How to make a saint

Dominic of Silos was on a mission to rebuild and reform his monastery in eleventh-century Spain. Dominic already had a reputation as a reformer of monasteries, but this new project at the Abbey of St. Sebastian had potential to be his greatest legacy. Despite his ambition, Dominic seemed unconcerned with acquiring any saints’ relics—which could add tremendous value to the abbey. When his monks complained about this, Dominic replied,

If you are willing to listen to and fulfill the precepts of the Lord […] then without doubt you have a saint with you, by whose merits and prayers you will not be inferior to any of your neighbours.

The monks didn’t understand. In retrospect, it seems obvious that Dominic was speaking of himself.¹All information in this post about Saint Dominic is from The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos by Anthony Lappin, which includes the above quote from the Vita Dominici by Grimaldus. But if it sounds odd to hear a saint talking about becoming a saint, that’s because it sort of is. For one thing, a saint doesn’t really have any say in the matter—sainthood is always posthumous²The current standard of practice is that a candidate be deceased for at least five years before the process of canonization can begin. One notable recent exception was the much loved Pope John Paul II. For another thing, it could sound inappropriate for an aspiring saint to be so confident in his own holiness. But assuming that Dominic—who did in fact become St. Dominic of Silos—was not simply an egomaniac, what did he know which so evaded his followers?

Why this journal exists

But I should pause here and say, St. Dominic isn’t really what this entry or this journal is about. It’s not about saints or sainthood or canonization. But all of these things have a part in the story of how this journal came to be. So before I return to St. Dominic, I’ll tell that story.

Several years ago I become fascinated with canonization: the process by which a person is evaluated and then made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Saints themselves are already fascinating enough, but the complex process of how they become saints is equally fascinating. As the process stands now,³ Canonization hasn’t always been as systematized as it is now. Suffice it to say St. Peter didn’t have to go through these steps. there are four phases and three requirements that the the saint must meet. But along the way of learning about all this, I made a few surprising observations about what it means to be a saint.

Three surprising things about sainthood

01. There is no garden-variety saint.

Even though all saints have presumably met the same three criteria, the uniformity really ends there. Saints are exceptional—in almost every sense of the word. Their passions, missions, and achievements are all different. It’s easy to think of saints as all uniformally white-washed into perfection, but their vibrancy and variety as individuals is a marvel. To illustrate this, you need only survey the panoply of patronages on the books. A quick internet browse and I found the patron saints of rabies, laundry and television, and lost causes.⁴Sts. Denis, Clare of Assisi, and Jude, respectively.

02. Being a saint is not about following all the rules.

Secondly, being a saint isn’t about perfection. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about being exceptional, about going further, doing more, dreaming larger. I think it’s easy to think about saints as people who checked off all the boxes and left behind a perfect track record. But saints weren’t people who simply did what everyone else should do, they did what no one else could—or would do.

03. A saint is someone who extends beyond themselves.

The third conclusion I came to brings us back to Dominic, the saint-to-be. I asked what he knew that his followers didn’t, and I believe (who can know for sure?) Dominic knew that after he died, he was to become so much more—that his life once lost would become something else altogether. Dominic knew that he would become something bigger than himself, which encompassed all of those people whom he had touched in life. He would become a story.

A saint is a story

As I’ve already said, there are several things necessary for the making of a saint. But that actual process, in which the church assesses whether an individual should be set on the road towards canonization, begins with the collection of stories—the testimonies of those who knew the candidate—along with the compilation of all known details of their life. Nothing is left out: what they wrote, how they lived, who they impacted, and what they left behind are all closely scrutinized. Their life story is written.

And it seems appropriate. After all, when a saint has died, and when every word they’ve written has been lost, when every person they touched has died, and when every tangible sign of their presence on earth has disappeared, there is one thing that can still live on: the stories we can tell about them. Even when we have begun to doubt their existence, the stories remain. The purpose of this rigor of collecting stories is, of course, to create a faithful portrait of the person, from which to assess their virtues. But I love the thought that all the little detail of one’s life, of everything left behind, becomes a part of the story. Nothing is inconsequential, nothing is incidental. Everything is meaningful, so nothing is coincidence.

The question is where we begin

Then I was struck by a question: What would it mean to live this process in reverse? Or rather, what would it mean to live from the beginning, as if the end were already determined? What would it mean to live like St. Dominic, conscious that everything around you would coalesce into one great story, that every one of those people surrounding you would have a part in it, and that each step you took would be connected to every one before.

Dominic had been given the gift of seeing his life in this way. A few years prior to the conversation with his followers, he received a vision. In a dream, Dominic is presented with three crowns representing the greatest accomplishments of his life: the first, for renouncing the world; the second, for devotion to the Virgin Mary; and the third, for the still-unfinished reform project at Silos. The vision is transformative, confirming his salvation, commending his life’s work, and encouraging him to press on in his vocation. It’s no wonder that Dominic could speak with such authority: he knew how the pieces of his life—past accomplishments and future goals—all fit together, the part that his brother monks would share in his story (his victory would be in their reformation), and the legacy he would leave behind for them.

Not all of us will get a supernatural stamp of approval on our life’s mission, confirming that we are moving towards something truly valuable. But what if we just took it as granted? I believe that one of the most powerful influences on personal identity is the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. So what if the story we told was that our way of life was meaningful, our point of view was valuable, and our body of work was powerful, enduring after us? Or to return to the rhetoric of the saint, what if you lived as if every event of our lives was another piece falling into place, in a story. What if we lived like we were awaiting, hoping, expecting, praying for our miracles? For God to do the impossible at our asking. Or better yet—what if we lived like he already had? And regardless of your feelings and beliefs about sainthood in general or the religion or denomination with which you associate it, I believe this is something a lot of us would love to aspire to: living a meaningful life in expectation of the impossible, with enduring impacts.

As you can see, this journal begins with a big open-ended question, the kind that takes an actual lifetime to answer. But this journal is also part of my answer, my way of taking note, of remaining conscious of the story.