David J. Collins, S.J.

Saintly Studies

Father Collins is a professor of history at Georetown University.

Between ourselves, I have an admission to make: I'm in grad school, and I love it. I study saints. If you were a German venerated as a saint (canonized or not) in the fifteenth century and the subject of a biography, then I probably have a file on you. If you were interesting enough to warrant a second biography, then I probably have a thick file on you because I want to use you to show how cultural symbols (like saints) can unify society, sustain diversity within it, promote programs of social change, and be instruments of resistance to and cooperation with those programs for even the "weakest" segments of society.

In a slightly more technical fashion, I ask Benno of Meissen, Sebald of Denmark, and Hemma of Gurk (noteworthy for their names alone!), among others, the very questions that have been asked recently of Pius IX and John XXIII in the popular press: what makes your "holiness" interesting enough to warrant the devotion of some and the opprobrium of others; how is your holiness "proved"; and who are the more worldly players (with all due respect to the Holy Spirit) who have a stake in the honor of your canonization?

I am energized (most days) not only by what I am doing, but where I am doing it as well. I enjoy the challenge of being a religious on a secular university campus. Two aspects of this challenge come quickly to mind. First, I work most weekends at the Newman Center. Working with Catholic university people is something for which regency and theology prepared me well. New to this work for me, however, is the new intimacy I have found with God and the Church through the liturgy as a priest. Second, in a circle of grad students and professors who are perhaps one-third Catholic (that high!), and one half completely unchurched (Catholics included), I see that I am an unusual representative of a faith they really only know about from the front page of the newspaper. Whether I 'm entangled in a seminar argument or tapped on the shoulder for a cup of coffee and a conversation, this apostolic dimension of my studies keeps me struggling to pray and to ask myself and God the hard questions that keep so many people away not only from the Church but from Him. This dimension of being here means a lot to me, and often it weighs heavily on my mind. It is shaping my priesthood and religious life more than any other experience I have had since novitiate.

As for that challenging new intimacy with God that the ordained life and grad student life together brings with it ... a few lines from some recent night reading -- not my words, but those of a more recent German than Saint Benno -- capture a bit of how I think that's going:

Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

R. M. Rilke, Book of Hours, II, 7.