What Greatness Requires
By DONALD DeMARCO
In a world such as ours, where mediocrity and confusion reign, where leaders mislead us and governments deceive us, the need for greatness is particularly critical. What is greatness, we may well ask? If we are not clear about the nature of this esteemed quality, how easy it is to settle for any number of its counterfeit forms.
Count Henri Claude de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon, an eighteenth-century philosopher, provides us with an amusing, though unhappy example, of this type of mistake. As his rolling name suggests, he was an aristocrat. Each morning, as a youth, a valet wakened him to the words: “Arise, Monsieur le Comte, you have great things to do today.”
More of an eccentric than a philosopher, Saint-Simon never achieved the greatness he sought. In 1823, at a low point in his life, he attempted suicide, but succeeded only in losing an eye. Two years later, near the end, impoverished, and yet still proud, he gathered a few of his disciples and urged them to: “Remember that in order to do great things one must be impassioned.” His life hardly justified such an operatic ending. In the estimation of historian Robert L. Heilbroner, Saint-Simon was “pigheaded,” a man of exceptional “self-indulgence,” and most assuredly not an icon of greatness.
Three Popes have had “the Great” appended to their names: Pope St. Leo I (reigned 440–461), Pope St. Gregory I (590–604), and Pope St. Nicholas I (858–867). St. John Paul II may be deserving of this accolade; many now refer to him as “the Great.” We also think of St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John XXIII, Benedict XVI, and Blessed Paul VI as deserving of this honor. They seem to have embraced all the qualities of greatness. But we return to the question, “What is greatness?”
In The Person and the Common Good (1947), Jacques Maritain, who has earned the right to be known as a “great philosopher,” makes the following statement: “Nothing great is accomplished in the world save through a heroic fidelity to some truth which a man who says ‘I’ sees, and to which he, himself, a human person, must fulfill; of which, perhaps, he alone is aware and for which he lays down his life.”
This sentence includes four factors that greatness requires: truth, fidelity, person, and self-sacrifice, all of which are disputed in the modern world.
Many dismiss truth as a presumption, fidelity as a form of stubbornness, person as a mere individual, and self-sacrifice as both foolish and imprudent. Here we find reasons that explain the scarcity of greatness. What does the person of greatness “see,” as Maritain indicates, in the truth of things? In the moral sphere, he “sees” the sanctity of life, the dignity of the person, that the end does not justify the means, the imperative nature of the Golden Rule, and the fundamental importance of love.
Many have recognized these values, but failed to remain faithful to them. It has become tedious to learn about political figures who backed away from their stated convictions concerning the sanctity of life while offering the feeble excuse that they did not want to impose their values on anyone, as if the sanctity of life were their own idiosyncratic value or that anyone could actually “impose” a moral value on anyone.
Greatness demands fidelity as well as vision. Gabriel Marcel, for whom fidelity was a core human value, states that at the heart of fidelity “the ‘I’ sees itself confronted with God as highest person. And God remains faithful to me, because in Him, infidelity is impossible.” Therefore, our fidelity to God should bind us to Him and His creation as His fidelity binds Him to us. Without fidelity we vacillate, and wave in the wind.
The third factor deals with the nature of the human being. Is man a mere individual who desires things for himself? Or is he a person in the larger sense, one who combines individual uniqueness with a generous concern for others? The great personalist thinkers such as St. John Paul II, Marcel, Maritain, and others, understand the human being comprehensively as a unique and unrepeatable person who directs his gifts to the benefit of others. A person embraces both uniqueness and social responsibility. Therefore, the notion of generosity is an essential ingredient in the makeup of the great person. But it is a generosity that extends to the point of laying down one’s life for one’s neighbor.
Here we must see self-sacrifice not as the dissolution of the self, but the highest point of charity. We see this in the sacrifices that parents make for their children, and in the sacrifices that saints make for mankind. We see it in the great teachers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.
We also find it in the great medical scientists, such as William Harvey, Edward Jenner, and Louis Pasteur. These stalwart researchers remained true to their visions despite strong social opposition, and even ridicule. Their selfless contributions — knowledge of the circulation of the blood, the importance of vaccines, the need for sterilization, respectively — have provided countless benefits for people the world over.
We see it in Christ whose ultimate sacrifice is our redemption.
Greatness, therefore, requires the integration of a regard for truth, fidelity to one’s vision, personal responsibility, and heroic self-sacrifice. It is as rare as it is excellent. “Not everybody can be famous,” as Martin Luther King Jr. once pointed out, “but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.”
Consequently, greatness should appeal to everyone and should not be rejected because of the difficulties it presents. Yet we seem to be adept at finding reasons, however shallow, for distancing ourselves from greatness. We think it is excessively demanding and interferes with our more practical plans. Nonetheless, we should imitate what we admire. And we should admire what is truly admirable.
(Dr. DeMarco is a senior fellow at Human Life International. His latest book posted on amazon.com is Why I Am Pro-Life and Not Politically Correct.)
