BETTER LATE THAN NEVER -- A GREAT WOMAN

Thinking about something to write today, I realised that I had completely forgotten June 15, the feast of the Anglican saint Evelyn Underhill. I use the term “Anglican Saint” gingerly but confidently: the Anglican Church officially has no saints of its own, only those shared with the Roman Catholic Church from before the Reformation; but the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has created a very decent Calendar of “Holy Men, HolyWomen”, and when, a number of years ago, I went to Mass at my old Toronto Church of St Mary Magdalene I heard, in the Litany, among a long list of other saints asked to pray for us, “Saint George Herbert”! So I have little reluctance in calling Evelyn Underhill an Anglican saint, and indeed a Doctor of the Church. I first heard about her from my late mother-in-law Noel Wynyard, a rather saintly woman in her own right about whom my daughter Tessa Kuin Lawton wrote a very fine biography, and who greatly admired Underhill as a teacher of Anglican spirituality.

Reading her famous book Mysticism, first published in 1911, I am struck by the civilised ease of the style and the enduring freshness of her intellectual approach. An example, from the introduction:

“All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But other remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream; some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen, declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic sceptic has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there.”

And a little further: “the mystics are the pioneers of the spiritual world, and we have no right to deny validity to their discoveries, merely because we lack the opportunity or the courage necessary to those who would prosecute such explorations themselves.”

And it occurred to me that in this current age, when Islamist terrorism has given rise to a whole new materialist atheism that (in order not to seem to discriminate) now considers all religion not only as ridiculous but as inherently toxic; reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting sages such as Underhill – who includes Muslim and Buddhist mystics in her considerations – may be a crucial antidote.

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN

Hallowe'en is catching on even in France. I suspect that 90% of those who celebrate it have no idea of its context nor of the feast of which it is the even. Mind you, few know much about its background either: the Wikipedia article on it is long and most informative. Still, I thought it would be good to have a little post on All Saints' Day, as a counterweight to all that cobwebs 'n candy.

People who like to read are divided into two kinds: readers of fiction and readers of non-fiction. For the latter – often those engaged in business or other ‘prosaic’ occupations – the favourite kinds of reading are history and biography. History has the pleasure of narrative with the assurance that this story ‘really happened’ and is thus not a flight of fancy or of mendacity; biography, often the lives of great men and women, has the virtue of inspiring admiration and emulation.

For readers of biography, the saints of the Church are a special case. One finds among them few entrepreneurs or scientists, and not many military heroes. However, there are no milquetoasts or marshmallows either. There are Martyrs: those who have suffered and died for the faith, from the victims of lions and gladiators in the Roman arenas to Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz. There are Confessors: those who have proclaimed the faith and worked tirelessly for it, and/or have lived signally holy lives, from the earliest hermits in the desert to the twentieth-century St Faustina Kowalska in Poland. There are Doctors: those who have applied their intelligence and learning to the faith and thus light the way for the rest of us, from St Athanasius to St Thérèse of Lisieux. There are the Evangelists, like St Francis Xavier, who brought the faith to far corners of the world. And there are the saints of Charity, like St Vincent de Paul and Mother Teresa, who have worked tirelessly for the poorest and most forgotten of humanity. Reading the lives of all these, and the works some of them have written, is indeed a journey of admiration and if inspiration: we learn courage, intentness, commitment, meditation, prayer, steadfastness and a vastness of faith that most of us sadly lack.

A particular case is that of the Saints Unknown. The Church allows for this: there are those whose faith shines, but shines in a small or remote context where it is not noticed by those who could bring it to the attention of the Church as a whole. Some of us have known people like this, and our lives have been genuinely blessed by the privilege and the joy. I find it pleasing that the category is recognised: there are so many flowers in so many fields, after all.

The Feast of All Saints celebrates and commemorates all those, famous, known, and unknown, who have been received in Heaven and there rejoice in the Presence of God. It is a joyful feast: meditating on all these extraordinary characters, one can almost feel caught up by them into a faint but joyous echo of Heaven here on earth. In one sense, it should be a permanent feast: the doctrine of the Communion of Saints recognises that we, the faithful of the Church Militant here in earth, are in communion with the Saints of the Church Triumphant. Catholics pray to them, as do some Anglicans; other Anglicans venerate them without asking them to intercede for us. But either way, we can derive strength and support from their courage, their commitment and their discernment. 

I can understand but deplore the representations of Heaven and its saints in most of the Last Judgement paintings. Hell is graphically and hideously imagined; Heaven has serried ranks of boring and bored-looking ecclesiastics. Of course, the experience of Heaven must be ineffable, and hard to picture; but surely something better could have been achieved? Heaven, if it is anything, is more beautiful than beauty, more joyful than joy, more glorious than glory, and more loving than love. The angels are its denizens; the saints its welcome immigrants. What joy, if this were our future. Imagine . . .

I can recommend the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, in paperback, as an inexpensive source of pleasurable study on the subject.