WHO IS AFRAID OF SAINTS?

One of the aspects that protestants think that makes orthodoxism repulsive is the worship of saints.The idea of kneeling to another man, invoking him in prayers is perceived as an offence to God and a return to paganism.For this supreme argument against Christianity, protestants have been praised by scientific atheists which saw in them the forerunners of illuminism and of humanism.

Possibly, the most expressive work against holiness is ”The genealogy of morale” by Friederich Nietzsche.He was convinced that priests gave charity at times only because it made them feel superior to the man in whose cap they threw a nickel. All militant atheists have the same way of thinking .For this category of people, had he not been a chicken eater during Easter fast, divinized by fellow monks, the saint would have been a ragged madman – in which the simple saw a materialization of their own suffering .This is why they turned him into o hero. Some atheists do not exclude the possibility of a self-indulged mystical delirium, caused by poverty and hunger or by women’s thirst for the unnatural.

Few know that “ The Antichrist” ‘s author was the son of a lutheran preacher. The detail concerning the confessional apartanence of Nietzsche is not without importance. The visions of the thinker who inspired Hitler, his thirst for a “gay” religion, as he called it, are an inevitable consequence of his Lutheran education. Lutherans – like all protestants and neoprotestants exclude the possibility of man cooperating with God because they believe Christ has done it all and man has no participation in his own saving. That is why the “superman” Nietzsche created is nothing other than a monster hatched in his subconscious devoid of the image of man as a superior being. The Nietzsche superman is a pathetic substitute of a Christian saint.

I do not want to give a list of Bible quotes to support the worship of saints but the fact that atheists, sects of all kinds and the Nietzsche type of persons shake hands when it comes to denying the worship of saints is revealing.

Holiness is the only thing one cannot take pride in, as one loses it the minute he does so. Holiness is the constant growth in acknowledging one’s weakness and flaws(S.Nil from Sorska) and I don’t think any of the opponents of worshiping saints want this for themselves.These men we honour not as gods, but as friends and guides , just as persons that surpassed us in some virtue. In the end, the worship of saints confirm that Christ is present in history and he works through people “ till the end of time”

There is no other reason people reject saints but self pride.The man lacking raw models and precursors expel himself from history .He creates a history that includes nobody but him, like a conceited and idiot Neron. It was not pointless that Nietzsche wrote “ Inopportune Considerations Against History” in which he imagines history as a river that prevents mankind from progress. Eventually, the man who faught holiness, history came to creating his personal history which began with himself. Communists created “homo sovieticus” , the man who works well in factories , and neo-protestants - the brother in spirit who gave up smoking, drinking, wears a tie and reads the Bible.

Indeed, maybe the times of saints imitating Jesus in a world like ours is long passed. Saint Paul says, referring to holiness: “But in a great house there are not only gold and silver vassels but also wooden and earthen; and some are unto honor, and some unto dishonor” (Timothy 2, 21)

Translated from Romanian by Diana Apetri