Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

All Stars, Movie Stars, Heiresses,...and the Communion of Saints

The print and electronic media are rife with stories about celebrities, mostly from entertainment and sports. The stories are about who is sleeping with whom, couples divorcing, who’s having a tummy tuck, who’s had a DUI, and who’s been sent to a drug rehab – salacious stories about sex, drugs, lavish living, and even violence. People obviously have a fascination with celebrities and celebrity – at least those celebrities whose lifestyles epitomize self-indulgence and who seem to live as if God does not exist. Should it matter to you or me if Paris Hilton had another DUI or what she was wearing when she was seen at wherever the paparazzi track her down? More "art" than news, so much of what we see in the tabloids and even in the mainstream media are examples of what writer Wendell Berry says are the worst "public art" has to offer: that which "glamorizes or glorifies drugs, promiscuity, pornography, violence and blasphemy" (Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community).

If our goal is theosis, the call to holiness, what are we doing paying attention to the antics of celebrities? Is there an alternative? There is, but not in the mainstream media. What we can do is turn our attention away from the mainstream media and look to the communion of saints, those men and women who, through the course of their lives were able to find their way to holiness. As Father James Martin, SJ writes in his wonderful book My Life with the Saints, we are all called to holiness – to our own personal way path to holiness; and we are able to discern that path when through our readings of the Gospels and the lives of the saints. The saints, by the examples of their lives, inspire, intercede, guide, and help us in our own theosis. Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ, whose cause for sainthood is presently being advanced, spent many years incarcerated in a Siberian work camp wrote that he sustained his strength over the years knowing that "God will not, has not asked us to bear any more than he himself has born in his Incarnation and suffering and death, or to experience anything he himself did not experience" (He Leadeth Me). Fr. Walter’s words inspired my wife and me through our son Paul’s difficult life-shortening illness and death. Saints are inspirational, they pray for us, and they can lead us to God if we let them. Their impact can be far-reaching: On November 4, 2001 Pope John Paul II declared Bishop Pavel Gojdic, first Bishop of Presov and later Apostolic Administrator of Mukacev, blessed. Blessed Pavel was imprisoned after the Communist regime made the Greek Catholic Church illegal. He was his flock’s "man with the heart of Gold." To a Jewish woman, Blessed Pavel was a lifesaver. The CWNews service reported on January 29, 2008 that Blessed Pavel’s lifesaving efforts led to his being recognized by the Yad Veshem Holocaust memorial as "Righteous among the Nations." Imagine the impact were the nightly news to have a five-minute segment on Blessed Pavol’s life and the Jewish woman whose life he saved. Fat chance. Brittany Spears and Roger Clemens will hold the viewers through the next commercial. Now that this column is drawing to a close, I think I’ll return to Valerie Martin’s Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis; timeless reading about a timeless saint.