|
| |
Can a Unitarian Universalist Be a Saint?
A Sermon Given
by The Rev. Roger Fritts
on November 1, 1998
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Many religious traditions single out a few people for their exceptional religious virtues.
The Buddhists venerate perfected persons, people who have gained insight into the true nature of existence; and having
achieved spiritual enlightenment, they are free from the bonds of desire, and will not be reborn again.
Hindus revere a bewildering range of divinely human and humanly divine figures including gurus. A guru is a
personal spiritual teacher or guide who has attained spiritual insight.
Saint worship is contrary to Islam, which does not admit of any mediating role between people and God. However,
Islam does have a tradition of both living and dead mystics who are said to be friends of God and they are considered
to have the power to work miracles.
The Jewish tradition has never encouraged veneration of human beings. However, among Jews there is some popular
devotion to people who have died martyred deaths and to beloved rabbis and teachers.
Most Protestant churches, born out of the reformation, do not have Saints today. Only the Anglicans and the Lutherans
maintain feast days for Saints. The Puritans rejected the idea that Saints, because they had special grace, could
intervene in people's lives. American Unitarians and Universalists grew out of this tradition of Puritan New England.
Today only the Roman Catholic Church has a formal, highly structured process for recognizing Saints. The process of
Saint making appears to strongly appeal to the current Roman Catholic Pope, John Paul the II. During the reign of
John Paul the II, the Roman Catholic church has recognized more Saintss than under any other pope.
How does the Pope determine who becomes a Saint? He has a staff of priests who conduct an investigation. These are
the questions the investigators ask:
- Does the candidate have a reputation for having died a martyr's death, or for having practiced the Christian
virtues to a heroic degree?
- As evidence of this reputation, do people invoke the candidate's intercession with God when praying for divine
favors?
- What particular message or example would canonization of the candidate bring to the church?
- Is the candidate's reputation for martyrdom or extraordinary virtue founded in fact?
- Conversely, is there anything in the candidate's life, or writings which presents an obstacle to his or her
canonization? Specifically, did the candidate hold, teach, or write anything which is unorthodox, or otherwise
inimical to Catholic faith or morals?
- Are any of the divine signs attributed to the candidate's intercession inexplicable by human reason and therefore
potential miracles?
- Is there any pastoral reason why this candidate should not be beatified at this time?
- Since the beatification of the candidate, have further miracles occurred through the candidate's intercession
which can be accepted as signs from God that the blessed is worthy of canonization?
- Is there any pastoral reason why the blessed should not be canonized at this time?
The key element in all this is evidence of miracles. The miracle is almost always a physical healing. Notarized
testimony is taken. A panel of medical specialists studies the case to determine that the cure could not have occurred
by natural means. A panel of theologists investigate to determine whether the miracle was the result of prayers
addressed to the candidate and not because of simultaneous prayers to some other established Saint. Until 1983 the rule
was two miracles for beatification and two more after beatification for full Sainthood. The current Pope now only
requires one miracle for beatification and one for full Sainthood. No miracle is required by martyrs for beatification.
Martyrdom is enough.
Can a Unitarian Universalist become a Saint? Could one of you become a Saint? Under the rules of the Roman
Catholic Church it is possible, if you are willing to convert and become a Catholic. Just last month a Jew became a
Saint. Of all the new Saints recognized by the current Pope, the recognition last month of Edith Stein has been by far
the most controversial. Edith Stein was the youngest of eleven, born on Yom Kippur in 1891 to Jewish parents in
Germany. In 1906, when she was 15, Edith Stein declared that she was an atheist and a feminist. Philosophy was her
passion and in 1913 at the age of 23 she entered the university to study under the father of phenomenology, Edmund
Husserl. Two of Husserl's disciples, Max Scheler and Roman Ingarden were Roman Catholic. Through their influence
Edith Stein began to question what she called her "rationalistic prejudice" and she began to explore Christianity. In
1922 she was baptized into the Catholic church. In 1933 she was banned from teaching by the Nazis because of her
Jewish background and so she entered a convent. In 1938, to avoid the Nazis she moved with her sister to a convent in
Holland. The Nazis saw her as a Jew not a Catholic. Edith Stein died at Auschwitz in 1942.
Pope John Paul II shared Edith Stein's interest in phenomenology. The Pope knew Roman Ingarden and for his own
thesis in philosophy, the Pope had chosen to write on the phenomonology of Max Scheler. Perhaps as a result of his
personal interest, the processing of Edith Stein's Sainthood moved forward quickly. The Pope had lowered the standard
from four miracles to two and required only one miracle for Stein because it was determined that she died a martyr's
death at the hands of the Nazis. However, to make her a Saint the church still needed one miracle.
The investigators found their miracle in Brockton, Massachusetts. There a two and a half year-old girl swallowed an
overdose of Tylenol. She suffered such severe liver damage that she was put on a priority list for a transplant. Then,
overnight, she got better. The church ruled that the child made a miraculous recovery. There was no medical
explanation, the investigators said the only reason was the prayers that the parents and their friends offered to Edith
Stein. The girl's father had felt a link to Stein. The name the parents picked for their daughter, Teresia Benedicta, is
the name Edith Stein chose for herself when she became a nun. Many Jewish groups and members of Stein's family
have questioned the Vatican's logic and sensitivity, arguing that Stein was sent to the gas chambers because she was a
Jew, not because she was a nun, therefore she should not be considered a Roman Catholic martyr. Nevertheless, on
October 12, Edith Stein's name was added to the role of Roman Catholic Saints. In this way a Jew or even a Unitarian
Universalist can become a Saint.
However, is there any other way that one of us could achieve Sainthood? The dictionaries define a Saint as a person of
great piety or virtue, a person of exceptional holiness, a model of excellence. I suspect that each of us can think of
persons we have met who have shown great piety or virtue, exceptional courage and strength, people who are to us
models of excellence.
In my own life I have met a number of people who fit that definition. I think, for example, of the music director of the
church I served for eight years in Illinois. His name was John Giles.
If John were alive today, he would have very mixed feelings about my suggestion that he qualifies for Unitarian
Universalist Sainthood. John grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois in what we today would call a dysfunctional
family. There was alcoholism and abuse. However, his music talent was noticed at an early age. After several
summers at Interlocken Music camp he decided to major in music at the University of Illinois, where he received a
Bachelor and a Masters Degree of Music. He received a Danforth Foundation grant for excellence in teaching, and
advanced training in music at the University of Michigan. John became the head of the Choral Department at the Knox
College in Galesburg, Illinois. He returned to school in 1980, studying voice at Northwestern University, and
eventually becoming a full-time professional musician. He sang in Chicago's Lyric Opera, he composed, taught, and
became the Music Director at the church I served in Evanston, Illinois.
We were the same age, and as we got to know each other I discovered the joy of working with a man of great
creativity, energy, love for music and love for liberal religious worship. Over time I discovered his compassion for
others, his caring and support for the people he knew in the church who were ill or who were struggling with personal
issues. "Through his music and his teaching he is also a minister to us," said many in the congregation. The
membership voted to change his job title from Director of Music to Lay Minister of Music, to recognize the power of
his work. The church members gave John, as a gift, this stole that I wear today.
John prepared rules of life that he tried to follow. He wrote them out and shared them with anyone who was interested.
- Rule number 4 was "If you're going to have a fantasy, have a good one."
- Rule number 8 was "Too much communication is better than not enough."
- Rule number 13 was "Never turn down a hug from someone you trust."
In the summer of 1989 John gave a sermon in which he talked openly for the first time not only about the fact that he was
gay, but also that he was HIV positive. Over the next several years we had many conversations. One day when John
was struggling with the early symptoms of AIDS, he told about a dream.
John dreamed that he was aboard a swashbuckling, adventure-packed pirate vessel, and that his sister Jackie, who had
died five months previously, filled the movie screen of his mind's eye. "Do you want me to take you on a real
voyage," she asked John with earnest gravity. John gulped and made his choice with great humility. "Okay," he said,
"let's go."
Suddenly his pirate ship was filled with all of the people he knew who had died of AIDS. John named people we both
knew. Christian, Michael, and dozens of others. The ship set sail for the edge of the world. However, the edge of the
world was not what he had expected. The whole horizon was filled with abandoned ships, moldy garbage, and other
debris thousands of years old. With great difficulty John and his shipmates maneuvered the ship through the garbage
and moved closer and closer to the edge of the world. Finally, they ground to a halt, then climbed the rigging to peer
out over the edge.
They saw what lay beyond the edge of the world. A beautiful, shimmering black pool bathed in an eerie, ultraviolet
light. In the pool swam hundreds of people. He could barely make out their faces and hands, because their bodies kept
flickering in and out of sight until they ultimately disappeared. Slowly, one by one, John's shipmates jumped off the
rigging into the pool, giggled like schoolchildren, their faces and hands turning white and their bodies gradually fading
from view.
Finally, only one other sailor and John remained on board the vessel. They looked at each other and said "this is
crazy." With great difficulty they navigated the doorway through the abandoned ships and headed for land. At that
point John's sister, Jackie, came back into view and said, "Well, John, it looks like you've made your decision. Live long and prosper."
"So what does this mean?" I ask.
"Two things," he said. "First, it means that I am going to fight to stay alive for a while longer. Second, when I woke
up all the anxiety I had been feeling had dissipated . . . Death," he told me "though still present, had lost its sting. The
grave, though its jaws were still open wide, had somehow been robbed of its victory."
John's fears and anxieties would come back and he would talk about them with me and with other friends. He was not
a Saint in the sense that he was a perfect person. However, for me he was a friend who showed exceptional courage
and strength, in the face of illness. He was to me a model of openness and excellence in the way he lived his life.
- Rule number 23 was "There are two and only two modes in life: Fear-mode and love- mode. Fear-mode thrives on
secrecy, rigidity, isolation, and denial. Love-mode thrives on justice, compassion, and discipline.
- Rule number 42 was "There are always Choices. The trick is to find the healthy ones."
- Rule number 46 was "Nobody is at their best when in intense pain, including me; especially me!"
- And rule number 73 was "If God really wants to call you home, there's not too much you can do about it; but until
then I can 'bust butt' to stay healthy."
John died of AIDS on August 22, 1996.
I believe that it is healthy to have people we look on as Saints, people of great piety or virtue, people of exceptional
holiness. Not perfect people, but people we can hold up as models of excellence. The Pope gets to do this when he
holds up Edith Stein and proclaims her a Saint. However, we can all do this. Remembering and modeling our lives
after people who have shown great strength and courage in the face of great difficulty is not simply the right of the
Pope, we can all look for people that we admire. I suspect that all of you know people like Edith Stein, who lived her
life with courage in the face of the concentration camp. And I suspect all of you know people like my friend John who
lived his life with courage in the face of a devastating illness.
To all the Saints of our lives: thank you for your courage and your strength. What you did is not forgotten but lives on
in our memories and in our lives. Amen.
Primary Source:
Woodward, Kenneth L., Making Saints, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1990.
|
