Are Saints Human?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

I have written a number of textbooks for use in Catholic high school religion courses. Some years ago, my brother Jim, a math teacher at York Catholic High School, saw a student carrying a book I had written. He told the student, “My brother wrote that book.” The student shrugged him off and said, “No, he didn’t.” My brother pointed out that the author’s last name and his were the same, but the student still didn’t believe him. It struck me that for many people books are not written by real people but by some creator who doesn’t exist in the real world. This past year, American Catholics have had an eye-opening and totally unexpected experience. An American was elected pope. Here was someone who grew up in a real place, Chicago, went to White Sox games, and attended Villanova University, where there are students today just like him walking the halls.

St. Therese of Lisieux, known as the “Little Flower,” died at age 24 just over 125 years ago, but she quickly became one of the most popular saints among Catholics. Depictions of her in statues and “holy cards” portray her as generically beautiful and saintly even though she is the first saint ever to have had photographs taken of her.  Those photos show that she was physically attractive, but no more so than many other young French girls of her time. She apparently was a spoiled, at times even bratty, child who clung to her father and was overly sensitive to how she was treated, especially by him. She was an attention seeker. She entered a local Carmelite monastery at the age of fifteen, a place where women separated themselves from the outside world and dedicated themselves to constant prayer. Therese discovered that the way to holiness that suited her was the way of littleness. She was content to be like an overlooked plaything in God’s closet, not engaged in great works but in simply doing little things for others. That message caught on among Catholics in the early 1900s and continues to this day. Most of us live our life of holiness around the kitchen table, food shopping, going to work or school, and interacting with the people we meet daily. Therese’s “little way” of holiness happens in such places, and it’s easy to see why it has been appealing to so many Catholics.

Unlike other Christian groups, Catholics have devotion to saints. If there are statues of saints in a church, they are typically portrayed as anything but human. They may have a halo around their head, their face is without blemish, and they wear clothes that regular folks simply don’t wear. They are other-worldly. They didn’t have struggles and questions or traits that were off-putting to many people who actually knew them. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement who is being considered for sainthood today, famously said: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” She knew that she was a flawed person, and she didn’t want to be relegated to some exclusive club of otherworldly figures. She felt that everyone is called to holiness, not just a select few who lived among us wearing a halo and with angelic music trailing them wherever they went. Saints are not comic book superheroes. They faced the conflicts and troubles of their time and tried to address them in the spirit of Jesus, as we are all called to do.

However, it’s important to remember the human side to this popular saint. Since she was so young—she entered the convent at age fifteen, and was exemplary in her piety, she was admired by the other sisters as their little saint. Her mother superior, in charge of the monastery, recognized that she had a talent for writing, so she was encouraged to keep a journal. She contracted tuberculosis in her early twenties, from which she suffered greatly and which took her life. When she became sick, she was encouraged to put up with her suffering and “offer it up” as a good little saint would do. She, however, asked to have her uncle, a doctor, visit her and prescribe medicine to help with the pain, a very human request but not at the time considered a “saintly” one. The sister nursing her even kept the pain pills away from her for fear that she would take too many. In other words, Therese Martin, the Little Flower, was addressing her illness in a very human way. That human response enhances her message of following the little way. Masochism is not saintliness. In hospitals today, doctors and nurses seek to make their patients as comfortable as possible. Such commonplace acts of kindness are saintly, even more so for being so humane. As we go through life, suffering happens and can even lead to valuable spiritual insights. However, masochism is not saintliness. Even Jesus said, “Let this cup pass from me” when faced with the physical and emotional pain about to be inflicted on him.

Where are the holy ones today? They are retrieving shopping carts in grocery store parking lots, watching over children in pre-school programs, even trying their best to navigate being homeless on city streets. Don’t look for halos or listen for angelic music. Instead, be attentive to how goodness is lived out in very human ways by very human people. With every simple act of kindness, count yourself among the holy ones.