Selections from FM GALICIA
01.12
Every now and then, I enjoy reading the Lives of the Saints. There are very few books existing that contain so many amazing stories. They are a waterfall of people’s fates. Besides providing instruction, they also offer a great number of fantastic narratives. I’m convinced that, in all the literatures and among all the peoples of the world, there is no such collection of stories.
But even these lives and these stories can be systematized by looking into how it is that the saints became saints. In turns out that in addition to the most important requirement—absolute faith—several other acts were also required. Chief among them was an honorable death. Martyrdom was important, but an honorable death was your guarantee that you would become a saint. The saints died in horrible ways. All the descriptions of brutality found in today’s literature cannot compare with those terrible manners of dying that were assigned to the saints. The phantasmagorical imagination displayed by the authors of those deaths refute any declarations made by pessimists who contend that, in today’s world, humankind has declined. Because then, at the start of the millennium, the fantasies and the industriousness of the executioners knew no borders. But the variety of deaths is only an insignificant feature of belles lettres. What is important is the conduct of those who were destined to die. None of them wavered, bowed down, or encountered doubt. They accepted their hours or minutes of death almost joyfully. Besides, there are things that our simple minds cannot fathom—parents witnessing the torture of their children and vice versa. But no one allowed themselves the opportunity to flee the situation or to be cowardly. The path of a righteous and virtuous life. Few were able to stay true to it. And those that were can be divided into two categories—ascetics and those who relentlessly helped others. Other possible paths—acts for the good of the church committed above and beyond the call of duty, or producing miracles and wonders. And the saints I like best are those who came up with something that you keep thinking about to this day.
Especially important for man’s reflection and reasoning is the life of St. Simeon Stylites. A person who, out of a thousand possible ways to live, chose the strangest—20 years of prayer on top of a tall pillar, on which no stray move was possible. Day after day, for twenty years, for every minute, only in this spot. Completely ignoring that which we call life’s opportunities. Just two leaves of cabbage a day for twenty years. And that’s it for the food. For the rest of the time—conversations with God. No outside impressions; no journeys, meetings, or entertainment. And, most importantly: no complaints, an inhuman patience. A pragmatist might consider such a life to be useless, an escape. But actually, Simeon is among those who provide life with at least a little bit of sense.
Whenever I start to get bored and impatient, I always think about Simeon Stylites. How did he deal with it?
Translated by Mark Andryczyk