All Saints
11.11113tSE OF LISIEUX, the Little Flower of the • [ant Jesus, is one of the most popular of young 11'1 saints, though many Catholics say they cannot stand her.' I think they are afraid of being stntimental, because her cult is shot through with vry soft feelings. Now we have her own story, • utobiography of a Saint, beautifully translated 1:0111 the French by the late Ronald Knox, who n.td some difficulties to contend with because of the girlishness. Thdrese suffered from her convent superiors. They were afraid she might be 'hysteri- c. 4I and so were stern. One of them was also rather J“e4lous and made her alter her confessions (she :"rote 'under obedience') so that they should seem be addressed only to this lady, who was Mother ouyerior. What Thdrese says of herself is what saints in the making always do say. . . . She feels erysi nfti 1 She must be more loving, espe- cially she must love those who are distasteful to her “31) one occasion such a person asked the saint hat she found so fascinating in her). She must ek suffering for Jesus's sake and choose tasks that ulsgust her. Thdrese felt she was truly 'married' to Jesus. When she took the veil she wrote : 'Eight days afterwards, my cousin Jeanne got married. I can't tell you, dear Mother [Superior], how anxious I was to learn, from her example, about the little attentions a bride ought to lavish on her bride- groom. . . .' She died in 1897 aged twenty-four.
The saints in Saints and Ourselves are twelve in number, ranging through James, Basil, Monica and Gregory, the unfamiliar Malachy of Armagh (who had some nationalistic difficulties as the Romans of that time thought the Irish wore woad), Thomas of Canterbury (politically unsound), down to Bernadette (1844-79), with several others on the way, not forgetting Francis Borgia— just to show that this vigorous family could some- times take its mind off toxic brews. Each saint has a different biographer. Miss Muriel Spark is good on Monica. Miss Nicolete Gray on Gregory is very cautious. 'Probably,' perhaps,"one gets the impression' dominate the text, so that the pic- ture of this badgered saint—longing for solitude and burdened with office---emerges with difficulty.
With St. Odo of Cluny we are on happier ground, if that is the word for it. This is a learned book, beautifully translated and edited. It was Oda's task, and his achievement, in times of disturbance, apostasy and decentralisation, to set a Catholic ethic on its feet and keep it there. As a writer he was very good. His Life of St. Gerald is both lively and edifying, abounding in simple marvels and precepts of love and mercy.
The Eastern Fathers, about whom the author writes with so much vigour and understanding in The Holy Fire, run from Clement of Alexandria, through Origen, Athanasius, etc., down to G. Palamas who saw the cathedral of St. Sophia fall to the burning Turks. Everything is burning in this book. Clement burns to convert the pagan world. 'Where now is Zeus?' he roars, 'he no longer flies, nor loves boys, nor kisses . . . he has grown old with his feathers.' Athanasius, scourge of the Arians, burns most of all. Even after Nictea had declared for the true faith (that the Son is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father) the people were still running in the streets singing their popular Arian song, 'There was a time when the Son was not.' The impact of these ancient conflicts is almost too sharp. One feels that when the Turks came it was time.
What lessons we draw from these accounts of sainthood must depend on our beliefs. Certainly the saints preached mercy and love—at least for those who were not obstinate in heresy, and cer- tainly they were ready to die a martyr's death. This, of course, does not prove their cause; all religions have martyrs, and science and art have them too. Bravest of all, perhaps—though they are not mentioned here—are the martyrs to atheism. They cannot thrill people much in this life, as the saints did, or accept drafts on the future. I suppose they die in the hope that earth's heaviest sentence—mum/us vult decepi—may one day die
too. Theirs must be a hard death. STEVIE SMITH
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