“Edith Stein,” I answered without pause. Edith Stein, the German Jewish philosopher turned Carmelite nun who was murdered in Auschwitz during the Second World War, seemed a strange response to a question flung at me at the tail of end of a stand-up comedy show. There is nothing light or whimsical about the story of Edith Stein, who was canonized a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1998. But after completing my set of light and whimsical comedy — the residue of a life I lived before my entry into the Society of Jesus — I was asked, “Who most inspires you?” “Edith Stein,” I answered without pause. “She is my patroness.”
Perhaps strangely for a comedian, I connected most with St. Edith Stein’s writings on the cross.
St. Edith Stein, or St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross — as she is referred to, in accord with her vowed religious name as a Discalced Carmelite — has been more a companion than a patroness. I have always had a fondness for her, and for the Discalced Carmelites, but she wasn’t my “number one” until I decided to undertake doctoral studies at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Teresa of Avila’s writings were some of the first I encountered after “reverting” to the Catholic faith of my childhood in my mid-20s, while (attempting) to work as a comedian in my hometown of Chicago. That return to Catholicism would eventually lead to discerning a call to the priesthood and, ultimately, my vocation to the Jesuits. I chose Edith Stein as my patroness because before her conversion to Catholicism she was, herself, an academic, an assistant to Edmund Husserl, the famed German phenomenologist. But perhaps strangely for a comedian, I connected most with her writings on the cross. I awoke every day and read two pages of “The Science of the Cross” as a part of my daily prayer routine. She became my companion for the journey throughout the writing of my doctoral dissertation, and she has continued to accompany me spiritually as I’ve begun teaching in academia.
But I don’t know why I was surprised, as there is a patron saint for almost everything.
When I happened to mention to an oh-so-pious Jesuit brother of mine that St. Edith Stein was my patroness during my doctoral work, he pointed out to me that Thomas Aquinas was the patron saint of academics. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be a patron saint of academics. But I don’t know why I was surprised, as there is a patron saint for almost everything. There are, of course, the popular ones that most Catholics of a certain age especially would know: St. Jude for Impossible causes; St. Joseph for house sellers (among other things); St. Christopher for travelers. Lesser-known patron saints include St. Matthew for accountants, as he was a tax collector, after all; Saint Bona of Pisa for flight attendants, due to her assistance to fellow pilgrims in her numerous visits to Santiago de Compostela. The patron saint of comedians is St. Lawrence, a martyr of the third century, who earned his patronage when in the midst of being burned on a gridiron said to his executors, “I am well-done on this side, you can turn me over.” That St. Lawrence is also the patron saint of chefs, speaks perhaps to the Catholic Church’s sense of humor, as well.
Having been raised Catholic, the idea of praying to the saints wasn’t an alien concept to me. However, having quite a few fundamentalist Protestant aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who all voiced their disapproval of “praying to anyone but Jesus” — echoing Protestant Reformer Philip Melanchthon’s “Augsburg Confession” — gave me pause. Add to that the numerous Catholic aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who by burying a statue of St. Joseph in their back yard to sell their house quicker made me uneasy as a boy about praying to the saints, a discomfort that had not dissipated when I returned to Catholicism in my 20s. If anything, my skepticism about the whole praying to saints thing had grown.
The Catholicism of my childhood was greatly informed by the faith of my Irish American grandmother, who was very much a piety alien compared to the one I embraced when I returned to the church. In the long-standing tradition of medieval piety and devotion, my grandmother said the rosary throughout Mass, even some 30 years after the reforms to the liturgy of the Second Vatican Council rendered such behavior obsolete. My grandmother only knew Scripture from what she heard during Mass, and she had a strong devotion to both Our Lady and Therese of Lisieux, to whom she prayed regularly. In short, my grandmother’s faith was far different than the Christo-centric, scripturally focused, post-Vatican II Catholicism that I found so inviting when I returned to the faith.
And yet, as I continued my journey of “re-version.” I found there was something invigorating and life-giving in reading about the saints — their stories of virtue and failure, tales of lives lived with purpose, and narratives of love and passion that transcended the parameters of the merely heroic historical legend. I gained inspiration from their inspiration, with the Holy Spirt emerging out of their stories and into my being. I felt a kinship toward these holy men and women as I learned of their attempts to walk the road of Christian discipleship, the very road I was attempting to embark on myself. This, I was to learn, is part of what being a member of the Communion of Saints means: to have a spiritual bond with those who went before me in faith and to appeal to their love and support in the world to come.
Indeed, it would be no less than a document from Vatican II that would assuage some of my discomfort with praying to not-God, essentially, as it says in Lumen Gentium (“Light of the Nations”):
For by reason of the fact that those in heaven are more closely united with Christ, they establish the whole Church more firmly in holiness, lend nobility to the worship which the Church on earth offers to God, and in many ways contribute to its greater upbuilding. For after they have been received into their heavenly home and are present to the Lord, through Him and with Him and in Him, they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us.1
Devotion to the saints emerged out of the persecution of the early Christian Church and the admiration that arose among the community for martyrs who emulated Christ’s passion and death in Christ’s name. As theologian Elizabeth Johnson says, “Veneration of the martyrs was pervaded by this lively sense of comradeship between the still-struggling living and the victorious dead, joined in the Spirit of Christ.” Yet even then it was a tetchy subject with members of the early Christian community — questioning the seeming displacement of Christian worship in lieu of the veneration of martyrs.
Devotion to the saints would continue after the end of the Christian persecutions, though primarily locally and relatively informally into the next millennium. However, the mode of exchange between the living and the dead shifted from one of companionship to one of spiritual patronage, and the practice began to include images, icons, and relics of particular holy men and women as their cults developed invariably at the local level.
My Catholic aunts text me to pray to St. Anthony when they can’t find the remote control (it’s in the sofa cushions … it’s always in the sofa cushions).
It was the medieval era when devotion to saints grew exponentially and the process of beatification and canonization became systematized and centralized in Rome. Concerns about veneration crossing over into worship, especially in relation to the “Queen of all Saints,” Mary the mother of God, were among the numerous areas of contention during the Protestant Reformation, particularly since there was no scriptural evidence for praying to saints to intercede on our behalf (except for 2 Maccabees, which Protestants consider to be apocrypha — go figure!). Catholics and Protestants proceeded to double down on their positions for the next 400 years or so, leading up to Vatican II. Lumen Gentium would provide a shift in understanding of the saints’ relationship with the living that was very much in alignment with many of the theological shifts of the council. Lumen Gentium articulates a more horizontal notion of our relationship with the saints, one less about asking favors and more about accompaniment — the understanding that we are all in this Kingdom of God together, supporting and loving one another, through, with, and in Christ.
Still, my Catholic aunts text me to pray to St. Anthony when they can’t find the remote control (it’s in the sofa cushions … it’s always in the sofa cushions). My Protestant uncles tell me that Marian devotion is pagan idolatry. Old habits (and beliefs) die hard. Devotion to the saints is almost as old as Christianity itself, and sometimes it seems every bit its age in its creaky fragility. And yet, there is something there in this Communion of Saints, and it is not about selling a house, finding car keys, or having a good stand-up set (of course, I’ve tried it!). It’s about being more than yourself. It is, to use an overused line at Jesuit institutions throughout the world, being with and for others, both here and hereafter.
1 Second Vatican Council, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964.” https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. [Sec. 49]
2 Elizabeth Johnson, “Communion of Saints and Mary,” Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, Francis Fiorenza and John P. Galvin, eds., (Lanham: Fortress Press, 2011): 435.
