When saints on pedestals are not acceptable but monarchs are, it reveals how we have remodelled our perception of what we are supposed to be. In terms of the Christian hierarchy, it must be the multitude of saints and not the kings or queens who should stand as powerful reminders of the ideal that we ought to strive for. Of course, saints and monarchs are not mutually exclusive because there have been many kings and queens[1] who have gone on to become saints. Through baptism, each one of us is called to be a saint but the truth is, in an age where celebrities have taken over the place of royalty, saints have become irrelevant standards as we become more and more enchanted by the failings and foibles of the rich and the famous.
The ironical inversion of our values—that is, sanctity being traded in for fame and glory—is not the only anomaly that we are experiencing. Today we mark the day of all saints—as in, we remember the “unknown saints” who are not publicly commemorated by the Church. Do we know what exactly we are celebrating? It must be important because ordinarily it is a day of obligation if it fell on a weekday. Let me elaborate.
When we speak of darkness, we are actually remarking that there is an absence of light. Or cold is defined as the absence of heat. In like manner, today’s All Saints, even though it is supposed to be a remembrance of “all the unknown saints”, precisely it has become a celebration of the “absence” of saints.
To illustrate what is meant by the “absence” of saints, let me ask a question. Have you ever heard of falling in love with the feeling of falling in love? The feeling has become more important than the person one is in love with. If that becomes the case, the “object” of one’s love has become a concept which is useful but not necessary. I just need someone (anyone) so that I can fall in love. Or the idea of filial piety. I visit my father out of filial piety which means the visitation is merely to fulfil the obligation of being filial which translate to my Dad being reduced to a utility.[2]
Similarly, the point is that All Saints has been relegated to an “empty” concept because we barely celebrate the saints throughout the whole year. In other words, we are marking a day of meaningless celebration. If light and darkness are in tandem relationship in the sense that one describes of privation of the other, perhaps All Saints only makes sense if we are regularly celebrating the Saints. Sadly, closer to reality is that we have narrowed our saints to basically, Bernadette, Jude, or Pio, saints who are famous only because they are associated with miracles; mostly because they are useful. We hunger for the spectacular and we search for the exceptional. Whereas there are possibly more than 10,000 recognised saints and how many can claim to have a working knowledge of 10, let alone 5 of these known saints?
Our lack of knowledge is but an indication that we are basically utilitarian at heart. As proof, look around and you only see Our Lady on my left and possibly another statue at the back in a forgotten corner. On my right or rather at the back of me, we have the Divine Mercy; another clue to our pragmatism—He is merciful whereas the eponymous Sacred Heart, after which this Cathedral is named, is nowhere to be seen because He is “useless” unless you count the symbol of the Heart fronting the tabernacle. Anyway, if you missed out, there are four saints and even they are functional—the Four Evangelist on the stained glass panels representing the Liturgy of the Word. In plain English, we have forgotten that saints are basically on the “pedestal” not because of their miracles but because of the lives that they had led.
Saints are the sacraments of Christian discipleship. If you want to follow Christ, look at the saints. If the Eucharist is the food of holiness, then the saints are our flavour of sanctity. They have marked out for us the path to heaven. Have you heard of Cosmas and Damian, Giuseppe Moscati, Antony Mary Zaccaria, Rene Groupil, Francis of Nagasaki. These are all medical doctors and are lived examples of sanctity for they modelled their lives on the prototype of Christus Medicus. Their Catholic faith and practical charity have united them to Christ the Physician as to allow His power to work in and through them that they see in everyone who is sick the Christus Patiens—Christ the Patient. How many of our doctors here have heard of Ss Cosmas, Damian, Giuseppe Moscati, Rene Groupil, Antony Mary Zaccaria, Francis of Nagasaki? The point is, there are as many sacramentals as there are professions. If you are a student, check out Ss Thomas Aquinas, Scholastica, Catherine of Alexandria or Aloysius Gonzage. If you were a pilot, St Joseph Cupertino. The list goes on.
The sanctoral or the sacramental desolation in many of our churches is the result of the regrettable process of vacating the Church of its full content. Many of our ecclesiastical buildings are sterile and uninspiringly vacuous. It is no wonder that people easily settle for televised Mass because the Church has already been vacated long before the Pandemic struck us. Simply put, the chicken of desacralisation has come home to roost.
Heaven is brimming with Saints and Angels so much that at every Sanctus, they join us in praising God. Saints are our lights and our signposts showing us the sure way to reach heaven. If we ever get renovated, it would be wonderful to invite into this sacred space more saints. They are our models of excellence perfected by Christ through the Holy Spirit. They teach us how to live really and to die with grace. They indicate for us a horizon beyond the temporal, where the fulfilment of our deepest human desire takes place, that is, to be united with God for all eternity. That remains our goal but while in the world the saints inspire us to change our world so that the City of Man may come to recognise God as well as it can be recognised by God. As GK Chesterton reminds us. “We do not want a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world”. In order to do that, we need to befriend our saints, real ones and not a concept, so that they can inspire us to emulate them. Saints of God. Come to our aid.
[1] Stephen of Hungary, Louis IX of France, Margaret of Scotland, Elisabeth of Hungary, Isabel of Portugal, Edward of England to name a few. They were monarchs who through their Christian discipleship have gone on to become Saints.
[2] A concept’s currency is judged by its utility and we have witness how ideas and notions come and go. This year is supposed to be Wawasan 2020. Even as the corrupt Crime Minister took over from the Old Man, almost overnight, the Wawasan 2020 became replaced with the 1Malaysia concept, if you remember. That is how useless utility is. Perhaps a point to note is if you use people, people will use you too. But I digress.
