Who are the saints among us?

IN A WORLD THAT SEEMS TO BE AT LEAST KNEE-deep in evil and selfishness, it may be difficult to believe that we are surrounded by good people, more than a few of whom are, in fact, saints. The words saint and saintly are, of course, widely overused. Nevertheless we have only to look around to find countless women and men of extraordinary virtue.

The word "extraordinary," obviously, is the key to sorting out the special sheep from the rest of the flock. My parents, for example, were good people. My mother coped successfully with a lot of knotty problems--not to mention knotty people--and my father was both a hard worker and a daily communicant. But neither were saints.

Through the "magic of television," we can see on almost any evening one kind of saint--the relief workers laboring heroically in places like Zaire and Burundi. The odds against them are incredible, yet they carry on. Just the thought of what it would be like to be in their place is staggering.

We know also that in every age there are countless anonymous saints. Some are people whose sanctity is known only to those closest to them, perhaps by the wise counsel they give to troubled others. Some of these anonymous saints are hardly known at all. Their holiness may emerge, surprisingly, only after their deaths. At that time a little reflection makes us aware for the first time of their special goodness.

There are, thank God, a few saints--a precious few--who are not anonymous, saints whose witness gradually becomes known widely. These "public" saints serve as role models, to use a fashionable term, who are invaluable for us even though they stand as mountains that we can never ascend, only gaze at admiringly.

Johnny Carson, the retired late-night TV entertainer, habitually skewered prominent people with his wit and occasional sarcasm. His targets included presidents, kings, billionaire executives, and show business celebrities. But when once asked if there was any living person he wound never make a butt of his jokes, without hesitation, he replied: "Well, I'd never joke about Mother Teresa."

The frail 86-year-old Albanian nun has become an untouchable icon in our time. The reverence with which she is viewed in her own lifetime is almost unprecedented.

In a rhapsodic syndicated column in secular newspapers, David Nylan wrote of "Mother T," as her associates call her:

"All the honors and baubles that a guilt-stricken civilization can bestow have fallen upon her. Which makes her queasy. She mistrusts honors, the fawning words of the mighty, and finds fame, of which she has the world's fullest measure, corrosive."

When Mother Teresa's long life ends, it would not be surprising, nonetheless, if a belatedly grateful world calls for her canonization by acclamation. Even the religious snobs among us who look down our noses at the very idea of formal canonization could not reasonably find fault with that outcome.

Some of the latter have indeed looked down their noses at the suggestion that the late Dorothy Day's unquestionable sanctity should be recognized formally and internationally by the canonization process. "Dorothy," as even her admirers who did not know her personally called her, reflected the same simplicity as Mother Teresa. Both have been willing to live lives of true poverty, willing to devote their lives totally to others. That both Dorothy and Mother Teresa are anything but anonymous is in no way their own doing. I have written previously that when Dorothy was asked to accept the first of the annual U.S. Catholic Award for furthering the cause of women in the church, she replied gently, "Oh, I don't think so."

Both of these saintly women would probably blush at the suggestion that their witness be recognized by all the world and by posterity if and when canonization is proclaimed. But the rest of us would be blessed in abundance.