Saint Simeon
Sainthood is our common calling. You and I don’t feel much like saints, but we
are trying to move in that direction.
True, we are not perfect, pure, flawless. But St. Paul said that cracked and
imperfect human vessels allow Christ’s light to shine through all the more
clearly. He addressed even the notorious
Corinthians as the “saints at Corinth.”
Sainthood is not a vocation of perfection. Sainthood is a vocation of commitment,
courage, humility, growth, and love. Though imperfect and ordinary, you and I
are saints in the making.
Nineteenth-century author Anatole France as a child became
captivated by the legend of St. Simeon, an eccentric who supposedly expressed
his devotion by living for thirty years on top of a sixty-foot pillar in Syria.
St. Simeon inspired young Anatole one day to “perform a similar act of saintly
heroism.” So Anatole went into the kitchen, placed a chair on the kitchen table,
climbed up and up and sat upon the chair, staying there all morning. At
lunchtime he got down. “His mother, who understood what was happening,
counseled: ‘Now, you mustn’t feel bad about this. You have at least made the
attempt, which is more than most people have ever done. But you must remember
that it is almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen.’"[i]
How true. In
our own kitchens we lose patience with a whining child underfoot. In our cars we exceed the legal speed
limit. In our church settings we
irritate and are irritated by those who approach problems differently than we
do. It’s hard to be a saint in the
ordinary places of life.
Maybe you’ve heard some version of this prayer:
Dear Lord, I’m doing alright today. So far I haven’t gossiped, grumbled, or
complained. I haven’t lost my temper or
demanded my own way. But I’m going to get out of bed in a minute and then I
really going to need your help.
Even
the early apostles were clueless. Even saintly grandmothers do things that, in
the words of Anne Lamott, make Jesus want to drink gin out of the cat
dish. Even church leaders have feet (and
legs and entire bodies) of clay.
Bearing
that in mind, I’ve nevertheless taken it upon myself to nominate for sainthood
someone known by many of you. This person is one of those ordinary saints who
affected my life in extraordinary ways.
Although I believe saints live among us and don’t have to die to be
recognized for the light they shine into our lives, I have chosen to canonize
and add to my personal catalogue of everyday saints, someone who died this
year: my friend, my sister in Christ: Sister Judith Smits, former Executive.
Director and founding board member of The Quest for Social Justice.
If I
get a little teary in the telling of her story, I hope those tears will not
distress you. It’s just that I am so
grateful to have known her. And I miss
her. I said goodbye to her in person
nearly a year ago as she was being transferred from Providence Hospital to a
nursing facility in Wisconsin under the care of her order, the Sisters of St.
Agnes. Her hereditary pulmonary disease
was advancing. When I had occasionally asked about her health in a private moment, she had spoken
comfortably with me about how little time she had left before her lungs would
give out. In those rare moments, I had
been able to bear her words about her impending death without betraying my own
anguish. I was not completely composed the day before she was flown to Wisconsin when a couple of other
members of The Quest and I stood at her bedside. We knew we would not see her
again. Before leaving her hospital room,
I offered a prayer and nearly made it through without crying. Judith indulged me my tears but was not about
to join me in any emotional display. She faced her death, as she faced life,
with no-nonsense determination.
You
may be wondering why I’ve chosen a nun to exemplify the ordinary and flawed
version of sainthood. After all, nuns
breathe a rarified atmosphere. Sister
Judith had taken the extraordinary vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. Many saw her as heroic: standing
with her oxygen tank with the Occupy Mobile contingent in all kinds of weather;
leading poorly attended prayer vigils outside the Cathedral to oppose capital
punishment; planning rallies for immigrant justice; standing with factory
workers being mistreated at a local company; challenging politicians in town
hall meetings; protesting each November at the School of the Americas; writing
letters to the editor on behalf of those on the margins; being faithfully at
the table whenever people in Mobile were working against racism, poverty,
exploitation, war, any injustice; speaking out—even when every other word out
of her mouth was interrupted by a cough. She was hardly an ordinary
Christ-follower, you might be thinking.
She
would disagree. She found herself very ordinary, very flawed, in fact, and her
ordinariness is the theme of the memoir she wrote hastily in the last months of
her life and which I had the privilege to
read in its first-draft form.[1] It’s titled God Chooses the Weak. Not only was her physical body scrawny, but
she was also a weak specimen of sainthood—she would say. She did say.
Nor could
Sister Judith make up for a diminished physique with a big personality. In
fact, she wondered if her lack of charisma and charm hindered her ability to
raise support for The Quest. But her
social unease did not hinder her from welcoming those on the fringes (including
a new female minister in town desperate to find like-minded colleagues). As Judith
eventually came to understand, both her own mother’s untreated depression and emotional distance as well as her own training as a young nun to “avoid friendships”
formed her in some positive ways but deformed her slightly in other ways. She did not lead by personal magnetism.
Judith said she'd often been downright defiant as a child. She did not excel in school. She was frequently in trouble with the nuns who taught her. On the day of her First Confirmation, she forgot to fast, as was then required, accidentally eating one piece of candy. Too afraid of the sisters in charge of her confirmation class to admit her mistake and delay her first communion, she decided to face eternal consequences rather than the displeasure of the sisters. She later explained, “As David said to Gad in 2 Samuel 24: 14, ‘I’d rather be punished by God whose mercy is great than fall into the hands of man,’ Or Sister,” she would add. She emphasized this choice by explaining, “In those days, dying in the state of mortal sin was no joke. You had to have your Act of Contrition handy at all times. You never knew when you might be run over by a bus and off to hell you’d go.”
Judith
failed at many things. She judged
herself unsuccessful in her initial work as a teacher. More painfully, she
failed to achieve her ultimate vocational goal.
You see, when the liberalizing waves of Vatican II brought new freedoms
and opportunities to religious orders, Sister Judith was part of a group of
nuns who began theological studies in preparation for the priesthood. She told me, deep disappointment still edging
her voice, that she had ardently believed she, a young nun in the 1960s, would
be among the first female priests. Such
was the trajectory of the Roman church at that time. Judith was able to admit
to herself only in recent years that that would never happen in her life
time. She knew failures,
limitations. Like all ordinary saints.
What
I think made the Light of Christ shine so clearly in her life was simply the love
of God and love of neighbor, which Mark’s Gospel reading today
underscores. This bedrock love led to commitment,
which led to perseverance. The “burnt offerings” aspect of religion had no hold
on her; a vocation of compassion did. I
believe she would have made a fine priest. I am sad and a bit angry she never had the chance to live out that
calling. But she found other ways to serve the cause of Christ and the people
of God. She was undeterred. Although she had a weak voice in a literal
sense, Mobile has lost one of our strongest voices for Jesus’ way of peace and
justice.
Like many biblical characters called to do a job for which they did not feel
suited, Judith simply saw needs and stepped in and did her best. And learned humbly as she went. And grew spiritually as she learned. She began her religious life with a narrow,
child-like, dogmatic faith, but her questions and struggles helped her grow a
deeper, more complex, and more mature faith.
A
challenge for us as a new church is to cultivate leaders. If we are going to
offer our community a progressive Christianity that takes the Bible too
seriously to take it literally, that welcomes especially those who have not
been welcomed elsewhere, that seeks and adapts spiritual practices (new and
old) to nurture our inward journey and impel us outward to serve others, that
invites science to speak to faith, that above all follows the loving way of
Jesus . . . then we need leaders—flawed, imperfect, but willing leaders—to jump
in and just do it.
So
let’s be willing to fail at something.
Learn from it. Lose the ego. Then
try again. Saints don’t have to have a perfect record.
And
saints don’t have to work alone. When
saints work together, we give one another lots of grace to make mistakes, just
as we need to give ourselves lots of grace.
To try is better than not to try.
We have an eternity to get it right.
Remember what young Anatole’s mother told him after he failed at his kitchen
table attempt to imitate St. Simeon?
“Now, you mustn’t feel bad about this. You have at least made the
attempt, which is more than most people have ever done. But you must remember
that it is almost impossible to be a saint in your own kitchen.’"
I want to make
the attempt. I don't want the perfect to stand in the way of the good. I want to go for the
good. Perfect is a long way off. The
attempt is everything almost. I want to be willing
to take some criticism without falling apart. I am pointing myself in the direction of Jesus.
I
close with some words from Sister Judith, who has been a priest to me, and yes,
a saint of sorts:
My friends, we think of saints as soloists. Maybe St. Simeon was a solo saint, all alone at the top of that pinnacle. But for most of us, we move toward sainthood in the company of other imperfect pilgrims. And that great cloud of witnesses, which now includes Sister Judith, cheers us on.
[1] God Chooses the Weak: A Journey of Faith
Through Times of Change is the title
of the memoir Judith wrote and self-published. I'm in the process of learning how to purchase copies.
[i]
I’ve lost the original source for this story, but an internet search shows many sermons have quoted this same source, verbatim, but without attribution. I’m happy to provide a citation if someone
can provide the original source.
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