Through our baptism, we are all called to holiness, but I wonder how many of us aspire to be saints. Perhaps you hesitate like I do because the apparent paths to sainthood for women include virginity, martyrdom, living in a cloister, mortifying your body or instituting a new religious order. The stories of the officially canonized saints, especially the early saints of the church, dwell on their holiness and not their humanity. Their depiction with halos and eyes raised to heaven encourages us to view them as other-worldly. The world was shocked to discover the depth of Mother Teresa’s struggles and doubts in her journal when it was published last year. Saints inspire us best when we see that they wrestled with the same human flaws that hobble us. We need to comprehend that they lived a holy life while struggling to avoid sin.
Robert Ellsberg has examined the lives of the saints extensively and has written a number of books about them. In a recent lecture he said that he believes we are moving back “to the original idea of saints from the first centuries, where saints were people who walked faithfully, heroically in the path of Christ, who showed us in some vivid way what it really means to be a disciple, and draw us, encourage us on our own journey to become saints.”
He believes “the actual saints were people who stood out among their contemporaries as people who showed some aspect of the divine, and not in a way that took away from their humanity, but… really set a standard for what it means to be a human being. I think holy people I’ve known—like Dorothy Day whom I worked with—they were incredibly fun to be with. They were attractive. They were fully alive. They had a vitality. And I think they attracted people in their own time, people wanted to be with them. They showed some aspect of the love or compassion of God and made that real for people.”
How the Church Chooses Saints
Most Catholics have at least a cursory knowledge of the saints; the “cloud of witnesses” referred to in the Letter to the Hebrews 12:1. Most of us have a saint’s name that was chosen for us at our Baptism, we have another saint whose name we took at Confirmation, we hear the names of saints in the Eucharistic prayer at Mass and we are aware of some of the saint’s feast days. At the same time, the process of becoming a saint holds a bit of mystery for most of us.
“Canonization, the process the Church uses to name a saint, has only been used since the tenth century. For hundreds of years, starting with the first martyrs of the early Church, saints were chosen by public acclaim. Though this was a more democratic way to recognize saints, some saints' stories were distorted by legend and some never existed. Gradually, the bishops and finally the Vatican took over authority for approving saints.
“In 1983, Pope John Paul II made sweeping changes in the canonization procedure. The process begins after the death of a Catholic whom people regard as holy. Often, the process starts many years after death in order to give perspective on the candidate. The local bishop investigates the candidate's life and writings for heroic virtue (or martyrdom) and orthodoxy of doctrine. Then a panel of theologians at the Vatican evaluates the candidate. After approval by the panel and cardinals of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the pope proclaims the candidate "venerable."
“The next step, beatification, requires evidence of one miracle (except in the case of martyrs). Since miracles are considered proof that the person is in heaven and can intercede for us, the miracle must take place after the candidate's death and as a result of a specific petition to the candidate. When the pope proclaims the candidate beatified or "blessed," the person can be venerated by a particular region or group of people with whom the person holds special importance.
“Only after one more miracle will the pope canonize the saint (this includes martyrs as well). The title of saint tells us that the person lived a holy life, is in heaven, and is to be honored by the universal Church. Canonization does not "make" a person a saint; it recognizes what God has already done.
“Though canonization is infallible and irrevocable, it takes a long time and a lot of effort. So while every person who is canonized is a saint, not every holy person has been canonized. You have probably known many "saints" in your life, and you are called by God to be one yourself.”1
But there is a danger embedded in this long process. In A Passion for Life: Fragments of the Face of God, Sister Joan Chittister says the process of canonization “runs the risk of reducing holy passion to the level of prosaic piety. It hazards sanctifying the insipid. It chances turning goodness into cardboard. It disqualifies for consideration people who fall in the course of rising to new human heights. It cuts holiness from a common cloth: the theologically proper, the ecclesiastically docile, the morally safe. As a result, it eliminates from regard an entire body of people because of whom the very soul of the world has been stretched but who may not be synchronous with the current ideas of the church, who may not even be Catholic, who may not be without signs of flaw and struggle. It leads imperceptibly but almost invariably, to a theology of disillusionment, the notion that only the perfect give us glimpses of the face of God.
“[N]ot all who point the way to God for us may themselves be perfect. There are figures gleaming in their holy causes who are awkward in their personal lives. They are sometimes in confusion, as we are. They are often in struggle with themselves, as we are. They are virtuous beyond telling in one dimension and weak to the point of sin in others. At the same time, they hold a fire in their hearts bright enough to light a way for many.”
The theme for our Cor discussions this year is “Blessed Among Women.” We will examine the lives of holy women who followed Jesus on the path of discipleship (some of them canonized saints, some not) and discuss some of the challenges we encounter as we walk that same path.
1from Catholic Online