A Saint is a Sinner, Deified

I went to Mass for the Solemnity of All Saints.

I didn’t have to. I know All Saints’ Day is  a Holy Day of Obligation, but I don’t really believe in “obligation” anymore. I was actually planning on having another quiet pray in the car, in the parking lot facing the church, so I wouldn’t have one of my panic attacks. I’ve only really been over the terrible weeks-long head cold that Adrienne brought home for under twenty-four hours anyway, so I should have stayed home. But Adrienne needed to go to Mass, and she didn’t want to go alone. So I took her.

I wish I could tell you all the wonderful stories about how Adrienne is doing and how much she loves school. She still wants me to respect her privacy right now. She’s not a little girl anymore; she’s a young woman. But you can be assured she’s having a wonderful time, and looks forward to every day.

I apologized to her recently about trying to be a proper Catholic homeschooling mother for so long, when it would have been much wiser to give up and put her in school earlier. I explained about the harsh way I’d been brought up, and the lies I’d believed, and that I thought being a Christian was something totally different from what it actually is. I promised I’d give up on trying to move us to Columbus or Pittsburgh and let us just be salt and light here in Steubenville, not with the Catholic community who have never accepted us but with her friends on the block and in school, where she’s so happy.

We’re  both happy, now that I’ve given up on being a proper cookie cutter Steubenville Catholic mother, six days a week and when it’s not a Holy day of Obligation. On days when we’re supposed to  go to Mass, I’m still miserable.

I am still terrified of the sacraments.

I am still half certain that God doesn’t love me.

I am still angry with God that it took until I was thirty-nine to get to a place that was anything like a peaceful one– and even then, I only got there by giving up on every hope and dream I’d had, and I’m still suffering from trauma. I am so furious. I don’t want to say the things I’d like to do to God, for what God did to me. And I am afraid that God will be offended by my anger.

I am still in a panic that if I ever go to where the Communion of Saints are, they will treat me like the Catholic Church has done and I’ll spend eternity being shunned and spiritually abused. I’m afraid that if I receive Holy Communion, He will poison me. I can’t remember the last time I received.

I spent all of the liturgy stimming in the pew, rocking and rubbing my hands together to distract myself from my fear. I tried not to make eye contact with the statue of the Virgin Mary because I’m even more afraid of her than I am of God.

The homily was about sanctity and how to become a saint, and I think it was a good one. I couldn’t really pay attention, because I was trying not to be sick.

The music was beautiful, and I wished I’d had a head to listen to it.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Deus Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna in the highest.

What is a saint?

A saint is a sinner, deified.

That is what it is to be a saint. To be a saint is to be deified, sanctified; to be made Holy, even though only One is Holy. To be a saint is to be drawn into the life of the Holy Trinity, to be a Child of the Father, to be a member of the Body of Christ. Some people think God sanctifies by covering up sins so He can’t be offended by the stench anymore, but I don’t believe that. I believe that sanctification is deification. God became man so that man could become God.  “going to Heaven” is a softer way of saying, “becoming one with God.”

A saint is a human being who had a certain body and a certain soul and mind, in a certain time in history. They belonged to a culture that had its good and weak points. They knew what they knew and were ignorant of the things they didn’t. They spoke this language and not that one.  They had good notions about some things and very bad notions about others. They had tempers that flared and passions that got out of control. Some of the things they did were glorious and heroic. Some of the things they did were the opposite. Every one of them save one, Miriam of Nazareth, failed God and sinned. And God took that sinner and pronounced them good, and then He made good on His word and healed anything in them that wasn’t good. What form that healing took, I can’t say. It started with a life of repentance on earth and most often, I suppose, the healing continued in purgatory. Sometimes, I suppose, the purgatory took longer than others. But when He was done, the sinner was deified.

I would still like to be deified.

I’m not very keen on the Catholic culture that I have known. Catholic kitsch makes me sick to my stomach. But deification sounds nice.

Being deified is not about following rules. Oh, there will be rules, but rules are not the point.

Being deified is not about finding your niche. It’s nice when you can find one, but sometimes deification means having nowhere to lay your head.

Being deified is not about getting it right, because ultimately, only God will get it right.

It’s about being yourself, sinner that you are, in God.

It’s about living your life, yours and nobody else’s, with your anger and your trauma and your grief, in God.

When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we begin to be deified.

When we eat this bread and drink this cup, if we permit it, our lives become a hagiography.

Next thing I knew I was helping Adrienne get in line for Holy Communion, and somehow I was next to her instead of staying in my seat. She doesn’t like to ask the priest for the low-gluten Host herself, so I was going to ask for her. And the next thing I knew I was asking the priest for the low-gluten Host, and I received as well, and I began to be deified.

And I’m not any different than I was before. I’ll be worried and terrified about having received Communion for weeks. But at the moment, it felt fine.

Adrienne and I scooted out of church right after the blessing, to avoid seeing anyone we didn’t like. We went shopping for school lunches, chattering about the good times we had planned.

Nothing had changed, and so had everything.