Episcopal Saints

We are celebrating the Feast of All Saints today. All Saints’ Day was actually November 1, of course. But of all of the seven Principal Feasts of the church calendar that do not regularly fall on a Sunday, All Saints is the only one we are permitted to transfer to the following Sunday. So in our common worship today we are celebrating All Saints.

I am very often asked: How does someone become an Episcopal saint? Or: What is the process in the Episcopal Church for achieving or designating sainthood?

The question arises, I suppose, because there is a very specific process in the Roman Catholic Church for beatification and canonization. There are clear steps and criteria, a formal process, by which the church designates who is a real saint. For what it’s worth, that process only came into being in the Middle Ages, for a variety of reasons. Before that sainthood was granted by the experience and consensus of the worshipping people.

In general, I do not like to publicly criticize another church’s practice or theology, but… In this case, I think there are at least two rather serious pitfalls implicit in the Roman Catholic practice of defining sainthood through a formal application process.

First, this process with its benchmarks and quantified criteria (at least so many miracles under these specific circumstances in a designated time…) This process implies that sainthood is something that is automatically achieved if you pass all the tests. Like passing the bar makes you a lawyer. Or like achieving a certain time in a race qualifies you for the Olympics. How could sainthood possibly be defined by specific, quantifiably criteria? To use a term common in today’s corporate world: There are no metrics for achieving sainthood.

Second, this formal application process implies that there is some clear ontological difference between saints and non-saints. You either are a saint or you’re not. It’s as though the difference were in the DNA or saints were some subspecies of humankind, different from the rest of us. Orthodox theology has always asserted that Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine. It’s as though saints are 100% human and 35% divine, unlike other mere mortals. But that’s not the way it works. Jesus was unique, unique in sharing human and divine life. The rest of us, all of us, are 100% mortal, 100% of the time.

Because of these sorts of concerns and because the process had been subject to great excesses even in the Roman Catholic Church, at the time of the Protestant Reformation many reformers completely threw out the whole idea of saints. We did not. Clearly those of us who are the Church of Saint John the Evangelist find something to cherish in the idea of saints. But because Episcopalians still talk about saints, the potential for confusion is great. We kept the word and the idea of saints, but we did, as a church of the Reformation, completely throw out the process. We threw out the formal Roman Catholic process for canonizing some people saints.

In the Episcopal Church, there is no process for designating sainthood. Sainthood is not something that some can achieve and others cannot. We do not beatify or canonize. We do commemorate. And that’s a very different thing. We commemorate. We celebrate. As a community of faith we commemorate and celebrate the lives of those who offer us a particular witness or example that we value. The process for choosing individuals whom we wish to commemorate by name is a democratic process. General Convention votes. Those whom we commemorate are listed in the calendar. Their lives are described and propers provided for commemorating them in worship in Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

From the preface to Lesser Feasts and Fasts (p. v):

"What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ expressing itself in and through particular lives lived in the midst of specific historical circumstances. In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection, but human lives, in all their diversity, open to the motions of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history or ecclesial perspective: Attitudes toward those outside the Church, assumptions about gender, understandings of the world may appear to be defective or wrong. And what, in one age, was taken as virtue may at another time seem misguided. It should encourage us to realize that the saints, like us, are first and foremost redeemed sinners in whom the risen Christ’s words to St. Paul come to fulfillment, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’"

Considering those particular saints whom we commemorate, what do the stories of their lives and witness offer to us?

First, an example… a realistic human example of a life of faith. And most often that example is one of perseverance. The saints are those who persevered in faith and action despite facing considerable difficulties in the world around them or even facing difficulties within themselves. The saints persevere in faith and action in the face of great challenge or difficulty.

Mother Theresa has been in the news a bit lately because of revelations from her own writings of darkness and struggle in her spiritual life. The most recent Christian Century (October 30, 2007) has a great commentary on this discussion. The author, David Steinmetz, writes of those who looked to Mother Theresa to be saintly and are disappointed by these revelations. They "reacted with shocked disbelief at the news of her spiritual struggles, as though saints were never allowed to have a bad day and the life of faith, properly handled, were a life of unending bliss."

He goes on to quote Martin Luther (the great Reformer!) on the spiritual life of saints. "Luther thought it was a fundamental principle of the spiritual life that saints and not sinners were the real authorities on sin. If any inquiring mind wants to know what makes sin sinful, it should ask St. Francis or St. Clare and not a roomful of hormonally charged late adolescents at a college frat party."

"The reason for this is very simple. To understand what sin is, one has to oppose it. The more strenuously one opposes it, the more powerful and pervasive it seems. One barely notices a current with which one is swimming. But one cannot fail to notice what is happening when one struggles to swim against an opposing tide. Which means that the more one progresses in the spiritual life, the more one may develop a sense of making no progress at all." But the saints are those who still persevere. Persevering in faith and action no matter what.

So the saints can be examples to us of holy and faithful living. But many people can serve as examples to us of how we would like to live our lives… secular historical figures, family members, even fictional characters can be examples to us.

As members of the Body of Christ, we look to the saints for even more. We not only commemorate the examples of their earthly lives, we celebrate their ongoing, living presence with us, our communion with their eternal lives.

And what do the saints offer us by their living presence with us? I do not like to publicly criticize the practice of another church, but… The living presence of the saints with us do not serve us as lobbyists or intermediaries with God. We do not need them to be our advocates with God, to speak to God on our behalf. Whether we like it or not, we meet God on our own, face to face.

But the saints, living with us, do come to us as companions, offering support. Drawing upon a passage from Hebrews, we refer to the saints who have gone before as a great "cloud of witnesses" encouraging and supporting in us our daily lives. In one of the prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, we pray: "Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit you have made us one with your saints in heaven and on earth: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy."

Perhaps some of you feel a particular relationship, a special affinity, with one particular saint. You feel you have a patron saint. Again, as Episcopalians, we would not pray to that saint so that the saint may go to God and intercede or speak on our behalf. Our communication with God is direct. But we might pray that a particular saint would turn his or her face towards us, and that we might find in our patron saint a mentor, a heavenly mentor. Someone who lives now in the eternal presence of God, but who looks upon us as a mentor would. Who, like the best of mentors, really cares that we be the best we can be before God. Someone who helps us to rise above all that holds us back or limits us in our relationship with God. Someone who rejoices in our spiritual flourishing. A saint as mentor.

I love the resource of Lesser Feasts and Fasts and my own spiritual life is enriched by the example and presence of the saints who are named in our calendar. But I do remind you of the danger inherent in naming some saints and not others. It implies that there is some difference between those named and those who are not. There is no difference. The glory and the responsibility of sainthood rest on us all.

In a way, there is no such thing as a saint. There is only the communion of saints. Again, from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (p. 467): "The Church is ‘the communion of saints,’ that is, a people made holy through their mutual participation in the mystery of Christ. This communion exists through history, exists now, and endures beyond ‘the grave and gate of death’ into heaven. For ‘God is not a God of the dead but of the living,’ and those still on their earthly pilgrimage continue to have fellowship ‘with those whose work is done.’ The pilgrim Church and the Church at rest join in watching and praying for that great day when Christ shall come again to change and make perfect our common humanity in the image of Christ’s risen glory."