Stories to Draw Us In and Lift Our Gaze
In my experiences working with the faith formation of kids and teens, my favorite resource to rave about is the saints. While I knew I loved certain saints for my own reasons, I had no idea how instantly I would be able to captivate middle schoolers with the stories of ancient Christians. Yes, they love stories of martyrdom, but its beyond that. We are compelled when these stories are told. We are drawn in to these people and their lives. Why do they have such power?
In the writings of the theologians Hans urs von Balthasar and Roberto S. Goizueta, both take up the question of who are those who make manifest the revelation of Christ to the world. They point to witnesses who give credibility to the Church and Christianity. Those who continue to reveal so that we may perceive the truth of divine revelation. It is primarily the saints who are these “signs” for us.
The saints are indeed part of divine revelation. In each of their lives, the saints tell the story of the life of Christ, they reveal His person to the world, and specifically to their own time and place. The person of Christ is our primary source of divine revelation and their lives make his love believable, again and again. We can think of the saints to be icons of Christ, presenting Him to us. Balthasar says of the saints, “The sole credibility of the Church Christ founded lies, as he said himself, in the saints, as those who sought to set all things on the love of Christ alone” (Love Alone is Credible p.122).
How is that we know that it is Christ we are seeing in the saints? It is the ability to perceive it that we have been already given. Balthasar explains this in the way we also understand our ability to perceive beautiful art. We are able to perceive the beauty that is conveyed through an image, we are given the Word made flesh as an image of God, of love, that we can perceive according to our creation.
We perceive Christ again and again through his saints. This discussion of saints is incomplete without turning to our own call to Sainthood. Goizueta speaks on how the saints and witnesses do not just show Christ to us, put they attract us, we are pulled in by the way they live, “More than any abstract principle, dogma, or theological proposition, the concrete lives of these exemplary Christians are what have attracted us to Christ” (Christ our Companion p. 2). These are not just the recognized saints but the people who have surrounded us in our lives, as St. John Paul II recognized them, “those who with simplicity and amid the circumstances of their daily lives testified to their fidelity to Christ” (Christ Our Companion p. 2). Goizeuta especially turns our attention to the faithful witness of the poor. The faith of those who have endured much suffering leads us to Christ on the cross, and to the revelation of His sacrificial love. We can gaze upon the cross and be in awe of the fact that it is beautiful, when it is not pretty. What is beautiful compels us, and divine revelation is a beautiful love that we have been given the gift to not just be attracted to but to also perceive and respond to, as the saints model for us. Saints are the credible proof that we can become lovers too, swept up into the heart of God. So much so that when looked at, one sees Him and not ourselves.