For All Saints Day, I want to look at some comments that I’ve gathered over the past year on holiness. But maybe not just any holiness—the holiness next door, to use a phrase of Pope Francis (Gaudete et Exsultate 6–9). And not just the holiness next door—but rather the holiness we find next door in our family, in our neighbours, in others. My points of reference will be Marcel Văn, the mid-century Vietnamese Redemptorist brother who was such a good disciple of Thérèse of Lisieux, and the Little Flower herself.

There’s one incident here that, when I was rereading Văn’s writings while working on a manuscript about him as a survivor of clerical abuse, caught my eye. It goes like this.

In a letter (To Brother Alexander, 28 Jan 1951),[1] Marcel rebuffs a confrere for calling him saint frère Marcel: “This expression both astonishes and saddens me a lot. Since, for me, sanctity is like a cloud which disappears in the evening like a dream that one sees no more.” So far so good. We might cursorily interpret this as humility befitting a Servant of God, or the dark night, or even moral injury in Marcel’s life, the residue of a wounded soul and self-confidence in the wake of abuse. Whatever way we read it, we are probably not surprised.

Yet Văn does not take his own advice. In fact, on the very same day, he writes another letter (To his parents, 28 Jan 1951) speaking of his “holy mom” of “exemplary life,” of whom it can be said, “to live as you live, it is to be holy”—and he tops all this off by naming it “a thought that never disappears from my mind.” Of course, he begs forgiveness for this outburst, insisting that he “dare not say anything which may wound your humility,” but he has already committed the words to paper. And he’d said similar things before. His mother is his “favourite Saint Anne” (To his mother, 13 Aug 1951); he can say, “I hope that one day you will have the title of Saint Anne of Vietnam. That is the wish I wish for you, that you leave to us, your children, the example of a holy woman.” (To his mother, 16 Jul 1949) And he would say even more forceful things later:

And you, mammy, you are already a great saint. Of course no one has canonised you, but I am pleased to call you “saint” since your whole life is an example of heroism on the field of battle. The temple of your perfection rests firmly on stones cut by the very hands of Jesus. You have accepted with joy all God’s will for you. Therein, Mammy, is your sanctity. You have penetrated far on the path of abandonment followed by my sister, Thérèse of the Child Jesus. It is you, yourself who has taught me to scale the mountain of perfection, according to the spirit of this saint, from the moment when, completely resigned to God’s will, you gave me your milk or carried me in your arms. And when you spoke to me it was always to teach me to do God’s will.

Mammy! God makes me feel that you have attained a very high degree of sanctity which cedes in nothing to that of the doctors or great saints.

Pray for me so that I always follow your example in order to become a saint. (To his family, 5 Oct 1952)

What Marcel denies others do to him, he does to others. What kind of hypocrisy is this? What kind of Christian enactment of the Golden Rule?

Well, each piece of this puzzle Marcel comes by honestly. His model and mentor, Thérèse of the Child Jesus, knows that it would displease her aunt if she were to say that she is a saint (LT 178).[2] And she also is reported to have said this: “To find oneself imperfect and to find others perfect, voilà happiness” (CSG 25).[3] In these two little snippets we have all the same theology that Marcel later blasts to different corners of Vietnam in letters to a confrere and to his family.

So, what is this really? And how much can we implement this with full knowledge of an abuse crisis, the need for social justice, an ongoing relationship with dispossessed and abused Indigenous Peoples, and so on—all those areas where I think I want to see contemplation on the roads, on the muddy roads, not just in the cloister or the ivory tower? Moreover, how do we find the sanctity of others even in the absence of systemic issues, but just in the presence of individual sin? Or, to express things more like Charles de Foucauld and Pope Francis, how do we see Jesus in others while not wearing blinders as regards evil? These are not insignificant questions and concerns.

Maybe, though, our two main interlocutors, Văn and Thérèse, have partial answers to this conundrum.

Perhaps part of the answer is that Thérèse doesn’t make happiness an aim, only (purportedly) claims the happiness results when the situation allows one to see oneself imperfect and others perfect. Another part of the answer may be that Văn unambiguously believes in resistance to social injustice. Moreover, he was talking specifically about his mother, in whom he, through familiarity, could find genuine sanctity. To be sure, his mother was not absolutely perfect—and he knew it. Some of the things she did utterly crushed his heart, like when she told him to stay at a dysfunctional presbytery because if he were to leave, tongues would wag. Participation in a cover-up culture is not without spot and blemish, even though massive holiness, intense adherence to God, distorted and confused under social pressures, may be present.

Perhaps the answer lies in what sanctity means. Marcel is helpful here. He identifies “heroism on the field of battle. The temple of your perfection rests firmly on stones cut by the very hands of Jesus. You have accepted with joy all God’s will for you.” Here is his description of holiness. It has one core, and all the moving pieces around this can be integrated more or less.

Holiness is radical, tried-under-fire adherence to God. That’s it. It has a deep root. All the other pieces can be blown and bent by the winds. We don’t know another’s conscience. We don’t know what battles are raged under physical, psychological, and social pressures that the person her- or himself may be unable to analyze and articulate. We see surfaces. We just don’t know what’s going on in another head, another heart.

Looking at Marcel himself, his confreres would hardly have identified a young man of heroic fortitude. Yet his courage was beyond compare. It had been tried in the clerical abuse crisis, and he had found, nearly completely alone, the meaning of standing-tall virtue under those circumstances. And when the opportunity arose, he did not hesitate before the choices that led to martyrdom in a Communist concentration camp. But who knew that heart before it manifested itself externally? It was there. All the seeds were growing. But who really knew?

Who knows for a single person we encounter the entire list of pressures, fractures, traumas, critical experiences, and more? Who knows the struggles? Who can judge the adherence to God that endures these difficulties? Perhaps the task is to find these inhibiting factors, these strains, these battles, and when we do—all while remaining firm on the absolute truths to be upheld in an ecclesial crisis of abuse, struggles for social justice, and important relationships—to encounter the holiness that’s there, just like Marcel discerns sanctity in his fragile, buffeted mother whom he took the time to look at and know and love.

I don’t think it’s easy. It does, though, seem to me possible. The answer lies, as so often is the case, in attentive relationship, all while taking evil seriously. And when we look at things this way, the celebration of All Saints in heaven might find a kind of parallel in our open-hearted attempts at discovery, however patchwork and incomplete, of the saints here-below.

[1] To = Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 3; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).

[2] References to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux using the system in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Cerf / Desclée de Brouwer, 2023), with translations my own.

[3] CSG = Soeur Geneviève (Céline Martin), Conseils et souvenirs (Paris: Cerf, 1973).