Uncanonised saints of everyday life

Saints are part and parcel of the Catholic faith. Our churches are full of them. Most are the classic ones like St Joseph, the apostles, some well-known martyrs, the founders of the most known religious orders.

If we look at saints canonised in the past 20 years, not many were lay people- Fr Alfred Micallef

Many Catholics have great devotion to saints. They pray to them, seeing them as intermediaries between themselves and God. This suits especially the Mediterranean temperament where we often seek the help of intermediaries whenever we would like to obtain favour from important figures.

However, I do not think this is the main reason why the Church declares certain people to be saints or, using the official jargon, why the Church canonises certain people.

The Church does this to provide us with models of holy life who would inspire us to imitate them. Being human beings like us, they are a proof that being holy is possible.

Historically, saints were not chosen from among those who form the largest category in the Church – lay people – but from those who form a minority, namely, priests and religious. Moreover, some of the few canonised lay people, if they had not done something extraordinarily heroic or suffered martyrdom, very often, lived very much like religious.

I am afraid this is somehow giving a false message, namely that in order to be holy one has to become a priest or a religious. This idea is not new in the Church.

In the past, we spoke of the “way of perfection”, implying that the road to holiness necessitated joining a religious congregation. This idea was also diffused among the people.

I remember that after having joined the religious order to which I continue to belong, more than one person had told me, “You did the right thing; you turned your back on the world.”

The Second Vatican Council tried to correct all this, and in Lumen Gentium, the Constitution on the Church, removed all the stuff about holiness from the chapter on the ‘Religious life’, where it was originally inserted, and put it in the second chapter, which speaks about the ‘People of God’, a people which includes the hierarchy, the laity and the religious.

The message from this arrangement is loud and clear: the call to holiness is for everybody, not only for the religious and the hierarchy.

Further, in the chapter on the ‘Laity’ of the same constitution it is asserted that the laity, “by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations.

They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven.” (Lumen Gentium 31).

Apologies for the long quotation. However, the implication of this is that lay people – by far the largest chunk of Church – become holy by engaging in their everyday life which sees them going through various non-religious activities.

Alas, the praxis of the Church does not seem to sustain this belief. If we look at the list of saints that were canonised during the past 20 years or so we would not find many who were lay people.

And yet, many of us are witnesses of great generosity and holiness among people who are mothers and housewives, fathers and sons and daughters who, with great patience and dedication, bring up their children, giving their best to instil in them the values of the gospel, look after elderly or sick members, extend a helping hand to their neighbour in need, and strive to bring peace and justice among their work companions.

They do not do anything out of the ordinary but they do the ordinary in an extraordinarily generous way.

Unfortunately, this is not often openly recognised as holiness. As a consequence, such first-class people continue to consider themselves second-class Christians.

Besides, these first-class Christians continue to remain without recognised models.

alfred.j.micallef@um.edu.mt