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There’s something addictive about reading the lives of the saints. For one thing, the stories are entertaining, and full of drama in exotic locales.
And some have wilder special effects than a Star Wars movie—the stigmata, bilocation, levitation, angelic rescues, and fiery signs in the sky. I devour the books, and so do my kids. The lives of the saints are powerful demonstrations of divine mercy, inviting us to praise God for all his blessings.
I think, though, that there lurks a danger in the general run of saint stories. The problem is not with the saints or the stories, but with sinners like me who read them.
For it’s all too easy for us to conclude from these stories—with all their emphasis on the spectacular and miraculous—that saints are unusual folks indeed, and that sainthood is for people who are “different” from you and me. And this imagined strangeness can comfort us as we settle into a second-class Christianity, something less than sainthood,…
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