Trying times, these, what with the pandemic and worldwide turmoil. What’s a person like you to do? Get angry. Go into limp apathy? Turn to chemical solutions? Become a hermit? Or…
Back in the 1950s on a very hot and humid day one summer Sunday, I was dressed in my “Sunday-go-to-meeting” clothes standing at the back of the small Catholic neighborhood church sweating in long sleeve shirt and tie. It was a bit more formal back then; the women and girls had to wear some kind of head covering. Men wore suits and ties. Anyway, there was a visiting priest from a nearby monastery, a Benedictine monk who gave what I think is the best homily I have ever heard or read—and I read those by the brilliant John Donne (1572-1631) in a literature course in college. The little priest addressed the parish, saying, “If you’re not a saint, you ought to be one.” That was it.
Short, right? To the point. What more is there to say. Heck, I’ve read those complex and long John Donne sermons. I’ve read those by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the congregationalist leader of the First Great Awakening, who told his congregation they were hanging over a fire on a spider’s web. But to what point are all sermons, from Donne’s to Edwards’s? What’s the fundamental message for those of us who have to deal with pandemics and social problems?
Even humanists who reject any specific religion can adopt an ethics that points in the same direction as those who follow some religion, becoming, say, a “secular saint,” someone who goes out of his or her way to help others or to make the world “better,” if only temporarily so.
So, in a time of death and unrest, of sickness and dissatisfaction, you have a choice: You can let the times get you down or you can lift the times. Those who lift are saints, religious or otherwise. If you’re not a saint, you ought to be one.
Back in the 1950s on a very hot and humid day one summer Sunday, I was dressed in my “Sunday-go-to-meeting” clothes standing at the back of the small Catholic neighborhood church sweating in long sleeve shirt and tie. It was a bit more formal back then; the women and girls had to wear some kind of head covering. Men wore suits and ties. Anyway, there was a visiting priest from a nearby monastery, a Benedictine monk who gave what I think is the best homily I have ever heard or read—and I read those by the brilliant John Donne (1572-1631) in a literature course in college. The little priest addressed the parish, saying, “If you’re not a saint, you ought to be one.” That was it.
Short, right? To the point. What more is there to say. Heck, I’ve read those complex and long John Donne sermons. I’ve read those by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the congregationalist leader of the First Great Awakening, who told his congregation they were hanging over a fire on a spider’s web. But to what point are all sermons, from Donne’s to Edwards’s? What’s the fundamental message for those of us who have to deal with pandemics and social problems?
Even humanists who reject any specific religion can adopt an ethics that points in the same direction as those who follow some religion, becoming, say, a “secular saint,” someone who goes out of his or her way to help others or to make the world “better,” if only temporarily so.
So, in a time of death and unrest, of sickness and dissatisfaction, you have a choice: You can let the times get you down or you can lift the times. Those who lift are saints, religious or otherwise. If you’re not a saint, you ought to be one.
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