Father H. Urs von Balthasar wrote recently in Dieu Vivant (No. 12, 1948): ‘From the dogmatic point of view we no longer take the modern saints seriously because they themselves no longer have to be dogmatic…. They leave dogma to the prosaic work of “the schools” and become lyricists.’ Such a statement is not an isolated one among spiritual writers today. And we need hardly add that as a rule it is made with a view to deploring this separation of ‘sanctity’ from theology.
Some readers then begin to wonder whether sanctity in the Church has actually become a kind of lyricism or poetic enthusiasm. Is it a matter of ‘mystical’ intuition, rather exaggerated, a special ‘grace'» Moreover the mentality of many of our contemporaries, sincere Catholics though they may be, echoes these questions. For them the point of view of the ‘mystic’ which they identify with that of the ‘saint', the ‘irrationality’ of his conception of Christian life, of prayer and penance, are all things that should not be discussed. They are accepted or rejected; but in any case such a view of Christian life is not final.