Of what are Saints Made?

By Mario Palmaro

Of what, exactly, are saints made? At times children ask us this and they are rightly accustomed – when they are accustomed well – to go and light a candle to St. Joseph, to St. Francis, to Don Bosco or to St. Rita. And they find themselves in front of a wonderful – when they are fortunate – statue of wood or marble which offers the image of a champion of faith. So: of what, exactly, are saints made?

A saint, first and foremost, is a man. Those who laugh when they think of this banality of the century should wait a moment: there is nothing more false than thinking that a saint is a superman or a half-man, or an alien. To put it simply, a living species made of different stuff to my own and yours. A saint is a fulfilled man, a fully fulfilled man. Brother Ettore was one of us, in the sense that he was of the same nature as us. A clay already seen millions, billions, of times. The point is that that clay, in the hands of God, generated the spectacle of saintliness.

And here we come to the second point: a saint is one who – to use the words of the great Claudio Chieffo – ‘makes himself do’. He meekly places himself in the hands of the Father and does His will. He stays immobile while the blows of the scalpel of the Great Artist transforms a formless mass into a masterpiece. The more he stays still and is meek, the more the Great Artist completes His work. Brother Ettore had the spirituality of a child: it was simple, direct, provocative and at times overwhelming. He was serene because he had made himself an instrument. He allowed himself to be made, to be transformed, by God.

And a saint is a man in love. A man who is in love with Jesus Christ and Our Lady. A man in love sees his beloved everywhere, and a saint sees Christ everywhere. Thus it was that Brother Ettore one day saw the face of the Nazarene in the anonymous face of a human wreck. Could he have withdrawn, leaving him there in the dirt and the misery of that terrible abandonment? No, he could not. And it was with that meeting that there began the great adventure of Brother Ettore who picked up tramps in the central station of Milan, who cleaned them and dressed them, and who fed them with the help of Providence. And thus it was that the legends began because Brother Ettore in Milan, and not only in that city, became a legendary figure. Ettore Boschini was in love with Mary: this is something that the Milanese well knew, being used as they were to seeing him go through the city with an old truck on which was placed a stature of Our Lady of Fatima. And this was something that was also well known by the inhabitants of Seveso who, when passing in front of the little church with glass windows in Corso Isonzo, saw inside a little chapel dedicated to the Virgin, who in 1917 appeared to three shepherd children.

A saint is one who multiplies, like Brother Ettore, who multiplies bread for the poor, bread which arrives when it seemed there is none left. And he multiplies the deeds of the Good Samaritan thousands of times so that an entire city becomes aware of the poor and rediscovers its noblest heart. And a saint multiples conversions because when people see such a tangible and practical faith, one that is so simple and true which one can touch and take into one’s arms, they then rediscover the pathway towards the only source of salvation – the Church.

A saint is someone who sees what we ourselves do not want to see. It has to be recognised that a look is an important thing. Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Pope (and he was a very great Pope) wrote that our humanity is decided by the way we look at others. and how true that is. Hearts grow hard, people grow arid when they become accustomed to looking at the world with an outlook of indifference, of hatred, of the drive to get on, to win and to prevail. It hurts somewhat to admit it but this can be a salutary exercise, the beginning of a conversion. How many looks of contempt, not only towards tramps but also towards girls in a vegetative state, ‘for it is better for them to die rather than being like that’; how many gelid looks at a conceived child, ‘for it is better for him not to be born’; how many hopeless looks at elderly people who no longer understand anything, and this to the point that ‘it is better to help them go than continuing to suffer like that’. A hundred, a thousand, two thousand, looks like these kill. And they kill us inside ourselves.

A saint is a man who tells the truth. Brother Ettore, who spoke the truth, was a fireworks display, a John the Baptist in the desert, a Don Giovanni Bosco who went to court to warn the Savoys that there was no future for dynasties that persecute the Church. Brother Ettore was like that: one who bent down in front of the least but did not love an ideology of exaggerated solidarity which makes the poor into a myth. He was a man who well knew the miseries, of a moral character as well, of the under-privileged who are not ‘good’ because they are poor but are simply men. And as such neither better nor worse than we are. We and they are poor, in the same way, when we do not have Christ.

Brother Ettore was a straight talking man, who cried out against legal abortion, and who did not fear to say that it was a crime. Ettore Bischini embodied to perfection his role as a son of the Church who is a mother and a teacher. Who helps the poor but does not keep quiet. Who clothes the homeless but does not forget unborn children. Who does not practise solidarity but charity. Who loves all her children, even if they are sinners, but cannot bless the marriages of divorced people or encourage cohabitations. The Catholicism of Brother Ettore was an authentic Catholicism and thus a Catholicism without end of season discounts or sales. A Catholicism without comfort, well summed up in the large red cross of the Camillians worn with pride on his chest.

And in the ultimate analysis a saint is useless. In the sense that a saint does not change the course of history. He does not solve social emergencies. He does not remove the injustices of society. He does not create paradises for the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. A saint cannot be measured by the yardstick of utility, of results achieved, of costs and benefits, or customer satisfaction. A saint answers only to God and to the Church. Brother Ettore passed by like his Lord, ‘doing good’, bending down to the most unpleasant or repugnant poor people. Apparently, nothing has changed. But, once again, what makes the difference is the look involved. The look of hundreds, of thousands, of people who met Ettore of the poor and felt, perhaps after many years, loved. It helps us to think that now, as well, Brother Ettore continues to look at us with that same good look. May God still send us many ‘useless’ people like him.

 ‘The fourth vow of Br. Ettore’ – Fr. Vittorio Palear

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