About Those Cattle on a Thousand Hills
Essay Posted October 30, 2007 by James E. Nelson
As “All Hallows Eve” approaches (on the Western liturgical Calendar), I turn my attention once again to saints and sainthood in the Christian Church. The appellation “saint” is given by the church to those people who embodied, in an extraordinary way, the presence of God and the God-given virtue that comes with that. And, yes, I know that this is a narrower definition of the word than found in scripture, where “saint” is synonymous with “Christian.” Just as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists define the word “Christian” narrowly and are then forced to make judgments about who is and isn’t a Christian because of the moral and character constraints put on the word, so the Orthodox and Catholics use the word “Christian” to refer to anyone who is part of the community—even if they're not very “Christian”—and in turn define “saint” narrowly, using it to highlight the piety of the people who are recognized to have embodied their Christianity in amanner that exceeds the average Christian. In short, all of us narrow the playing field a bit, I suspect because all of us are uncomfortable with the expansive and prodigal character of divine grace that simply seems too excessive to our results oriented sensibilities.
But in this essay I’m less interested in the earthly life of the saints and more interested in their heavenly life. It would seem that just as earthly life throws us a few curve balls now and then, so it is for the heavenly life of the saints. (At least that is how it might seem to us whose earthly life is not yet done.) Consider the Holy Martyr Paraskeva (who is remembered on Oct. 28) as a case in point.
Paraskeva grew up in a wealthy family in the third century in Iconium (the modern province of Konya, Turkey, just to the north of the island of Crete. Iconium already had a long and rich Christian history in the third century. At a young age she decided to become a missionary. She took a vow of celibacy so that family would not hinder her, and she began her preparation for her life’s calling in earnest.
But this was the era of Emperor Diocletian, who seemed to have a particular hatred for Christians. In the end her zeal was her undoing. Because she was so well known as a Christian, not just in her private prayers, but in her witness and public life, she was brought before the city prefect. He demanded that she show loyalty to the emperor and offer sacrifices to the local pagan deities. She refused and was martyred for her faith. Surprisingly, her specialty as understood today has neither to do with missionary work nor martyrdom. Her gift to the church lies in a very surprising new direction. But more about that later.
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Certain Christians seem to have certain specialties when it comes to prayer. Soon Ae Carpenter, spiritual leader of the Korean Presbyterians in Delta Junction, Alaska, for instance, had remarkable success when it came to praying for healing. If you were sick, depressed, or knew someone who was ill, your best bet was Soon Ae. Of course, you never had a clue what she was saying—when she got serious about prayer she always prayed in Korean. And she would go on and on for huge blocks of time. But when Soon Ae prayed, people got better, so for most folks in Delta Junction, it didn’t matter if you couldn’t understand what she said, nor how long it took. She got results.
On the other hand, it was never a good idea to ask Soon Ae to bless the food. By the time she was done praying, the hot dishes were lukewarm, the egg salad and salad dressing was room temperature. She always prayed at such length that you worried about food poisoning by the time you got around to eating it. Of course, she blessed the food in Korean too, so for all we knew, she was probably asking for healing in advance as part of her lengthy prayers.
When it came to asking for someone else’s intercessions on your behalf, Soon Ae was the obvious choice. For standard blessings, she was to be avoided.
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The saints are similar. Since dead Christians are alive and well and in the presence of God, it’s always acceptable to ask them to pray on your behalf. Given the reality that their struggle with sin is done and they now know the presence of God in a manner we can only hope for, asking a saint to pray for you is not only acceptable, it’s a most excellent idea. They are not beset by the cares of this world that can so easily distract us who still live in this world. When a saint prays on your behalf, you can have great confidence that they’re really going to put their mind to the task.
On more occasions than I care to admit, I have promised to pray for someone and subsequently forgot. Oh, they’re request was no doubt part of my general petition, so the bases were covered and I was technically in the clear, but all the same, when I saw them again I would guiltily shoot up a quick prayer of intercession on their behalf so that I could honestly say that I had prayed for them if I was asked.
I’m pretty sure this particular failure doesn’t come into play when you ask your fellow Christians already in heaven to pray on your behalf. Asking the saints to pray for you is always a safer bet than asking your distracted pastor or friend who has three small children.
For those of us in the West who are children of the Enlightenment, all of this often comes as a bit of a surprise. We’re acclimated to this world and not the next, to the physical and not the spiritual nor heavenly. By Western standards, carrying on an ongoing relationship with the dead is just a little bit creepy, unless it’s Halloween or you live in an asylum.
Yet Christians since the time of Christ have had a lively sense of the whole church. I’ve always been partial to the Presbyterian description of the whole church as the Church Militant (the living) and the Church Triumphant (the dead). The point is, that the whole church, militant and triumphant is called to the task of prayer, and we ought not be shy to enlist the help of the triumphant (the saints, if you will) in that task.
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It ought not be a surprise that some people seem to be better at certain things than others. Soon Ae had a gift for interceding on behalf of those who were ill. All of us who knew Soon Ae and had seen her in action understood this was the case.
Similarly both Anthony of Padua and St. Phanourius have a knack when it comes to lost things. Over time different saints have shown themselves to be particularly successful at certain sorts of intercession.
The Holy Martyr Paraskeva of Iconium is invoked for protection of cattle from disease.
No, really.
I suppose it’s a pretty important thing. Cattle are the livelihood of a lot of people after all, but it’s mostly outside my area of experience. Oh, I owned a couple of cattle when I was in junior high and early high school as part of my wages when I worked summers for Lauren Bruckner, but “my cows” never concerned me too much. I was there when one of them was unceremoniously pulled from its mother’s womb (being Chianina cross-breeds, the calves grew inordinately large before birth) but after that they were just part of the herd. I didn’t even stop out and wish them happy trails when they clambered onto the truck and went to market. But I got the money from their sale, less some fees for pasture, hay, and transportation, and it helped pay for college. That’s my whole experience with cattle ownership. It wasn’t exactly a personal thing, so asking someone to intercede for a diseased cow is not a strong suite of mine.
But important or not, from a purely human perspective there seems a bit of a letdown with this whole story. Young Paraskeva was planning on becoming a missionary. Instead she was killed by Diocletian’s minions before her career in serving God ever really got off the ground, and now she’s the patron saint, not of missionaries nor martyrs, but of diseased cows.
Don’t think I’m belittling her or her eventual calling in life-after-death. Rather, I find her story wonderfully instructive and hopeful. Like St. Paraskeva, when we are young our dreams are almost always glorious and full of grandeur. But for most people, their real lives fall far short of their dreams or the expectations others have of them. In contemporary society we often consider this a sign of failure.
For instance, Johnny’s daddy was a banker. Johnny got a MBA. He now drives a taxi.
Failure!
Oh, we never mention that he volunteers down at the shelter helping others get their feet back on the ground. That’s just volunteer work, after all. He could have run his father’s bank, so in our eyes he failed.
Usually the story isn’t so dramatic. Tom was going to become a physicist and when he was in high school he hoped to make wonderful discoveries. In the end he became an engineer with a good salary, a family, and home in the suburbs. No matter how successful he looks on the outside, it’s a dead-end life and he dreams of what might have been in the wonderful world of physics.
But look on the flip side of this phenomenon. Fortunately for society (and ourselves) most of our dreams don’t come true. If everyone was as “successful” as they had hoped to be, no one would be left to clean the toilets. And a corner office with hardwood walls thirty stories above a gilt-edged marble foyer isn’t all its cracked up to be if the toilet’s backed up and stinking and no one’s willing to do anything about it.
St. Paraskeva had big dreams. They weren’t even selfish dreams. Her family was wealthy and they lived near the crossroads of the world. No doubt the world was her oyster if she had so chosen. But in spite of all that she dreamed of being a missionary, of enlightening the pagans with the light of Christ.
But it never happened quite like that. Instead she is now invoked for protection of cattle from disease.
From our earthly perspective, so full of competition and the allure of greatness, power, and wealth, that sounds like a huge let down. But it is how St. Paraskeva continues to serve God. And serving God in a seemingly unglorious task is far more glorious than being incredibly successful and yet alone in the universe and not doing what God wants you to do.
For those of us who don’t own cattle, and therefore worry not at all about our diseased herds, St. Paraskeva still offers us a wonderful lesson in what’s important in the larger scheme of things.
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St. Paraskeva, those of us who have not lived up to expectations appeal to you, those of us who tried but failed appeal to you, those of us who have found our place serving God doing “menial” tasks appeal to you: pray that we will find satisfaction in the presence of God’s mercy and not be swayed by the expectations of others.
Copyright © 2007 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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