The French philosopher Simone Weil once commented that it’s not enough today to be merely a saint. Rather, “we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment”.
She’s surely right on that second premise: we need saints whose virtues speak to the times.
What kind of saint is needed today? Someone who can show us how we can actually forgive an enemy? Someone who can help us come together across the bitter divide within our communities and churches? Someone who can show us how to reach out to the poor? Someone who can teach us how to actually pray? Someone who can show us how to find Sabbath rest amid the bombardment of 10,000 television channels, a million blogs and a billion tweets? Someone who can show us how to sustain our childhood faith amid the sophistication, complexity and agnosticism of our adult lives? Someone who, like Jesus, can go into singles bars and not sin? Someone who radiates a full-bodied humanity, even as he or she is, by faith, set apart? Someone who’s a mystic, but with a robust sense of humour? Someone who can be both chaste and healthily sexual at the same time? The list could go on. We’re in pioneer territory. The saints of old didn’t face our issues. They had their own demons to conquer and aren’t rolling over in their graves, shaking their fingers in disgust at us. They know the struggle. They know that ours is new territory with new demons to conquer and new virtues required. The saints of old remain, of course, as essential templates of Christian discipleship, living gospels, but they walked in different times.
