DIY Beatification

Make Your Own Saints...And Your Own Miracles

In the Middle Ages most people made their own saints. By this I mean that they did not wait for a papal decree to begin asking for help from someone well known on the other side. Before religion became homogenized people still held on to their ancient pagan practices—the most powerful of which was asking the dead for help. You called on the Madonna of your choice (and they all had a different flavor) but your town also had a patron saint (often a demoted goddess), your profession had a patron saint, and you had a personal saint that you were named for or with whom you shared a feast day. If you had a leg ulcer you called on one saint, and a toothache upon another. You had a whole team on the other side—and if somebody remarkable departed from the world you had system for integrating them into your personal pantheon. Mostly that meant you asked them for a miracle when you needed one.

For six hundred years many people brought their petitions to Joan of Arc—soldiers in battle, women bristling against the limitations placed on their gender, the unjustly accused, those headed to the stake, and everyone in France when that country was under attack. But Joan was not “sainted” by the Church—she was, in fact, condemned and executed by religious authorities as being a heretic. But that didn’t stop ordinary folk from recognizing her power, not just as a living folk hero but as a magical ancestor. They asked her for miracles and she delivered and they told their stories about her. More people asked her for help. People went on pilgrimage to her birthplace, where she died, the city she liberated. Eventually, after France’s victory in World War I, which many attributed to Joan’s protective powers, the Church officially beatified her.

In the modern era, the Church has increasingly tried to control sainthood, offering up an official litany of approved souls on the other side. They have removed many saints as apocryphal saying they have no actual basis in historical fact. Many of these figures are, actually, older than the historical record, and older of course than Christianity. St. Christopher was deemed “apocryphal” but if one traces back the stories of this dog-headed saint carrying the infant Christ across the river one will eventually arrive in Egypt to the dog-headed deity Anubis, god of the dead, carrying souls back and forth across the river of life. In any case, in an era of ever more terrifying speeding vehicles, devotion to St. Christopher remains undiminished and many travelers hold a medal to them in their pocket when stepping on airplanes or hidden in the glove compartment of their cars. I know I do.

The Church has also tried to reserve beatification only for those souls deemed appropriately religious when they were alive—this pope, that nun, this long-suffering martyr.

But that’s not the way sainthood really works. It’s not about how supposedly good people were when they were alive—but about how responsive and magical they are from the other side. Many saints were very complicated people when they were still breathing but turned all of that into blessings once they got some perspective. We learn from our failures after all. People pray to St. Rita to rescue them from abusive relationships not because she avoided them but because she didn’t know how to get out of hers. Real saints come from below, from the rock-bottom prayers of people in need, and not from edicts on high.

Many people who have crossed over in the modern era did not lead saintly lives—and yet the general public responded to their deaths with a saint-like devotion. They brought their flowers to Buckingham Palace when Princess Di died. They went on pilgrimage to Graceland in memory of Elvis. People still bring roses to Marilyn Monroe’s grave in LA. What we have forgotten how to offer these figures, however, is the very act that would confer sainthood upon them—and that is a miracle story.

Every saint needs their book of miracles.

But to get a miracle we need to ask for one. We need to want one, desperately. We don’t ask for a miracle to “prove” this soul is a saint, we ask for a miracle because we are deranged with need. We didn’t see any other way out. Money can’t buy us what we want—and our actions have been defeated on every side. When all hope is lost, that’s when you need a saint. Who you going to call?

There are plenty of “traditional” saints who will get the job done. Jude will show up for the desperate and Anthony to find your lost eye glasses. Peregrine will help with your cancer and Roch with your knees. They are great. But they are not the only ones—and so many of the old saints, the ones people called on to heal cows and dropsy, have vanished into the past. That, too, was part of what used to happen. Saints wove in and out of popularity and new saints were always emerging for the necessities of the times.

Walk into a kitschy gift shop in some tourist town (like my own in the Catskills or where I grew up on Cape Cod) and you are likely to find “joke” novena candles. A novena candle is one of those six inch high candles in glass usually with a picture of the saint on it. It is burnt, traditionally, during a nine-day period where one offers devotions and prayers to this particular soul. You can get a St. Dymphna candle if you feel anxious or a St. Agatha if you are navigating breast cancer. But in this gift shop you are going to see novena candles not to St. Lazarus and St. Martha but St. Betty White and St. Prince and St. Divine and St. Virginia Woolf, and of course, almost always, Marilyn and Diana and Elvis.

But this isn’t a joke. These candles speak to people’s ordinary desire to reach out to these souls with whom they feel a connection they can’t explain and can’t necessarily understand. David Bowie. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Anthony Bourdain. Maybe they buy the candle, maybe they gift it or light it, maybe they feel something in their hearts turning around…but none of these figures has really been beatified and they could be.

All it takes is a petition, your petition, and a miracle, your miracle.

Suffering from an eating disorder? Why not call on St. Diana of Wales who overcame her bulimia and was honest about it? Working for social justice issues and feeling defeated? Put on your lace color and say a prayer to St. Ruth Ginsburg. Worried about your Saturn return? Why not put the 27-Club (St. Janis, St. Jim, and St. Jimi) on helping you make it through? I have begun calling on Elvis, who probably had a genetic connective tissue disorder to protect both my children who have it and help them avoid its worst outcomes. I pray to him every morning (“love me tender, love me sweet, beloved Elvis keep my kids on their feet.”) and have promised him a pilgrimage to Graceland.

We need new saints for the times we live in—and we have them. But we have forgotten how to active their magic. Let us ask our saints for the miracles that prove they are real. Let us claim those miracles when they arrive. Let us tell our stories and spread the good news of all those on the other side waiting to lend their hands.

No one knows who first asked St. Anthony to find their lost eye glasses or St. Joseph to help them sell their house. But now everyone does. Nobody prays to St. Anthony to help deliver a kick-ass sermon (which he did) or St. Joseph to be a midwife (he was) but that’s what happens on the other side, our super powers become obvious, honed, essential and urgent. We tend to have specialties and those specialties are determined by the special ways the saints show up for us.

There are so many different ways to play with the saints—prayers to write for them, pilgrimages to take, candles to buy and light—but it all begins with what is in our hearts, what we need. Saints are about cultivating a relationship that reminds us we are not alone but we have teams of souls waiting to lend a hand.

So today I hearby decree that you can beatify one figure of your choice. In all likelihood you already know who that person is, you probably already have a devotion to this saint but haven’t known how to acknowledge it or what do with it. Who is it? Tell me! What are you asking for? Tell us! Let’s share our saints!

Together let’s write a whole new book of miracles for the age we live in.

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I teach workshops on collaborating with the dead and will be offering a six-week intensive Saints Alive! Through the fabulous Morbid Anatomy. You can read more about it here. You can also pre-order my book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World which is about having a direct relationship with ALL of the dead.

This is the free version of my newsletter. There is also a paid version where I share work more directly connected to my upcoming books (Saints Alive! And The Body of My Mother) Thank you for taking the time to join me in this work shifting the belief-sphere in which we live.