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November 11, 2007

When Pope John Paul died, thousands and thousands of people came to pay their respects. I remember seeing an aerial photograph of Rome with this long line of people waiting to pass by to honor this man. Around St Peter’s, multitudes gathered in love and grief, many of them holding signs that read “Santo Subito:” santo – saint; and subito – immediately, or for you musicians, suddenly. Santo subito: make him a saint immediately. Whatever the Church’s process, the people believed that in God’s eyes, he was already a saint.

So what is sainthood? What makes John Paul – or Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or anybody, or that matter – a saint?

Meister Eckhart, an ancient holy man, a saint himself, once saidworking with rural women’s cooperatives that struggled to find domestic markets for their traditional handicrafts. Returning to the U.S., Benita and Ruth held fair trade crafts sales on their campus. They made enough money doing that to make a difference, and decided to make that part of their life’s work. Ruth and Benita are Yale College graduates, class of 2004.

And then there is Daisy. When she was six years old, she went to first grade in an elementary school in a very poor part of the rural United States. She was so fragile and tiny that she looked as though she would break into pieces if you touched here.Daisy loved school. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And her favorite part of school