Fashions in Saints

...For the bartering and selling, the living and loving—yes, even the green plains and steep mountain-sides, the winds and the stars—pass with the swift suddenness of a shadow with the coming of night, and all that remains of the sentience that was a man is what is in the minds of those of his kind who love and live after him on earth—and his own vastly better part, in a vastly better land...

...Further: "What saint's day it is I know not, but your familiarity with the Roman calendar will no doubt supply that datum...

...He is thus being remembered today by at least his fellow-priests of the Church, who, in reading their breviaries, will pray with hearts, or lips, or both, to God, in honor of the heroic virtues of Saint Casimir, confessor...

...Not such a one as we use daily— the familiar chart of months and numbers and vivisected moons which comes to us yearly with the highly lithographed compliments of this or that bakery, garage, tire manufacturer or bank, and concerning which one faintly recalls tales of Roman (and even Catholic) origin...

...In the light of eternity, perhaps, it should matter to no one, so long as mankind has its saints to shoulder mankind's burdens and plead mankind's causes before the throne of God...

...What would be the effect should one direct a prayer to any of these, long gone from here...

...Linus, who was a Pope, and Peter Chrysologus, triply-honored as bishop, confessor and doctor...

...the main difference between the two being, one reasons, that more saints of Carmel appear on the latter—otherwise they are very likely identical...

...And there was I! Saint Matthias, Apostle...

...Even if they are not, the Carmelite variation will serve...

...One wonders about these ecclesiastical heroes of an ancient time...

...How fortunate they must consider themselves to be undisturbed in their eternal business by the importunings of feeble mortals, inhabitants of a flesh and sphere cast aside by these blessed as an outmoded garment and an untenable dwelling ages ago...

...Upon consulting the list for the name of the saint on whose day I was replying to the letter—and softly, of course, to the jibes—aforementioned, I found that it belonged, all twenty-four hours of it, to Saint Matthias, Apostle...

...No—for here is the prayer, Polycarp," he might be told further, "Now do you see what can be done May 8, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 17 about it, for certainly you have been long gone from mortality, and that someone has disinterred you from a calendar, or a martyrology, to direct a prayer toward, is surely a fact very deserving of consideration...

...Polycarp, here is a prayer begging your intercession in such-and-such a situation," that martyred bishop might be told by Him Who, the catechism says, "makes our prayers known to them...

...A Butler's Compendium supplied the information—why, certainly!—the man appointed, by divine guidance, to the place of the pitiable suicide, Judas Iscariot, who might have been a saint...

...I, a Catholic, recalled not a fact, not a legend, not even a pious story concerning Saint Matthias...

...and these are but a scratching of the surface, chosen with a vague gesture toward their hitherto unfamiliarity to the writer, and present nonenity to, no doubt, many, many others...

...Outside of that, I—and my natural shame of my lamentable ignorance was tempered by the wellgrounded supposition that I was certainly not alone in my lack—knew nothing of the good Matthias, Saint and Apostle...

...Matthias, he who had been made twelfth of the Twelve, after the Master had gone...

...Is there a better fate on earth for a man than that he be called bishop and confessor, or saint and apostle, and be remembered in the prayers of priests for all time, if only for a moment, one day a year...

...That should have been an end to the thing, but the calendar and the Compendium, once consulted, were intriguing...

...Polycarp might reply, in tones of extreme surprise, "For me...

...Mathilda, a widow, and Juliania of Falconieri, a virgin...

...but one of those lesser known lists of dates, with their corresponding saints and important liturgical events...

...Well, before replying to his letter, I went a-seeking a Roman calendar...

...He had been an estimable person, surely, to bear the dual title of Saint and Apostle, even now, long years, long centuries, after being called to his reward...

...In a styleridden world, is there a fashion in saints...

...A sincere Socialist, now, or an avowed atheist, or even a belligerent Bolshevik, I can see and hear and remain cold, but an agnostic...

...Will Anthony of Padua, Francis of Sales and he of Assisi, Rita, John of the Cross, and all others to whom men pray in these times, some day be merely names opposite a date, as far as men are concerned...

...Raymond of Pennafort, who was a confessor...

...Then and there I determined that not an occasional letter but all my correspondence with that gentleman would depart from me flying at the masthead the banner of the appropriate saint or feast...

...For me, Lord...

...Certainly to the saints themselves it matters not a whit...

...Today, the day on which this is being set down, one Casimir, a confessor, is listed on my Carmelite calendar...

...The best I could find (and it is quite good enough for all practical purposes, and even for such an impractical purpose as the writing of this article...

...16 THE COMMONWEAL May 8, 1929 FASHIONS IN SAINTS By ALAN DRADY "YOU will perceive, no doubt, that this is written on the eve of George Washington's birthday," is the opening line of a letter I received some weeks ago from a friend who is one of those "show me," agnostic persons...

...Possibly...

...There, and in the calendar too, one finds Polycarp, who was both a bishop and a martyr...

...I have, on earth, a comfortable niche in that place where the hierarchy stores its saints, and am recalled on rare occasions, and vaguely, by priests...

...Still . . . sanctity, for its very rarity, is deserving of more than it receives in the minds of men...

...To a few I am still a name, and to a few others a distorted and fanciful personage in certain histories, but the majority of mankind either never knew or have completely forgotten Polycarp, Lord, and I am well pleased that things are as they are...

...Before writing "Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle" on the top of the intended letter, then, that I find out just who he is and had been on earth was both seemly and wise...

...He alone, perhaps, of the millions who trod the green plains and climbed the steep mountain-sides, who gazed at the stars from those wind-blown heights, and, being mortal, shortly abandoned the stars to their twinkling, and fled from the chill of the breeze, who bartered and sold, lived, loved and died, in the dim era when Casimir was about his shriving of sinners and other priestly duties, is remembered at all...

...I am queer that way about my agnostic friends...

...Skipping through them, one is startled at the number of saints of whom one knows nothing, and startled also at the realization that those listed are but a scant handful compared to the numbers listed in the martyrology, a book of heroes known to very few beside our seminarians, who absorb bits of martyrology along with bread and meat at meal-times...

...There is the Litany of the Saints, the calendar, the compendiums and the martyrology...

...was a Roman calendar, as amended for their own use by the order of Carmel...

...Will the influence, the positive, gladdening influence, of, for instance, the Little Flower, be yet experienced 2,000 years hence ? Or will she have been recalled to heaven to share fully in the rewards of Love, forgotten, needed no longer by a race busy with the beseeching of saints of their own time and manners...

...One is saddened a trifle by the thought that one's favorites in heaven are doomed—or blessed—to meet some day the same fate at earthly hands...

...A gently ironic jibe, that last, at a familiarity which is wofully deficient, and an agnostic's almost offensive reference to the habit, or foible, of some of us who are pleased to superscribe "Ash Wednesday," "Maundy Thursday," "Feast of Saint Francis de Sales," and other religiously-derived calendrics on our personal correspondence with, say, agnostics—in order to show them plainly that, friends though they be, we are quite out of sympathy with their agnosticism...

...Twenty centuries hence, should finis not yet be written to the story of man on earth, priests will pray the same prayer, mayhap, and Casimir will be well content to be forgotten entirely for the other 364 earthly days each year...

...Why, men have long since forgotten me, Lord...