Saintliness Reconsidered

“Economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world’s welfare.”

--William James

I don’t happen to be Irish, but the proximity of St. Patrick’s Day got me thinking this week about the whole notion of “saintliness”--what it is, who qualifies, how one gets to be one--so today I thought that I would reconsider what saintliness means, or might mean, to a world in desperate need of virtuous exemplars.

As one who, as a student at the University of Maine, spent too many St. Patrick’s Days drinking green beer at Pat’s Pizza in downtown Orono, I can honestly say that I did not care one way or another about the real St. Patrick. But as I grew older--and wiser, and soberer too, we trust--it occurred to me to ask who this St. Patrick character actually was.

It soon became apparent that there was a contradiction between the legendary Patrick--the one who converted the entire country of Ireland single-handedly, the one who expelled snakes from Ireland, the one who explained the Trinity by reference to the shamrock--and the historic Patrick. Does that historic Patrick, I wondered, the real one, really matter at all?

During the Middle Ages and later, the cult of saints was immensely popular. Saints were the celebrities of their day. Pilgrimages to the resting places of saintly relics, such as bones, teeth, hair, and so on--seldom genuine--was a popular pastime (think Elvis Presley). It has been said that during the Middle Ages there were enough pieces of the original cross of Christ in Europe to build an entire Cathedral!

The pilgrim earned indulgences for oneself and one’s deceased relatives by visiting the places associated with and made famous by the saints and their activities or relics; and, not incidentally, they had a great time as well. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is perhaps the best known account of such a religious pilgrimage during the 14th century.

As an offshoot of the cult of saints, the reading of “hagiography”--what scholar John Stratton Hawley calls “the literature of lives” of the saints--also became immensely popular. The Golden Legend is one well known collection of such lives. More often than not, these “lives” of the saints retained little if anything of the real, historic person. Rather, the lives of the saints tended to emphasize the dramatic and miraculous. Occasionally, however, the “real” saint would peep through the overlay of mythology, some characteristic too human to have been invented, though this was certainly not what the readers of saints’ lives were interested in,--any more than drinkers of green beer are much interested in St. Patrick, though for different reasons. . . .

Today, alas, we are much less gullible and much less naive than our medieval ancestors. Today, most of us--at least most of us here this morning, I daresay--don’t believe in the literal truth of legend and myth. We lead far more mundane existences than our ancestors in the Middle Ages. But though the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Saints assures me that “the historical Patrick is much more attractive than the Patrick of legend,” how can we be sure?

I’m not sure that the semi-literate little Irish bishop, who lived from about 390 to 461, is more interesting than the Patrick of legend, who is most often depicted as treading on the snakes he so fearlessly and wonderfully expelled from the Island Kingdom. One might well ask: is the real Patrick even necessary?

As religious people not accustomed to the veneration of saints, this may seem an odd question. But just what is a saint? Is it possible to delineate the characteristic traits common to sainthood? For now, forget about the obscure process of canonization which confers sainthood within the Roman Catholic Church. Saintliness is clearly not restricted to any particular religious tradition. Do we not have our own, liberal religious saints: Channing and Emerson, Fuller and Parker?

It has been almost one hundred years since William James delivered the lectures which make up his classic study of The Varieties of Religious Experience. In the lecture entitled “Saintliness,” James said,

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, in which the features can be easily traced [my emphasis].

A more recent scholar of Saintliness, John Stratton Hawley,draws upon the Second Vatican Council to also make the point that the essential qualities of saintliness transcend particular religious traditions. The Council, writes Hawley, “drew attention to three areas in which the lives of remarkable persons could serve to enrich and empower the lives of ordinary individuals: example, fellowship, and aid.” In his book Saints and Virtues, Hawley develops these three areas, suggesting that “these three aspects of veneration go a long way toward explaining the power of saintliness in a wide spectrum of religious and cultural traditions, and suggest a context within which all saints exert their moral force.”

By their very existence in the world, saints provide an example for the rest of us to follow; they provide fellowship by their presence, and we feel less alone because they have been here with us, if only briefly; and they provide aid, most obviously by the hope which they inspire in us, which enables us to meet and surmount the many causes of despair that life inevitably brings to us. By such criteria, then, we might judge the true saint.

Among the examples of saints that Hawley chooses are St. Francis of Assisi from Catholicism; Muhammad from Islam; the female poet saint Mira Bai from Hinduism; Confucius; the Baal Shem Tov, Israel ben Eleazar, from Judaism; and Acharn Man from Buddhism. The penultimate chapter of his book, interestingly enough, is dedicated to “Saint Gandhi.”

Responding to criticism that Gandhi failed to live up to the expectations of his followers, Hawley writes that, “. . .somehow the facts of Gandhi’s life and his apparent inability to live up to the moral expectations of those who revered him seem not quite relevant to the matter of Gandhi’s sainthood. Saintliness, like beauty, exists largely in the eye of the beholder.” Hawley continues

The fact that Gandhi was extravagantly revered presents us with a phenomenon worth considering in its own right, regardless of whether or not we feel that the man deserved it. Such adulation shows that sainthood is far from dead, even in the present day and even, perhaps, when the “saints” themselves--Gandhi, included--disavow it.

To think of it another way, we might say that it does matter, after all, who Saint Patrick really was, because it is the human qualities of saintliness that we really need. The legend is interesting, even, perhaps, exciting; but the reality, even if mundane, is much more important. In the final analysis, the celebration of saints is the celebration of the human: of the religious impulse as embodied in a human being: what James called “the ripe fruits of religion in a character.” And that should appeal even to the humanists among us.

Did St. Patrick tread on snakes? Did he convert all of Ireland? The answer is no. All that we know of the real Patrick is found in two of his writings, and can be summarized as follows: born in Britain, son of a deacon and grandson of a priest; while still a youth, captured by Irish pirates and reduced to slavery for six years. During that time, spent much time in prayer, and lived a more religious life than formerly. Either escaped or was freed, and, after many adventures, returned to England and his family. Received some training for the Priesthood, but education not extensive, which he always regretted. As the Oxford Dictionary of Saints puts it, “His own Latin writings are inelegant, even at times rustic.” Sent back to Ireland as bishop and apostle in about 435. Started a school and made missionary journeys.

His writings are the first clearly identified with the British Church, and show that he was typical of other 5th century bishops. He was not learned, but he had “sincere simplicity and deep pastoral care.” As his biographer states, “One of the traits which he retained as an old man was a consciousness of his being an unlearned exile and formerly a slave and fugitive, who learnt to trust completely in God.”

That is all that we really know of Patrick, but perhaps it is all we need to know. It is enough, after all, to show that he was human. In fact, he was quite ordinary: no snakes, no shamrocks, no mass conversions. But it is because of his humanity, not in spite of it, that he was originally remembered, and it was out of his humanity that the legends grew.

Of course, thinking of Patrick and Ireland is a reminder of the very negative role that religion, too often, plays in human affairs. Too often, it is the cause of all that divides us from one another: the cause of distrust, hate, bigotry, and violence. It is not difficult for the cynic to point only to this negative side of religion and to discard it as pointless at best, and downright dangerous at the worst. I do this myself, more often than you might think.

But religion has also embodied the highest and the best that we know. It has been the repository of our common humanity. It has often been the sole force for good, the sole force for community, the sole force for caring and love. Religion shares in the essential paradox at the heart of our world: it is neither all evil, nor, unfortunately, all good.

The question of St. Patrick matters to me, because it matters to me that others have tried to live the good life. Some of them have even succeeded! It matters to me that Patrick was flesh and bones, that he was a real person, with the flaws and foibles that distinguish the rest of us. We are imperfect beings, perhaps, yet we aspire to be as the gods.

We may not know much about St. Patrick, but we do know the most important thing: he was one of us. It is his humanity, not his sainthood, that ultimately counts. Patrick lived and died. That is all we need to know, but it matters very much that we remember it.

“Let us be saints, then, if we can,” said William James, “whether or not we succeed. . . .” It is the effort that counts, though few of us will actually reach the goal. The saints hold us to a higher standard. May the religious impulse to be better than we are be ascendant in our hearts; and may we, too, share in that saintliness of character which is our inheritance as children of God, and as human beings.
May it be so. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock