Michael Plekon

In Hidden Holiness, Michael Plekon challenges us to examine the concept of holiness. He argues that both Orthodox and Catholic churches understand saints to be individuals whose lives and deeds are unusual, extraordinary, or miraculous. Such a requirement for sainthood undermines, in his view, one of the basic messages of Christianity: that all people are called to holiness.
Instead of focusing on the ecclesiastical process of recognizing saints, Plekon explores a more ordinary and less noticeable "hidden" holiness, one founded on the calling of all to be prophets and priests and witnesses to the Gospel.… (més)

Reviewed in 11-12/12 Books and Culture

LibraryThing, Saints As They Really Are, Michael Plekon
Also reviewed books by Plekon: Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church (2002), Hidden Holiness (2009)
Books and Culture review, 11-12/12, p. 9

“Today it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself without precedent.”

Despite the ancient understanding of the holy as something “set apart,” Plekon and his fellow travelers insist that in Christ can never mean a distinction between different domains of life, different geographical locations, different tasks. Holiness demands to be everywhere.

“‘Hidden holiness,’ in the end, is neither magical nor theoretical, but personal and interpersonal—an invitation to follow Christ where we are.”

Perhaps the saddest part of all was the practice, then, of discouraging seminarians from emotional intimacy of any kind with anyone at all; holiness was treated as a matter of keeping oneself to oneself and God alone: “Emotional reserve, the distancing of oneself from others and from one’s own feelings, having little to say about one’s own thoughts, less even about one’s personality—all of this was to some extent acquired in the formation I experienced in the Carmelites.”

… one would expect to find the same problem in any Christian community that drives a hard line between individual and community, between the holy life and the ordinary life.

But being set apart does not mean being set alone. Plekon does well to remind us of Tertullian’s old adage: “Solus christianus, nullus christianus: There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.”… (més)