How Saints Can Help Us Sinners

Jim O'Grady, freelance podcast reporter, producer and editor, tells us why he looks to a Catholic saint in life's difficult moments, and listeners call in to talk about their favorite saints or spiritual guides.

→ "You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Live Like a Saint" | New York Times Magazine

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To wrap up the show today, a call-in, along with a name and a voice, who some of you astute WNYC listeners will remember, Jim O'Grady. Maybe you saw Jim's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine. It's a letter of recommendation, and here's what it's about in brief. In difficult times, or amid what he calls unreasonable fear that is leeching the color from your life, Jim recommends the comfort of saints. He writes, the saint doesn't have to be a literal, official Catholic one. They can be anyone who rejected a life of maximal self interest in favor of radical service. Well, Jim O'Grady these days is a frequent podcast reporter, producer and editor. In a previous life, he was a WNYC reporter. This piece in the New York Times Magazine is You Don't Have To Be Perfect To Live Like A Saint. Hey, Jim. Welcome back to WNYC. Glad you could join us.

Jim O'Grady: Hi, Brian. It's so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who are the saints who help you navigate life's challenges or offer spiritual guidance? Whether they're literal Catholic saints or people who embodied radical service unrelated to religion, do you have such a person who you turn to in your heart, in your head? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. First, Jim, I want to just say it sounds really hard to be, as you put it in your piece, annually waylaid by irrational, apocalyptic fear. How are you doing?

Jim O'Grady: [laughs] Well, first of all, I admit that it's embarrassing that I have this fear that I know is nonsensical in essence, but I guess I'll briefly describe it. It happened to me again this late winter, sitting at my desk, looking out the window at a stripped and barren world. I just have this moment where I envision the thing that we need the earth to do every year on schedule is to bloom, is to put forth greenery, leaves on trees, plants and flowers. We depend on it so much that we take it for granted. I have these negative epiphanies where I think, "So this is the year when suddenly it doesn't happen."

I know it's silly, but it also connects to something inside me. I think it expresses, I felt, in the moment at least, kind of a loss of faith in the world's ability to regenerate. I felt like I was stuck in a rut myself, especially with my work life. This fear just came barging in to remind me that I wasn't doing so well.

Brian Lehrer: You write, "Maybe you too have an unreasonable fear that is leaching the color from your life. Maybe you remedy this through walking, meditation, or therapy. I recommend picking a saint to help you." [chuckles] Where should one begin in that endeavor if they're interested in taking that path?

Jim O'Grady: That line is about, I realize, even though this is a strange little quasi-ritual I go through just about every year, I'm not special. Everyone has challenges like this. Everyone has moments like this. I had a book. I just remembered this book I had read and really liked. It's called All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time. To your point, it doesn't have to be a Catholic saint by the author Robert Ellsberg, what he does for each day of the year, he gives you a mini biography of a different saint, broadly defined. I thought, "Why don't I just go back to that book and search for a saint who can just be with me, who can serve as a kind of a role model, who can provide me with a strategy, an approach toward getting past fallow times?" That's when I came across my new friend, Brother Lawrence.

Brian Lehrer: An actual Catholic saint, fairly obscure.

Jim O'Grady: Very obscure. Technically not a saint. The Catholic Church has a list of 10,000 official saints. He's not officially on it, but he was a 17th century soldier turned Carmelite friar who just-- He grew up a peasant in northern France. He enlisted in the 30 Years’ War, kind of out of desperation and starvation, saw horrible slaughter in combat, was wounded himself, captured as a prisoner, probably tortured, released, and went back to combat. He was wounded for the rest of his life and sort of broken inside.

He ended up in a monastery in Paris that was known for its great scholars and thinkers and revered, articulate men at the time. He worked as doing menial work in the kitchen, scrubbing pots, repairing sandals. He wasn't noticed, nobody asked him anything until one day a visiting church official just struck up a conversation with him and didn't leave for hours because Brother Lawrence was telling him how he made his life meaningful from day to day, from hour to hour, from minute to minute. When this church official left, he was convinced that he'd been in the presence of a spiritual master.

You might notice, this is Cinderella [chuckles]. Brother Lawrence was literally a scullery servant who was overlooked by everyone, but was really the beauty, and in this case, spiritual beauty. This really appealed to me, the way he found a method to savor his daily life as rote and menial as it was.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find yourself tempted to take Brother Lawrence's path of what you just described, or what you write in the article was, "savoring dull chores like peeling vegetables and washing pots"? Do you find yourself tempted to give up all this journalism and podcasting and go work in the back room of a kitchen somewhere? Maybe you'll wind up a character on The Bear.

Jim O'Grady: [chuckles] No, not literally. I wanted his approach to apply to me in my life and the work that I do. I wanted it to be transferable. For him, what he did was place himself in the presence of God through more or less prayer as he toiled, which lifted up his labor and gave it a certain dignity and gave himself the sense that he was in the presence not of an angry God, but a loving God and a companionable God. He has this great quote that he says, "We can do little things for God. I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and afterwards, I rise happier than a king."

Here's this common person doing a method that's available to all of us common people, and feeling like a metaphorical king because of it. I found this appealing. We can all do this. I try to do this myself at different points of the day to just sort of savor my own experience. That's how Brother Lawrence came to be in my mind, my pal, my daily friend.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some calls from listeners on their saints. Again, as Jim O'Grady defines it in his New York Times Magazine article, the saint doesn't have to be a literal, official catholic one. They can be anyone who rejected a life of maximal self-interest in favor of radical service. Olivia in Ocean Port in Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hello, Olivia.

Olivia: Hi. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got for us? You have a saint?

Olivia: I actually have two, one being Saint Ignatius, who founded the Jesuits. My dad definitely heavily- he definitely prayed to St. Ignatius a lot and was a big influence on me and my brother. We're both Jesuit-educated. He is definitely someone where I definitely turn to just living my everyday life and being open to the world, and people of the world, and different cultures and surroundings, as well as St. Jude. St. Jude is a big saint. He's actually my patron saint. For someone who typically can be anxious, I find him very reassuring and actually someone who brings me closer to not only my loved ones, but to Jesus and all that's good in life.

Brian Lehrer: Olivia, that's a beautiful story. Thank you very much. We're going to go next to Anna in Stockholm, Sweden. Hi, Anna, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York.

Anna: Hello. Hello. I thought that I would call in because it's just I go swimming every day and being in the water, I am at my most grateful. Then I have taken my hands together and I've been praying. I picked up, actually, St. Louis, the saint from Edith Piazz. If anyone has seen Lamont the movie, it's a, it's very, it's very profound in that movie, how she prays to Saint Louis. I imagine, too, and then it was just that celebration that day. I realized that I'm actually praying to my own angel because when my friend sent me St. Louis, the photo, I was like, "That's not my saint." I do that praying in French, too, because I'm just, I'm not religious, but I'm desperate. It makes you very humble to not only clasp your hands together and being in a grateful spot, but I swim also three times a day. It just gotten me close to Muslims, too. I was like, gosh, it's so humbling to be praying all the time because I'm so tired of praying, honestly. It's a nice exercise to also do it in a language that perhaps brings you closer to something, your savior or love or whatever you want.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, is your heart beating faster hearing this story?

Jim O'Grady: I like that. I meant to say Brother Lawrence called it prayer. You don't have to pray. It doesn't have to be prayer. It doesn't have to be pietistic or devout in any way. It's not even a new idea. It's fairly common to hear discussion of the concept of being present in the moment. It's akin to that. The caller mentioned St. Ignatius, another ex-soldier who was hit in the legs by a cannonball and shattered physically and internally and, like Brother Lawrence, just set out on a quest for a deeper life, a more meaningful life. That often leads to these kinds of moments of introspection and ultimately to trying to figure out ways to savor life more and better. Ellsberg has a line, "To be fully alive within the midst of our frenetic society."

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "My saint is the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. I am part of her Letters From Love, Substack, in which we write letters to ourselves from love/God/universe." Another listener writes, "Enjoying your conversation with Jim right now. I commend your attention to Father Stanley Rother, murdered by Guatemalan paramilitaries in 1981, in line for sainthood, who could become the first US-born saint." Laurie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Laurie.

Laurie: Hi, Brian. Hi, Jim. John Gustav White was an attorney on Long Island in the '90s when I coordinated a legal clinic for people with HIV, and we worked very closely together. I can remember one actual Good Friday after the death of two parents, making sure that their will got executed. There was a plan for the surviving children. John was living with HIV himself. He faced it so bravely. What a humorous, smart man who comes to me in my dreams at times and helps me. That's my nomination.

Brian Lehrer: A Brother Lawrence figure, it sounds like, somebody who was nothing recognized as a saint living the tough life. Thank you for your call.

Laurie: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: When I was on vacation last month, Kousha Navidar was sitting in, and I know they had a great conversation with the writer Antonio Pagliarulo in which they asked listeners to call in about their queer saints. Saints come in all shapes and sizes and genders and sexual orientations and professions and walks of life.

Jim O'Grady: For sure. There are some general characteristics that I think saints share. They are ambitious. They take on the burden of trying to do good, which is, as we know, very difficult. It's hard to sometimes know what is the good, or if we have a sense of the good, what is the best way to go about bringing it about. It's an enormous challenge that saints take on with fervor.

There's this quality that the people who know them when they're alive are drawn to them. you're not drawn to people who are dour and waiting for martyrdom, necessarily, or just emptying themselves for others as a form, sort of as a negation. They're full. They're brimming over. They seem to have more life. There's a reason saints are depicted with halos. They seem lit from within. I sometimes think about Martin Luther King giving the I Have a Dream speech. Just look at that man in that moment, tapping into something transcendent that speaks to saintliness.

Brian Lehrer: A number of people are correcting an earlier texter who said somebody being considered for sainthood would be the first US-born saint. A number of people correcting that, "No, there have been other US-born saints." "Mother Seaton," somebody else says was the first. We don't have time to fact check whether that's exactly right. But just saying, a number of people are writing and to say no, there have been other US-born saints.

There we will leave it, this very inspiring "I hope" segment. Inspiring, judging by the number of callers and texts that we have, which we could keep going with if we had more time for Jim O'Grady, former WNYC reporter, who has that piece in the New York Times Magazine about his saint and finding your saint. Jim, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.

Jim O'Grady: Thank you, Brian. Couldn't agree more.

Brian Lehrer: That's the Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our national politics podcast. Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. Stay tuned for Alison.

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