s focused on securing my survival, my significance, my voice or power or satisfaction in the world. It’s not that this ego-ic identity, this ego-self is bad, or that all these roles we’ve played are somehow false. In many ways, they’ve been necessary – they’re how we’ve functioned and got on in life, how we’ve been able to relate to others and make our contribution. But if we think that these labels, these roles, these habits of self-concern are all we are, then there’s a problem. And the problem is that the ego-ic self always sees itself at the centre of things. Even if I think I’m one of the underdogs, one of the put-upon ones, one of those without power in life – I still see all this from my perspective, me at the centre. And from this mindset, I probably won’t ever notice some of the subtle ways I do in fact dominate, organize, control or manipulate other people in the service of my survival or comfort or increase.
And all this suggests that the journey to spiritual maturity, to holiness, involves becoming more conscious of these egoic and ego-centric patterns. It involves facing up to the particular ways each of us tends to go about protecting, justifying and aggrandizing ourselves. This can be difficult, painful. But the good news is that the more this happens, the more I begin to discover who I am apart from these roles and compulsive habits of being – the more I discover who I am in God’s eyes. This, for Merton, is my ‘true’ or at least my ‘tru-er self’. So the important point here is that we don’t become our ‘true selves’ by trying hard, by polishing some saintly self-image to present to the world – that’s ego-centrism again. Instead, we can only begin by recognizing where we lack freedom or peace or generosity of spirit; where we’re anxious or trapped or uneasy. Our tru-er self is what emerges when these pockets of falsehood and unfreedom are healed and let go. And it shows up in the world not as something we can point to – oh, there you are! It’s evident as a new kind of responsiveness, a new capacity to pay attention and to love the world, beyond anxious self-preoccupation. The great paradox here is that our true self is the self-less self.
So what does all this mean for us? Well – for one thing, I think, it helps to deepen our sense of what a saint is … not some plaster piety, but someone undertaking the demanding journey from self-centredness to other-centredness, from illusion to reality, from hurt to healing. The saint, the true self, is characterized by receptivity to and availability for truth … which means, ultimately, their availability for God. Merton said: ‘If I find God I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find God’.[3]
This process is very different from the ego-centric cultivation of a lifestyle. You can’t make a project of becoming a saint. This journey of sanctification is the fruit of our willingness be open to a reality beyond us, a fruit of radical prayer involving patience, vulnerability and humility. Very early in his public ministry Jesus taught his disciples: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh’. Jesus teaches that the true fulfillment of human life necessarily involves letting go clinging to life on our terms, becoming whole-heartedly receptive and responsive to God’s call and gift. Only then may we live for and among others as bearers of God’s freedom, compassion and joy.
A Russian pilgrim we met
on our first pilgrimage said: it takes a long time to discover the truth of a
life. But this journey of deepening truthfulness is the journey of sanctification. All of us are called to
become who we truly are, so that we may offer ever more freely and
whole-heartedly what is distinctively ours to offer. Like pilgrims on any
journey, we need the support of our fellow travelers – the inspiration of those
who have gone before, and the companionship of those with whom we share our
way. As we commit ourselves ever and anew to this journey, we give thanks for
all the saints living and dead, known and unknown, among whom, I think we can
rightly hope, we may be numbered one day.
[1] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Paperback, 2007), p.31.
[2] Jesse Browner, ‘“Just be yourself” is cruel, fraudulent advice to give to young people’ (accessed: http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/just_be_yourself_is_cruel_fraudulent_advice_to_give_young_people/, 3 November 2016)
[3] Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p.36.