Saints

With All Saints and All Souls days this weekend, a look at what Chesterton and Lewis has to say about saints.

Chesterton

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

“The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need.

There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means a man who knows he is a sinner.

Lewis

The stamp of the saint is that he can waive his own rights and obey the Lord Jesus.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been. How gloriously different are the saints.

Lewis, being a Protestant, will never be recognized officially by the Catholic Church as a saint, but if he is in Heaven, he is a saint anyway.

As for Chesterton, the cause for his sainthood has stalled. Perhaps it will restart - certainly many Chestertonians hope so - but even if it's never official, if he is Heave he, like Lewis, is already a saint.