By DONALD DeMARCO
Holiness may be easier to recognize in a person than it is to define in words. One recalls how the multitudes recognized the holiness of John Paul II and exclaimed in one voice, “Santo subito” (sainthood now). Nonetheless, it is possible through the medium of writing, rather than through the medium of a holy person, to shed some light on this most exalted and important quality.
We begin by looking to language. Holiness, as its etymology in almost every European language indicates, is a special form of wholeness. The words “heal,” “health,” “whole,” and “holy” are all etymologically related. A person may be healed and regain his health, which is his physical wholeness. But holiness is a form of wholeness that includes God. As such, it involves man’s conformity to the will of God. Holiness, therefore, is a complete form of wholeness.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, holiness signifies two things.
First, it denotes “purity,” which means being “unsoiled.” In this regard, holiness implies a certain intimacy with God, a union without alloy. Aquinas is well aware that the human mind can be “soiled” by its involvement with pleasures and possessions.
Second, for the Angelic Doctor, holiness denotes “firmness” inasmuch as it demands loyalty to God who is both man’s beginning and end. In general, holiness refers to both the person of holiness and God to whom and for whom the person’s actions are directed (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 81, 8).
Holiness is original. The holiness of God precedes all other forms of holiness, just as innocence comes before guilt, and as creation comes before the fall. In not remaining holy, one is rejecting his original condition.
John Henry Cardinal Newman, in one of his sermons, speaks of “the holy and renewed heart which God the Holy Ghost gives us” and “how it may exist in infants, who obey the inward law without knowing it, by a sort of natural service, as plants and trees fulfill the functions of their own nature; a service which is most acceptable to God, as being moral and spiritual, though not intellectual.”
Newman’s remark is consistent with the appropriateness of identifying the male children who were slaughtered by King Herod as the “Holy Innocents.”
Another important application of the adjective “holy” is in reference to the “Holy Family.” The family had a long history before the advent of Christianity. But, as G.K. Chesterton has astutely observed, Christianity “did not deny the trinity of father, mother, and child. It merely read it backwards, making it run child, mother, father. This it called, not the family, but the Holy Family” (Heretics, 1905).
Giving the child prominence distinguished the holy family from pater familias (Latin for “father of the family” or “owner of the family estate”). By the unselfish pouring of their love into the child, parents imitate the procession of the Holy Trinity that gives prominence to the Christ Child and special honor to the Nativity. Abortion, therefore, is a clear and emphatic refutation of a family’s claim to holiness.
Because holiness is original, it is not ambitious. A person of holiness is not interested in performing heroic acts but in doing everything with a purity of heart. Purity, then, is maintaining one’s original condition. St. Peter affirms the qualities of purity and firmness in his own way in 1 Peter 1:13-16 where he states the following: “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (see also Lev. 11:44 and 19:2).
Holiness is recognizable because it imparts a splendor of its own, naturally, and without fanfare. A lighthouse does not ring bells, send up flares, or shoot off cannons in order to communicate its presence. It simply shines. Holiness is profoundly and effectively communicative on its own terms.
This is what Blaise Pascal had this in mind when he stated that “the serene silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the might of the Spirit of God.”
One of the most unfortunate features of the modern world is the dethronement of God and the enthronement of man in his place. By virtue of this usurpation, man takes on the task of defining and generating his own holiness, a feat that is not possible since holiness is not the mark of one who is alone and alienated from God. Thus, the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche could advise, “Love yourself through grace, then you are no longer in need of your God, and you can act the whole drama of Fall and Redemption to its end in yourself.”
With the concomitant eclipse of God and decline of religion, it is no longer commonly believed that God is an eternal and inextinguishable source of wisdom and goodness, that God alone is the measure and the means of all holiness. Instead, man himself, not God, becomes the measure of all things. But it is God that remains the measure of His creation and not His creatures.
Holiness belongs primarily to God. Whatever degree of holiness an individual possesses does not originate within himself but through his intimacy with the divine. Holiness is not an illusion; it is an objective reality apparent in the life of one who radiates the love of God.
+ + +
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress