All Saints

The Solemnity of All Saints 2015 – Cycle B Revelation 7: 2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”

That is what Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and the social justice movement, famously said about herself before her death at age 83 in 1980. Why do you think Dorothy might have said that? Is it because we have frozen in time the saints of the past and present to such an extent that they can no longer speak to us? Resulting in dispassionate and aloof figures in front of whom we light candles and ask for favours; spiritual gofers, if you will? Is this what Day meant when she spoke about so easily dismissing the saints?

An answer may be found in the insights of Jesuit priest, James Martin. He notes that a saint is more than a statue, more than an image on a prayer card or a figure looking down upon us from stained-glass. And if we idealize these men and women to such a degree it can lead us to overlook their relevance for today. And being relevant is foremost in today’s culture. Whether in business, politics, technology or religion, if you are not relevant you are in Day’s word, “dismissed”. Or as Heidi Klum declares on Project Runway, “In the fashion world, one day you’re in, the next day you’re out”.

She was a single parent in a period of economic downturn; ostracized by her family and those of her social rank. She was considered deluded to the extent that many doors of opportunity were closed to her; yet she held her family of five children together and opened up her own establishment, a school. And she did something a parent should never have to do, bury her own children.

How relevant this is to the contemporary experience of many women in our society: single parenting; a period of economic downturn, doors of opportunity – glass ceilings – still closed; while holding a family together alone. Do we dare dismiss Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, a tough woman who was not afraid to challenge herself spiritually or confront church leadership?

Orphaned at sixteen, living a “lonely and aimless” life for a young man, he would say: “breaking my neck trying to get everything out of life that you think you can get out of it when you are eighteen”. Some of his schoolmates, who had gone with him to Cambridge University, recalled that he drifted away and became isolated there. He started drinking excessively, hanging out in the local pubs and bars rather than studying. He was also very free with his sexuality during this period, some friends going so far as to call him a womanizer. He fathered a child with one of the women he encountered at Cambridge. Vain and bad-tempered, occasionally cantankerous and self-pitying, his spiritual journey continues to help many in the midst of the spiritual restlessness of our time through his spiritual writings.

How does a person seek to cultivate an inner silence so as to listen to the voice within us* inviting us to a deeper relationship with God? Can any of us living in our hectic society as a seeker of solitude dare dismiss the spiritual wanderings of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton?

He was tall and handsome and admittedly vain about his appearance. By his own admission he could also be difficult to live with. The consensus among his peers and biographers is that he was gay but chose to live a celibate life. Fear of retribution from church authorities didn’t keep him from reaching out to the gay community. And long before he was enshrined on the list of 9/11 heroes he was a hero to many: to the poor, the ostracized, the sick, the addicted, the dying, and the lonely. One homeless man was quoted as saying, “He didn’t stay in the sanctuary, He brought the sanctuary out to us.” The photograph of his corpse begin carried from Ground Zero, the first confirmed casualty of the September 11 attack has come to be called “the American Pietá”.

In a time when so much is judged solely by appearance and not substance; when the world endeavors with how to respond to terrorist violence; when society struggles with the issue of same-sex marriage and the Catholic Church and Christianity grapple with how to compassionately address its gay sisters and brother, can we dismiss the Franciscan friar and priest, Father Mychal Judge?

Though baptized in the Episcopal Church, she saw little purpose for religion. A writer and activist she had a growing interest in social and political issues. She was decades ahead of the country and the church on the issues of civil rights, women’s suffrage, world peace, and worker’s rights. Her participation in protests got her arrested where she was subjected to degrading physical and sexual abuse from female guards who taunted her. An affair led to an abortion which she regretted and a subsequent pregnancy led to a religious awakening. She believed in direct service to the poor and with her coworkers lived in solidarity with society’s outcasts. In her diary she confided, “The dirt, the garbage heaped in the gutters, the flies, the hopelessness of the human beings around me, oppress me.”

In the light of the continued struggles for human rights across our planet, growing poverty, the role of women in society and the church, the polarizing issue of abortion and the exposing of sexual abuse in our society and church, can we dare dismiss Dorothy Day?

Have you noticed anything in common about the stories of these women and men?

Did you notice that they dealt with the same issues we do today, with personalities that were not always so pleasant or easy to get along with, with personal weakness and addictions and often meandering spiritual journeys. See, holiness is not the same as perfection or being sinless. The call to holiness does not remove us from our human experiences. The call to holiness does not deliver us from our personality traits or our past. Holiness is a response to an invitation from God to first of all accept ourselves as we are, warts, abilities, shortcomings, and sins. Then with God’s grace to move forward and do greater works then Jesus, as Jesus said we would. [See John 14: 12]

Holiness is not about us making ourselves acceptable to God but about God transforming us despite ourselves.  “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” 

Never dismiss yourself out of hand for we are all called to holiness.**

*See 1 Kings 19:11-12 ** numerous phrases and ideas were taken from, New York Catholics: Faith, Attitude & the Works! By Patrick McNamara, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York