One of my favorite legacies of Pope Francis is his idea of “the saints next-door.” It’s hard for me at times, as a pretty average lay Catholic, to square the universal call to personal sainthood with the list of legendary, seemingly perfect, often unrelatable saints of yore. But as Francis shares in his exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, sainthood is not merely reserved for the beatified and canonized. Saintly holiness can be found in “our own mothers, grandmothers, or other loved ones.” It can be “found in our next-door neighbors, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence.” This idea feels like one of my grandparents putting an arm around me to say, “Don’t overthink it; sainthood isn’t that hard.”
I share this because the idea of the saint next-door was echoing in my brain when my eighty-six-year-old saint of a grandmother demanded I read The New York Times bestseller Theo of Golden. Featuring an eighty-six-year-old saint of a mysterious background, the eponymous Theo, the novel opens as our protagonist appears in the fictitious Georgia town of Golden one spring day with a heather green hat and a Portuguese accent. From there, the story’s plotline reveals itself in a wonderfully meandering pace that mirrors Theo’s smile-filled strolls along Golden’s leafy Promenade. Theo, more than any hagiography I’ve encountered, shows us what a modern-day saint next-door can look like, and what can happen when one person devotes himself entirely to “small, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness.”
Without giving too much of the story away, there’s a particularly poignant scene in which Theo speaks with a reporter who has gotten wind of his unconventional generosity. She wants to interview him, to print a human-interest piece, under the perhaps noble auspices that “people would enjoy it. They would be inspired by [his] example.” In an attempt to break through Theo’s polite reticence, she asks, “We need some positive stories these days. Wouldn’t you like to inspire others?”
Theo’s response is as instructive as the example of quiet charity that he lives throughout the book. He tells the reporter that recipients of his kindness “only know that a stranger, for some strange reason, gave them a gift. If those people read an article that focuses on me the least bit then, whether you mean for it to be or not, the gift would be diminished somehow.” He mentions then “another teaching about kindness,” this one from the Gospel of Matthew, “‘Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.’” He shares that he has tried charity in a showier way, but that after experiencing a “great emptiness” in doing so, he is now trying to live, and give, “without notice or hope of reward.”
He meets everyone in their own, unique, human brokenness, and reminds them of their own, unique, saintly capability.
And so Theo goes about his quiet works of kindness with his neighbors in Golden. He doesn’t swoop into an impoverished nation or an impoverished neighborhood. He doesn’t tally his income and expenses and make sure he’s tithed a certain amount each month. He doesn’t run for office or join an advisory board or make an enormous donation. Of course, the Lord thankfully does call some of us to take such action. As St. Thérèse writes in The Story of a Soul, “It pleases [the Lord] to create great Saints, who may be compared with the lilies or the rose; but He has also created little ones, who must be content to be daisies or violets. . . . The happier they are to be as He wills, the more perfect they are.”
In this spirit, Theo continues down a littler way. He allows himself to get to know the people in his community, to listen to their stories, and to respond to their needs, both material and spiritual. Sometimes he does so secretly, sometimes face to face, sometimes with a handwritten note. He is indiscriminate with this brand of charity, applying it to an accountant and a custodian, a bookseller and a street dweller. He meets everyone in their own, unique, human brokenness, and reminds them of their own, unique, saintly capability. He doesn’t do so by preaching or proselytizing or holding himself up as the example. He does so as a fellow traveler, in a way that endears him to his friends before they realize that they don’t even know his last name.
To return to Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis tells us that the “holiness to which the Lord calls you will grow through small gestures.” Theo of Golden shows us what happens when a person chooses this smaller version of sainthood in a modern way. It shows us that it is never too late to begin again, to choose a humbler way of loving and giving. It shows us what happens when we allow our own suffering to draw us into the suffering of others, to sit with them there, and to choose to walk towards good together. Most of all, it’s encouragement for those of us who often feel that holiness is only for the giants of history books or the titans of our communities. As Theo tells a young man who laughs off his suggestion that he, too, could be a saint one day, “My good fellow, there is a term for ones like us. ‘Raw material.’” May the raw material in all of us continue to seek out the acts of good we can bring to our communities—big and small—and may we continue to emulate our own modern saints next-door, wherever we may find them.