Why You Shouldn't Imitate Everything a Saint Did

Spiritual practices, such as fasting or other mortifications, should always be performed under the watchful eye of your confessor or spiritual director.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

Saints lived holy lives and achieved a profound union with God on this earth, but that doesn't mean we should imitate every aspect of their lives.

When reading a good spiritual book, especially one that details the life and practices of a saint, sometimes we may think that everything should be imitated. This can often leave us overwhelmed, thinking that this is the path to sanctity.

We may get the idea that we need to sell all of our possessions, pray 12 Rosaries every day, or sit inside a church for long hours in order to be a saint.

Venerable Augustine Baker, a holy Benedictine monk of the 17th century, gave detailed suggestions on what to avoid when engaging in such spiritual reading. These suggestions can help us look at spiritual books or articles from a different perspective, recognizing that each person is on a unique path to God and what works for one person doesn't necessarily mean it will work for us.

Saints are not meant to be imitated entirely

Baker urges in his book Holy Wisdom: "Let [the reader] not be hasty to apply [counsel from spiritual reading] to himself by practice, out of his own natural judgment or liking, but let him observe his own spirit, way, and internal guidance by God, and accordingly make use of them; otherwise, instead of reaping benefit, such inconveniences may happen, that it would have been better he had never read."

For example, a saint may have performed great mortifications that helped pave the way for that saint to draw closer to God, but if we perform them, it will do more harm than good to our soul.

Baker reiterates this advice, writing, "of all errors the greatest and most dangerous is the indiscreet imitating the examples and practices of saints in particular extraordinary corporal mortifications, voluntarily (yet by God’s special direction) assumed by them, [such] as labors, fastings, watchings, disciplines, etc."

We certainly can be inspired by the lives of the saints, but we need to "translate" their lives into our own with the help of God and a trusted spiritual director. God may want us to live in a similar way, but not in the exact same way.

Baker continues, "The benefit that we ought and easily may reap from the reading of such extraordinary practices of others is to admire God’s ways in the conducting of his saints, and to take occasion from thence of humbling and despising of ourselves, seeing how short we come of them in the practice of their virtues; but no further to imitate them in such things than we may be assured that God directs us by a supernatural light, and enables us by an extraordinary grace, yea, and moreover, till we have obtained the leave and approbation of a prudent director."

Each of us is unique and unrepeatable, which means that our path to God will look much different than every other person's.

Pictured: Dom Augustine Baker, OSB