Christianity VS. Paganism in the prayers to Saints

When I was reading the stories of Saint in the Golden Legend, I felt very uncomfortable because it reminds me of the superstitious behaviors by the “fake Buddhists” in China. It reminds me of my grandmother’s yearly worshipping of the god of Kitchen, and of the miracles happening to those who worship different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in the temples. They believe that if you pray to a Bodhisattva--a human who reached enlightenment and gained many superpowers--he will come to you and assist your prayer to become true. The saints in the Golden Legend gave me the same impression. They have superpowers. They perform miracles. They fulfill the wishes of those who pray to them, and they were incarnated after death to appear to people and save the good from the evil. If Christianity is the true religion according to my Christian friends (who think all other religions are evil), what’s different between the popular anecdotes of saints and bodhisattvas? How is Christianity different from “paganism”?

As Professor Brown pointed out in the class about temple theology, the core of Christianity is worshipping. From our class yesterday about the saints, I affirmed my understanding that the core difference between Christianity and paganism is that Christians worship the true God--the Lord, Yahweh, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, while pagans worship others. Even though it appears to me that people worship the Saints, they are asking the Saints through the prayers to pray for them to the only God. Saints take the roles of intercessors and mediators between the people and God, and the goal of the prayers to the Saints is to reach God.

However, one might ask, as Jesus is the perfect mediator between man and God, since his task to come to the world is as such, why would people in the Middle Ages need Saints to take this role? Isn’t Jesus himself enough, as he said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”? Let’s probe into this question from three aspects.

Who are the Saints?

Saints are human beings like we are, bearing the original sin when they were born. The difference is that they have a pure mind that tames the senses of flesh and thus they don’t sin. They reached immortality, and become Adam and Eve before the Fall, enjoying themselves in the paradise with God. They are who we are supposed to be, what we are without sin. The halos they wear in the medieval art demonstrates that they enjoy perfect unity with God, and that they become the light from God, who is the source of light.

From Saints to God

The saints seem to make the relationship between God and people more accessible. It is because, firstly, they are human beings, once a sinner like I am, and they understand me a sinner. St. Anselm wrote in his Prayer to St. Peter:

Remember that Christ asked you three times

If you loved him,

and when three times you confessed it

He said to you, “Feed my sheep”.

He is indeed a lover of sheep

Who thus sifts the love of the shepherd

Before committing them to him.

When you had confessed that you loved him,

Then he confided his sheep to you.

How, then, can his shepherd spurn his sheep? (137)

St. Anselm contemplated on St. Peter’s rejection of Jesus. He knows that Peter can emphasize with him as a sinner. As Peter still reaches immortality thanks to God’s Grace, he becomes a model for humans and gives us hope that we can be part of the heavenly family as well. Also, the prayers to the Saints help us to see different aspects of God. God is so complex and wonderful, and it is hard to understand him as a sinner. For the medievals, the biggest dream is to have the vision of God and to see his glory. As the saints are each light of God, they reflect different aspects of God in their own life stories. Through Peter, we see Jesus’s love as mercy and forgiveness. Through St. Catherine, we see God’s dignity, wisdom, and eloquence. Through all the martyrs, we see God’s bravery and transcendence of the worldly suffering. No saints can encompass all the beauty and complexity of the Lord. And their beauty, purity, and holiness are given by the Lord. And thus, to pray to them is to understand God in different forms.

God, Saints, and prayers

God, Saints and the sinner form a triangular relationship through the prayers. The deep sins I have to block me to see God, who is too wonderful for me to understand. But you, my dear Saint, you understand my sins as you were once a human, and you have now become one with the most Holy Father. And please pray for me, the sinner, to the Lord. And because you are rejoicing in the love with Him, I can glimpse and enjoy His love through you. As Professor Brown states in “Anselm and Praying with the Saints”, “God moves the sinner to repentance through the saint; the sinner moves the saint to intercede for him through God; and the saint moves God to have mercy on the sinner” （120）.

The topic on the Saints helps me to understand Christianity’s specialness. It is easy for me to confuse the prayers to the Saints who perform miracles with the worshipping of the gods in China when I see it on the surface. In Christianity, everything always points to the One behind--the Lord Yahweh, while in paganism, Chinese families light fireworks on the fifth day in the Lunar New Year to the god of wealth, because he is the one in charge of the money. I feel uncomfortable about the superstitious acts of some Chinese people back at home because they stay on the surface of the miracles but don’t go behind it. Buddhism is about gaining wisdom, instead of creating images and worshipping Buddhas, the wise men, just as we can’t stay on the surface of waiting for Saints’ miracles, but should honor them as a way to see God.

---YTL

Reference:

Anselm of Canterbury, Prayers nos. 8-16, trans. Ward, pp. 127-206 Rachel Fulton Brown, “Anselm and Praying with the Saints,” in Experiments in Empathy: The Middle Ages, ed. Karl Morrison and Rudolph M. Bell (Turnholt: Brepols, 2013), pp. 115-38.