Heroic Virtue: an interview with Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B. by Richard Smoley Gnosis, Summer 1992

A community in the full sense is a group of people who have a shared hero — even the Deadheads, for example.

Richard Smoley: To begin with, I’m wondering what use you think there is for the concept of the saint today.  A saint seems to be someone who was once alive on earth, who developed something exceptional, and whose help can still be called upon.

Brother David Steindl-Rast: I’m interested that you picked just those elements.  Intercession is one aspect, of course, but the official notion of a saint in the Catholic church is that a saint is one who has followed Christ with heroic virtue.  This term “heroic virtue” is important and rather interesting.  The notion of the saint comes very close to the notion of the hero, particularly in the sense that the hero is constitutive of the community; the hero creates community.  You can actually say that a community in the full sense is a group of people who have a shared hero — even the Deadheads, for example.

Of course in the full sense the hero is a model that shows us what life is all about.  It’s all about dying into a greater fullness of life over and over again.  The hero is singled out as representative of a particular group of people — a king or a priest or some exalted figure — and goes through some form of death, then returns to the community as life-giver.  Even the Gospels are at least subconsciously modeled on this hero pattern: Jesus is our hero.  That notion of Jesus as hero of the Christian church, although we hardly ever use that term, is ancient.  In early texts you have Jesus compared with Greek heroes; in the Middle Ages, you have songs about “Christ our hero”; in the nineteenth century you have Hopkins, who speaks of the “hero of Calvary” and “Christ my chevalier.”  So Jesus is the hero of all Christians.  The saints, mirroring one or another aspect of Jesus Christ, are heroes — male or female — for subgroups within the Church.

The other aspect you mentioned was intercession.  That’s very important, I think, because the saints that really matter to people are those whose intercession they call upon.  We find that very early in the Christian church.  In its historic development, the veneration of saints has sometimes had unhealthy overtones.  A Christian really doesn’t need a mediator to Christ; Christ is the mediator to God.  But early on you have the saint as a go-between between us and Christ, the go-between between us and the go-between.  That’s a little unhealthy.

But for an intelligent Catholic Christian today, the intercession of the saints and hagiography in general can also have something very positive.  I’m personally very interested in saints; I like to read the lives of the saints, and I pray for the intercession of the saints every day; I pray to a whole slew of saints.  But it’s not in the sense that I need a go-between or anything like that.  You’re a member of the family, and if one of your family members is a very wealthy person, then you too will be better off for it, because that wealthy uncle might once in a while give you money.  The saints have achieved closeness to God; by keeping close to them, you have a better chance of coming close to God himself.  By keeping good company even with living “saints,” spending a lot of time with them — satsang, the Buddhists call it — your spirit will be uplifted.  It’ll make you better.  But if you spend a lot of time with people who are likely to lead you astray, that’s not so good.  In this sense, a close relationship with the saints is something very healthy.

And then of course nothing has as much power to change our lives as the example of others.  No theory, not even any higher experience, has as much power as when it is embodied in a human person.  Unfortunately, there is a lack of heroes in our time.  Young people especially are looking for heroes, not in the narrow sense, but in the wider sense of persons with whom they can identify and by whom they can be inspired.         

There are many new books on saints out.  I like the approach of Lawrence Cunningham.  He wrote What Is a Saint? and The Catholic Heritage.  But this heritage is totally embodied, there are no abstractions in that book.  Cunningham goes through all the types of saints, for instance the warrior.  This type embraces both the saints who were martyrs because they refused to serve in the Roman army or other armies, and those who were actually soldiers.  Other types are the ascetic, the pilgrim, the artist, the activist, even the outsider; there is a very important kind of “saint” who has to be an outsider with regard to the Church.

Smoley: What you say about modeling is interesting because if you take the typical life of a saint, you see that the saint is very elevated.  That can evoke two kinds of response.  One is “I’d like to be more like that.”  The other, which is equally typical, is “This is impossible.  I might as well give up.”

Brother David: And you excuse yourself from reaching a level you could reach because you’re looking at a level that you can’t reach.

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