The Difference Between a Good Man and a Saint

A few years ago, my friend’s father died. He was happily married for 54 years to his wife and best friend, and they had six children together. He was an active parishioner at St. Robert Bellarmine parish for 42 years, serving on the parish council and Pre-Cana team. He organized their parish March for Life bus trip to Washington, D.C., with his wife, and he served as a lector, extraordinary minister, and a weekday altar server. He was a good and thoroughly Catholic man. 

It should be enough to be a good man in this life. When I walk into my local Catholic church on the Mondays when they have the Blessed Sacrament exposed, I am among twenty or so other people reciting the Rosary and adoring the Lord. That I am one of the only ones without gray hair is not lost on me. 

On what grounds would one criticize such a scene, though? These are folks active in their parish, actively seeking silence with our Lord, giving homage to Our Lady. I do not know the state of their hearts, obviously, but I would wager most are not falling victim to the slavery of mortal sin on a regular basis and that they are walking in a state of grace. These are good things. 

It could also be that they are at an age and of a generation in which church and community go hand in hand. If I were a retiree with copious amounts of time in my calendar, wouldn’t I want to spend it in a scheduled, meaningful way—such as going to daily Mass and catching up with other folks my age afterward? It is as much something to do as it is a good thing to do. 

They are easy targets for Gen Xers like myself, or those of a younger generation, to take potshots at with pejorative monikers such as “Boomer,” “blue-haired old ladies,” or “Karen from the parish council.” There may even be some misguided envy lurking in our hearts—“Must be nice to have enough money to be able to retire,” or even an envy of an innocent kind of ignorance: “These modern churches are so banal—why does it not seem to bother them?”

The people I find myself praying with on Mondays, like my friend’s father who died well because he lived well, are good, normal, practicing Catholics. Just why I am so critical in my wicked heart is a mystery to me. Not to mention that in thirty years I will be in their shoes and some self-assured young pew sitter will be judging me with the same judgment I judged with. And it’s not even just people of the prior generation but people my own age who are content to have their kids baptized, attend Sunday Mass, and say grace before meals—ostensibly good people doing all the good things. They do not get “carried away.”

A good man may or may not be remembered by his family, and a handful of others in passing, after his death. As the Scriptures attest, “No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them” (Ecclesiastes 1:11). Whether he is enjoying heavenly repose or being purified in purgatory, the man who is saved is saved not on account of his goodness, but by grace. He is recalled, if at all, with affection on account of his natural goodness—a smile, an affability, a generosity of spirit. 

There is, however, a part of me that chafes at being content with “good enough.” I have heard quoted more than once the saying, “The only great tragedy is not to have become a saint.” This haunts me. What makes a saint uniquely qualified to wax about Heaven? What inspires him or her in magnanimity? What leads people who have never met them to invoke their intercession hundreds of years after their death? And what makes me think I can join their lot?

The saint, on the surface, may be all the things the respectable man is not—a holy fool, or a man of contradiction and uncouthness. He may be obsessive with the things of Heaven at the expense of manners and convention. He would rather die than commit a mortal sin. He is always “a bit much.”

And yet, he cannot be ignored. People are drawn to those dabbed with the perfume of sanctity—holy men and women living lives of deep faith, charity, and heroic witness—because their lives go beyond the ordinary and commonplace, even in the midst of the ordinary and commonplace. Or good folks are repelled by them because the saints take their idea of “goodness” and crucify it before their eyes. It is not enough for them to serve at a soup kitchen once a month; they must abandon their livelihood to make themselves a slave of the poor. It is not enough to say their nightly prayers; they seek to pray without ceasing so that every breath they take on this earth is breathed out as a holy oblation. 

It is not enough to be “good”—in fact, they see themselves as more wretched than any man alive and are acutely aware of their shortcomings. “Why do you call me good?” our Lord says. “No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18:19). And they suffer acutely, whether by inviting the contempt of the world with their ardent love or simply because they are so far from Heaven while on this earth. They are not running to simply finish the race—they are running to win (1 Corinthians 9:24). 

A man who wants to be a saint has touched the hem of grace and been transformed, and his heart is no longer content with the husks of pigs. He strains, exercising his will for the good, but it is only when aided by the gift of faith and the grace of perseverance that he acquires virtue. While the good man moseys through a meadow path enjoying what God has created, the man who sells everything he has in order to be a saint knows he is on a precipice—that the stakes are higher than the highest mountain and his ability to balance so precarious that he must cling to God with every fiber of spiritual muscle he has because otherwise he will fall to his death. Pride and vainglory, chief officers in Satan’s army, perch near the top to relentlessly poke at his feet.  A man who wants to be a saint has touched the hem of grace and been transformed, and his heart is no longer content with the husks of pigs.Tweet This

Magnanimity is not on the radar of the good man—for he is content to be good. The saint wrestles this virtue of magnanimity like Jacob with the angel and has his hip knocked out of its socket. He wants to do great things for…God? Neighbor? Himself? To be remembered? Yes, his intentions are pure. Or are they? This is what keeps him up at night, the dogs of temptation lapping at the foot of his bed. For the saint is close to Satan as he is close to God. While the good man enjoys the smell of his wife’s baking in the kitchen, the would-be saint knows with familiarity the sulfuric stench of evil’s breath outside his bedroom door. 

The good man graces the world by his goodness. He is in good enough shape that he doesn’t need to train and finishes the race commendably. He receives his medal of participation and joins his family for a meal, content; he is loved and he loves. Meanwhile, the would-be saint takes his meals alone: bread with tears. The race for him is not between first place and last place. It is between first place and death. 

The world would be transformed by an army of saints—but even a handful would suffice. A good man is not hard to find, but a righteous man—a saint—one has trouble finding even ten (Genesis 18:32). Is this because they are as rare as a master sculptor or a chess master? That it is beyond the common man to become one? Or is it because men have been encouraged to be “good enough” and that that shall suffice? 

For scarce for a just man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man some one would dare to die. But God commendeth his charity towards us; because when as yet we were sinners, according to the time, Christ died for us; much more therefore, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:7-9)

No, the invitation to join the communion of saints is one extended to all, the impossible made possible by grace. That they are rare is not because it is not possible to become one, for all things are possible with God (Matthew 19:26). That we have settled for less is because we have not chosen the better part, for only one thing is necessary (Luke 10:42). For we have not “willed the one thing.”

It is a good thing to be a good man, for we die as we live, as St. Robert Bellarmine said. The good man is to be commended for his goodness insofar as it reflects the goodness of God. But the world doesn’t need more good men. It needs saints. That we choose the lesser is, perhaps, one reason why Heaven is ever beyond us.