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"First of all the commandments."
October is
a great month for saints. It begins with the commemoration of
St. Thérése of Lisieux and ends with All Hallows
Eve, the night of spirits who do not so much haunt streets as
inspire hearts.
October is a month of giants: Francis of Assisi, who rebuilt
the church and inspired centuries of holy souls; Teresa of Avila,
mighty doctor of the church and reformer of the Carmelites;
Anthony Claret, missionary, founder, archbishop of Cuba, and
chaplain to the Queen of Spain; Simon, Jude, and Luke, apostles
and evangelist; Ignatius of Antioch, one of our earliest bishops,
a martyr in Rome; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Visitation contemplative,
who with her Jesuit friend Claude La Colombière bequeathed
the Sacred Heart devotion to the church.
Talk about diversity.
Yet they all had in common the kind of wholeheartedness that
the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Mark require: to love
the Lord our God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength.
At first hearing, the “Great Commandment” might suggest
to us, as it did to a young woman at the turn of our own century,
a range of high and mighty acts:
all the deeds I long to accomplish for you. I would be a martyr,
a doctor of the church. I should like to accomplish the most
heroic deeds—the spirit of the crusader bums in me. I long
to die on the battlefield in defense of the holy church. I would
be a missionary. I would choose to be flayed like St. Bartholomew,
plunged into boiling oil like St. John, or like St. Ignatius
of Antioch I would be ground by the teeth of wild beasts into
bread worthy of God. With St. Agnes and St. Cecilia I would
offer my neck to the sword of the executioner, and like St.
Joan of Arc, I would murmur the name of Jesus at the stake.
And yet Thérèse Martin, psychologically and physically
frail, hidden and protected from the onslaughts of the world,
soon realized that her gift was not that of the noble warrior
or the martyr of faith, nor that of an apostle, missionary,
or preacher. Her grace was to love with whatever heart and mind
were given her.
 The wisdom shared by all the saints, after all, was not about
the particular talents or deficits one brought to the world.
It was about the wholeheartedness of love, a willingness to
give it all away. They also seemed to know that wholeheartedness
was not a matter of "once and for all," or something
that would happen overnight. It was, rather, a matter of opening
up their entire lives to the transforming grace of God.
The little Thêrèse would learn to love despite
countless slights imagined or real, suffocating caregivers,
and the frailty of her body and psyche. The great Teresa would
face victories and terrible defeats, rewards and rejections—but
with a permeating faith, even through disillusionment over projects
and performance. Francis of Assisi suffered nerve-wracking discouragement
and disappointments with himself and his communities. The wonder
of their lives was that even in their defeats they abandoned
everything into the care of God.
We imagine that wholeheartedness is some achievement or jewel
of ours that we bestow upon the grateful Almighty. Or we fear
that if we offer our all, something cherished will be snatched
away from us. Too much might be asked. Something terrible demanded.
We miss the point. Wholeheartedness means that we present everything
of ourselves before our God, even our dust and dross. The gift
is not taken away, it is transformed. We are not robbed, we
are revitalized.
Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet, in his Gitanjali tells the story of a beggar going from door to door asking for
alms. He suddenly sees his celestial king approaching in a chariot
and dreams of bountiful gifts and lavish endowments showered
upon him by his liege. But to his surprise, the king asks him
what he has to give. He stares, confused and undecided. But
finally he peers into his sack of meager possessions, takes
out a tiny grain of corn and gives it to the king.
But how great my surprise when at the day's end I emptied my bag on the floor to find a least little grain of gold among the poor heap! I bitterly wept and wished that I had the heart of give thee my all.*
All the saints, whether celebrated or unknown, would not cry
bitter tears but weep for joy. Placing every grain of hope in
God, they became likened to God. And in poverty or mourning,
in gentleness or hunger, in the mercy they gave and the peace
they brought, even in the terrible losses they endured, they
found the happiness we all long for.
Saints have entered into the mystery of Christ, described by
Karl Rahner as "the unique case of the perfect fulfillment
of human reality (a nature which, by giving itself fully to
the mystery of fullness, so empties itself that it becomes God)
which means that humans only are when they give themselves away."
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* Tagore, Gitanjali #50. To read to entire poem online, press here. Notice that in the third stanza, second sentence, the word 'earnest' should be 'comest'.
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