Saints and Superheroes

The great cynic, Ambrose Bierce, defined saint this way: “SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.” If he meant that a saint was a dead sinner whose faults, evil deeds and misdemeanours have been simply papered over perhaps he was rightly cynical.

I read his definition a little more positively; there is no one now termed a saint by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican churches, no gospel writer or apostle, who is not a sinner. St. Basil, St. Paul and Saint Mark: these are indeed sinners who have been accepted, revised, edited and incorporated into Christ’s body.

Do they achieve in their daily lives some sort of special merit that asks or demands that we recognize them as worthy intercessors? I think not. I suggest that Christians have an actual paucity of saints, that there should be vastly more so identified.

Achieving some sort of beatification is not something rare, I posit, but actually a goal of God’s work within human beings. St. Paul’s famous doctrine of predestination says so: we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of his [God’s] Son” (Rom. 8:29).

In doctrinal terms, what we’re talking about is sanctification which is both a fact and a process, something like loving your spouse and learning to love him/her more.

Saint Curt

Here’s a story from my own experience. Back in the day, when I was about 14 years old, I had an acne problem (an older tenor in our church choir called me Rudolph because of my nose), a voice that was changing in pitch from mellifluous bass to screeching soprano – often in mid-word – and a fear that I was actually not one of the elect. It was then, at my most insecure self, that I discovered what is the most useful definition of saint I have ever heard.

It came from my pastor, the Rev. Carl Reitsma who, walking into our catechism classroom, with no context, slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Saint Curt, good to see you.” It was what J.R.R. Tolkein would call a “sudden, unexpected grace.”

I suggest that there are as many saints reading Christian Courier as there are in any book of hagiography, many more than are listed on any church liturgical calendar, and many more than the four who wrote the gospels.

A famous theologian once wrote a sermon called, “You Are Accepted.” I’d add, “And you, dear fellow child of God, are a saint.”