In conversations among moderns, the term ‘Saint’ or ‘Saints’ sometimes surfaces in bars and movie theatres more often than churches. In Seattle, The
Saint is a bar that touts the “world’s most dangerous happy hour.” In New Orleans it’s a professional football team. In 1997, The Saint was a movie spin off of a 60s TV series about Simon Templar, a man who managed to outwit the police again and again. In 1977 The Saint was a fictional biography of Thomas Becket by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.
Most of us would be reticent to accept the title of ‘saint’ in conjunction with our own personhood. “Do you know Betty? She is a saint!” “That man is so wonderful, he’s just a saint.” We know ourselves all too well to accept the modern definition of sainthood as a term that defines who we are. We are more likely to say something like, “Trust me on this, I’m no saint.”
I’m not sure when the RCC first began ‘recognizing’ saints and formally canonizing them, but when Alban Butler published Lives of the Saints in 1756, the book contained 1,486 saints. Many more have been added since that time. The Eastern Orthodox Church, on the other hand, says anyone in heaven is a ‘saint,’ whether recognized here on earth, or not.
Most Protestants use the term to refer to anyone who is a Christian. For example, Methodists believe all Christians are saints, but mainly use the term in reference to biblical characters, Christian leaders, or martyrs. Lutherans approve honoring saints in three ways: by thanking God for their examples of his mercy; by using the saints as examples for strengthening our faith; and by our imitating their faith and other virtues.
The Apostle Paul referred to Christ-followers in general as ‘saints,’ regardless of how well or badly they lived or how mature or immature they were in the faith. In Run with the Horses, Eugene Peterson says the term refers to the “kind of life to which they had been chosen, life on a battlefield. It was not a title given after a spectacular performance, but a mark of whose side they were on … (God) doesn’t wait to see how we turn out to decide to choose or not to choose us. Before we were born he chose us for his side—consecrated us.”
Here is the point of all this. When you and I are being our authentic selves, knowing who God is and who we are as ’Christ-followers, we are ‘saints.’ Thomas Merton put it this way: “For me to be a saint means for me to be myself.” A saint is someone through whom we catch a glimpse of what God is like — and of what we are called to be. Only God makes saints, but the Author of our faith is the Source of the grace by which saints live. And there we have it: a saint is someone whose story God tells.
So, “To all (of you) … who are loved by God and called to be saints (and who desire to live out their calling in life’s second half): Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:7).
The world (and the Church) needs more of us.
W
(I’ve looked for the origin of the term “Saints preserve us!” but so far unsuccessfully. I await one of my readers to enlighten me on this one.)