November 5 is a special feast day on the Jesuit liturgical calendar–the Feast of All Saints and Blesseds of the Society of Jesus, a kind of All Saints Day for Jesuits. Five years ago, in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I celebrated Mass in our formation community in Rome on that day. The homily, translated into English, is below.
We need saints.
Today more than ever, I feel this need. In these days of isolation, loneliness, anxiety, and disillusionment, we need companions. We need to know that we are not alone—even in the dark nights when we cannot sleep. And when we are confused, afraid, full of doubts, we need companions who have experienced confusion, opposition, doubt, sin and penance, and yet have come to peace.
Today we celebrate the great consolation that we have such companions. As Jesuits, we celebrate the fact that among all the saints recognized by the Church, there are many who made the same choice we have made, who prayed as we pray–who have, we might say, eaten with us in the refectory. As Moses says of the word of God, these companions are not across the sea but are near to us. In the long winter we are experiencing, we need only open our mouths in prayer, and these companions will be present at our side.
Today we remember not only the great names—Robert Bellarmine, who cheers us on in our studies, and Francis Xavier, who reminds us that our studies are only a means to spread the Gospel. Among these heavenly friends, there are many less famous ones, perhaps even some companions we have known in this life who are now in the Father’s house.
Every year when we reach the second half of Ordinary Time and volume four of the breviary, I find the holy card of Bob Araujo, a Jesuit who taught me in Chicago and greatly encouraged me in my studies and advised me during some doubtful moments of my formation. Bob suffered quite a bit in his life, first, from opposition in his career and, then, from a slow and painful cancer. He died in October 2015. When he died, the words of St. Paul came to mind: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” When he died, another companion said to me, “He’ll get right in.” Now I talk to Bob from time to time, and I ask him, “What do you think? How am I doing? Do you have any advice for me?” I imagine you also have such companions.
But when we talk about saints and Jesuit saints, I must admit that there is also something that disturbs me, just as there is something that disturbs us in the Gospel passage chosen for this feast: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”
I’ll explain what bothers me. In March, when we started the first lockdown, a story from the life of St. Francis Xavier came to mind. While Xavier was working in a hospital in Venice, he was afraid to touch the sick for fear of contagion. Understandable. So he took his hand and scratched the back of a sick person–covered with sores and pus–and then he put his hand, covered in pus, into his mouth. And he said to himself: “There is no longer any reason to fear the sick because what is inside them is now inside me.” There is a similar story in the Autobiography of St. Ignatius.
This story is not mentioned in the latest Prime Ministerial Decree, nor in the pronouncements of our episcopal conferences. It was not a very advanced strategy for achieving herd immunity. It was simply an act beyond any logic we know. Beyond the logic of well-being, of social responsibility, beyond even common sense. We cannot dismiss Francis Xavier and Ignatius with the usual, “But they were men of their time.” I’m sorry, but eating the pus of a sick person was disgusting and dangerous even in the 16th century.
There is something about saints that resembles the approach to a black hole—those astronomical phenomena that exert such a strong gravitational force that nothing, not even light, can escape. For science fiction writers, the fascination of black holes comes from the fact that what happens inside a black hole is completely mysterious to us. The laws of physics, space, and time change. There is no way to study the inside of a black hole. The forces inside are so great that they become incomprehensible. So science fiction writers like to treat black holes as the passageway to another reality, to alternative universes, to the past and to the future. Inside a black hole, reality is simply not what we know as reality.
The problem with saints is that they seek holiness. And holiness is like the inside of a black hole. It does not correspond to our laws. The grain of wheat that falls to the ground, which Jesus speaks of in the Gospel, is a black hole. And that is what saints choose. When they are offered comfort, health, a long life, social respect, they choose—the glory of God.
Another phenomenon popular in science fiction and related to black holes is the “event horizon,” that is, the horizon around a black hole beyond which it is no longer possible to escape the hole’s gravitational pull. The point of no return. The plot of many science fiction stories is based on the decision of whether or not to cross the event horizon.
This is the choice that Jesus offers us in the Gospel. The choice of holiness, of God’s glory at the cost of everything else. The certainty of never being able to return. The risk of wagering everything on the cross.
St. Isaac Jogues, after being tortured by the Hurons, decided to return to the forests of North America knowing full well that he would be martyred. He decided to cross the event horizon and enter the black hole of holiness. It still amazes me when I listen to the list of saints in the Roman Canon, after visiting the churches in this city dedicated to those saints, how many of them were martyrs. And among our companions–the saints and blesseds of the Society–the number of martyrs–from Edmund Campion in England to Miguel Pro in Mexico–is impressive.
Brothers, I ask you: do we still want holiness? It troubles me to ask the question because it seems to me that the answer is, “Well, maybe, but nothing extreme.”
Do we really want the glory of God or is a comfortable Limbo enough for us? At this moment in the history of the Church, it seems to me that even Purgatory is too demanding for us; if there’s Netflix in Limbo, we’d choose to go there. We are afraid of black holes. We would be happy to be like another astronomical phenomenon, that of white dwarfs—stars that are too small to become black holes, whose gravitational force is too weak to move other stars, and so they die silently and slip away into space. There are not many science fiction stories about white dwarfs.
If, with regard to holiness, we find in our hearts much of the white dwarf and little of the black hole, there is a remedy suggested by one of our companions–a man named Ignatius. If we realize that, honestly, we do not want holiness, says Ignatius, we should pray for the desire for holiness. It seems to me that the Church, the Society, we, I need this prayer. We must rediscover the gravitational pull of holiness.
At least, though, we have this advantage: the difference between a black hole and the kingdom of God, the point where the metaphor breaks down, is this: the saints can cross the event horizon. May they return to help us! And let us pray that their desire may become our own.
(Original: Italian)
Readings: Dt 30:10-14; Jn 12:23-26
Collegio S. Roberto Bellarmino, Rome
November 5, 2020
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 