Easy Sainthood

Rowan Williams concludes a brief summary of the patristic debates about the double/single will of Jesus by saying “we are encouraged to see Jesus as fully aware of the general possibilities of human nature, including the possibilities of betrayal, cowardice, and self-gratification, aware of those as part of his composition as a person with a human nature, yet not actively welcoming, not saying yes to them, so that it still makes sense to describe him as without sin” (Silence and Honey Cakes, 56).

We have a hard time seeing this as a real choice, a real exercise of will, because we are “inclined to romanticize struggle and tension.” From Kant on, “there is a feeling that really good deeds are the ones we do with the most effort, after the biggest struggles; so our moral thinking has concentrated on the difficulties of decision-making more than on the character that develops over a lifetime.” But this really doesn’t fit our moral instincts: “if we think of those people whose moral and spiritual integrity has mattered to us and made a difference to us, we shall normally find that they are the ones whose behaviour doesn’t draw attention to how difficult it all is, how hard they’re working to be good; they are people for whom, to some extent, there is a ‘naturalness’ about what they do. They have become a particular kind of person; and that personal reality has begun to change the human nature they live in and to make slightly different things seem the obvious focus of desire” (56). Williams cites the Orthodox understanding of Jesus to reinforce the point: “Jesus, because as a person he is one with the Word of God, in perfect communion with the Father, changes human nature by his personal loving surrender to God in every detail of his life and death. Those who live in him by grace are in the process of having their human nature changed as their personal relation with him develops. . . . Human nature as transformed by his divine freedom is becoming, as we might say, ‘second nature’ to them” (56-7).

That is the character of sainthood: “the saint isn’t someone who makes us think, ‘That looks hard; that’s a heroic achievement of will’ – with the inevitable accompanying thought, ‘That’s too hard for me’ – but someone who makes us think, ‘How astonishing! Human lives can be like that, behaviour like that can look quite natural’ – with perhaps the thought, ‘How can I find what the have?’” Saints’ live are made up of “incidents that make it startlingly clear how extraordinary behaviour can arise in situations of extreme pressure without any apparent effort” (57).