I was raised to hate the saints.
Okay, okay, maybe hate is too strong a word. In fact, it is almost certainly too strong a word. But it does make a catchy opener, right? Really it is more accurate to say that I was never taught to love the saints, I was taught to think of them as a distraction, something that weak people used because they weren't really committed to God. Saints were idolatrous, I mean, just look at all that art connected with them. So many pictures. Man's futile attempt (gendered language being part and parcel of the diatribe) to bring the infinite down to a knowable level. Which is wrong! And wicked! And really, really naughty!
The same thing, in essence, was said about all non-spontaneous prayer. If it wasn't "from the heart," the immediate, extempore outflow of that moment's emotions and response to God, it was phony, insincere. Rote. The product of Dead Faith. This would include, in practice at least, if not in theology, even the Lord's Prayer and the Creeds. The most important thing, in both of these cases, is my personal, direct connection with the divine, my individual response, my emotional engagement.
But what happens when the connection is severed? When emotions are deadened? When I can't bring myself to have any response at all? I think a part of the culture which produced devotion to saints and reliance on liturgical prayer was perhaps one of greater humility than our own. It was a culture of largely unlettered people, more farmers than poets. Perhaps they felt incapable of barging in on the Most High, unannounced and without decorum. Perhaps it wasn't (isn't?) wrong to feel that way. While we recognize God-drawn-near in the incarnation of Christ, we must also keep in mind God-mysterious, God-beyond-speaking, Holy-Holy-Holy God. When we view God in this way, doesn't it seem right that spontaneous words should seem to rough? That we ourselves should feel somewhat inadequate to approach, knowing ourselves as we do and knowing only the thousandth part of what the incandescence of God requires.
But this is not really my point. I was often taught to think of saints and liturgy as something for weak people, for those not brave enough to face God, not faithful enough to speak their own thoughts to Her.
But now, I know, I am weak.
Not only not brave enough to face God, but often caught running in the opposite direction. I imagine burly brothers and sisters, both living and passed, catching hold of me as I try to scoot out the back-door of faith and turning me, pressing me back in the proper direction, and then pushing me even further with their prayers when my stubborn, terrified feet refuse to go even one step farther. When my own faith is weak or dormant, the prayers of the saints keep drawing me toward the dread throne. They lower me like a dying invalid through a roof, knowing intimately the nature of my disease and its cure.
They are mentors, wise voices still speaking to the Bride, urging her to remember old lessons. Francis chatters amiably to birds and wolves and speaks a very current message about the urgent need for creation care. Thomas unwillingly goes to India and challenges us with the intrepid faithfulness of a doubter. Mary quietly sings her song about a God who fills the hungry with good things and calls us to have compassion on the poor who have always looked to her for aid.
These days, I find myself having a similar reliance on liturgical prayers. Too often, I have nothing to say to God or I am too unbalanced, only complaining or thinking exclusively of my own little problems to the neglect of my local and global community. When the spontaneous outflow is stopped through hardness of heart, the words are a gift. The kyrie reminds me of my constant need for mercy. The Lord's prayer humbles me with every pounding phrase, to be brought to ask for another kingdom besides mine, to ask for pardon, to be put on the same level as my enemies. The prayers from the Book are beautiful, from liturgies are beautiful, and I am attracted to beauty when nothing else moves me. To say, I am angry, I am in pain, I am confused, but here are these words, and I can say them because of their sound, their feel in my mouth, their look on the page. They comfort me. To say, there is so much I cannot do, so much to this life of faith of which I feel incapable, but, these words. I can say them. Even without feeling, even without belief, I can bring myself to say these words and to believe, in this moment, that saying is enough.
I am profoundly grateful for saints and I am profoundly grateful for prayers and I am profoundly grateful for the renewal of mind that allows me to embrace them both.
