Holiness and Experience

On April 21st, 2021, Pope Francis declared a son of our city, Pietro Marcellino Cardinal Corradini, venerable; so last Sunday, my parish celebrated an event that is quite rare, even by Italian standards. After a year of waiting and with the easing of COVID restrictions, the Collegine Sisters of the Holy Family (the congregation he founded) finally held a Mass of thanksgiving for our new venerable. In advance of the celebration, we announced the event for weeks prior, and I made it a point to emphasize that Corradini was from the city: “You, too, can be a saint from Sezze! It’s possible!”

Need for Models

This is part of the reason why the Church encourages the veneration of the saints: they are an example of how the Gospel can be lived out in diverse times and settings, even the most challenging ones. Now, none of us is meant to be a carbon copy of a saint; rather, each of us is meant to be a saint in a unique and unrepeatable way, just as our lives and souls are unique and unrepeatable in the eyes of God.

That being said, both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (among many others) emphasized the need to have models to emulate in order to behave well. When we read about or study a saint, we come across a standard or an exemplar that can serve as a guide for our thoughts and actions. The supreme model of holiness is of course Jesus Christ, but in the saints, we see how real men and women, throughout the diversity of times and places, have been able to imitate Him.

It comes as no surprise, however, that in our world, the figures that are held up for emulation are often far from sanctity. Even more disconcerting is when things are confused within Christianity.

The declaration regarding Corradini brought back to mind a book I happened across during my years in seminary: Mark Hyman’s Blacks Who Died for Jesus: A History Book. Given that our parish had a large African and African-American population, it seemed like a text with which to spend several hours. Indeed, the book self-proclaims that it is “a history of saints, popes, and martyrs from the early Christian era, amazing revelations of well-known patron saints of African descent. The book uncovers the true history of people of African descent and Christianity.” I found some time to spend with the book, in eager anticipation of learning about the likes of Charles Lwanga and his companions, Pierre Toussaint, Josephine Bakhita, Martin de Porres, Augustus Tolton, and so many more.

Curious Inconsistencies

As I spent time with the book, I noticed only one flaw: despite the title, most (if not all) of the people were one of two things: either they were not black, or they didn’t die for Jesus! In the words of G. K. Chesterton came to mind:

It is as if one were to write a most detailed analysis of the mistakes and misgovernment of the ministers of George the Third, merely with the small inaccuracy that the whole story was told about George Washington; or as if somebody made a list of the crimes of the Bolshevists with no variation except that they were all attributed to the Czar.

Let us consider two extreme cases given by Hyman:

• Hyman proposes the Queen of Sheba as a black who died for Jesus. Was she black? It’s possible, especially if, as some scholars think, Song of Songs 1:5, “I am black and beautiful,” refers to her. Did she die for Jesus? If she lived during the reign of King Solomon, approximately 980 to 900 BC or so, it is impossible: living a thousand years before the birth of Jesus makes it hard to die for Him, except in a most spiritual sense.
• A second case that Hyman proposes is Arius. Was he black? Again, it’s possible: born in what is now Libya, we can only speculate. Did he die for Jesus? In a word, no. Arius is known for promoting a heresy which proclaimed that Jesus is not equal to the Father, a heresy aptly named “Arianism” after its chief exponent and promoter. Arius believed that Jesus was created: in Arius’ mind, Jesus might have been a great piece of creation, maybe even the best God the Father has made, but He would only be a creature, and not eternal. The struggle against Arius and Arianism would dominate the life and work of Saint Athanasius and many others. Did Arius die for Jesus? No.

Now, it could be objected that I am being too critical and judgmental: perhaps Arius was really a nice guy with the best of intentions. My problem, someone will certainly say, is that I live in my 21st century world of comforts, and I, trapped as I am in my cultural and historical setting, cannot possibly understand the struggles of a man such as Arius, who, in his dissent, only sought the truth and was punished for it.

Such a statement has an element of truth: it is certain that I don’t know Arius (nor do I think we would get along if we happened to meet), and I can’t place myself perfectly in his shoes to understand his historical context with all its ins and outs. However, here there is also an error: the error is to think that, to form a judgment of Arius’ teachings, or to affirm that he “died for Jesus,” I need to have that sort of knowledge.

I might not know Arius, but I do know Jesus; Jesus is my model for holiness, and it is from Him I take my standard. Now, the saints can help shed light on that standard, but ultimately my model is Christ Himself. When I see someone falling short, I don’t need to criticize the person, but I can point out their actions and note that they are not in keeping with that of my role model.

Knowledge of the Truth

Consider another example of the same: in the introduction to the 1960 Polish edition of Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla notes that

there exists a view that only married people may speak about marriage, and that only persons who experience love between a man and a woman may speak about such love. This view demands personal and direct experience as a basis for speaking in a given field. Thus, priests, the religious, and celibate persons cannot have anything to say on matters of love and marriage.

How many times do we hear these arguments repeated? “A priest (or bishop or even the Pope) can’t tell us anything about how to live out our marriage! He has no right to speak about things like contraception or abortion!” Yet, priests, bishops, and Popes do speak out (although perhaps not enough). How is this possible? The future pope continues:

A lack of their own personal experience does not hinder them since they possess a very rich indirect experience proceeding from pastoral work. For in pastoral work they encounter precisely these problems so often and in such a variety of ways and situations that another experience is created, experience that is undoubtedly more indirect and “alien”, but at the same time much more extensive. Indeed, the abundance of facts from this field prompts all the more a general reflection and a search for synthesis.

Making Judgments

The Pope’s is an interesting point. First-hand knowledge is certainly one sort of knowledge and a useful one at that. However, such knowledge cannot be the sole rule for making judgments. For instance, when the doctor suggests that we need to lose weight and eat healthier or else risk a heart attack, we don’t reply, “Yeah, well, have you had a heart attack? No? Then what do you know?!”

Likewise, using the same logic, unmarried persons could never work as marriage counselors, and men could never be gynecologists or obstetricians. Indeed, for many fields that deal with a wide range of situations, we would rather have the one advising to have indirect experience of many things rather than direct experience of one or two. Medical doctors are trained in precisely this way: they receive second-hand exposure through case studies, texts, and work in the hospitals, rather than experiencing all the illnesses and injuries themselves.

The Ideal Determines the Truth

Why is this the case? For physicians, there is a model: it is a model of perfect health and, no matter how a particular person falls short of that ideal, there is at least the ideal to which they are to be restored. In much the same way, when the Church presents her moral teachings, or really any teachings, and holds up the saints as models and exemplars, she presents them and holds them up in the light of Christ, the model of holiness and of men and women who are “fully alive.”

One can argue that Arius is misunderstood, or that his is a model for informed dissent, but, in the end, the measuring stick doesn’t compare us with Arius; it compares us with Christ.