I cannot profess to have read every single work that Gilbert Keith Chesterton has produced - frankly, I don’t think anyone really can; more are discovered each year - but all the same, he is among the greatest writers in all of history from the invention of language. Every time I read one of his works, I find myself not reading just a remarkable writer who is talented at the English language, but someone who is having fun; someone who is playing with words like toys. One can almost hear Chesterton giggling to himself after a particularly witty remark.
As an apologist, Chesterton effortlessly takes the most elaborate, complex, and compelling arguments, sticks a sewing needle into its gears, and the entire effort of the argument disintegrates due to the most innocent of observations. His knowledge and talent was nearly superhuman, in some truly genius paragraphs you can almost feel him becoming an instrument of virtue and divinity.
That said, I cannot quite say I agree with his canonization. Even as he fits many of my personal criteria for holiness, he was not quite a saint, as I see it. A saint, to me, is possessed of different sort of spirit, something almost alien to them. There should be an enigmatic quality to them, one foot in the cosmos and another in the divine realm.
Chesterton most certainly knew of this matter, but I maintain he did not particularly experience it, anymore than the average God-loving person would. As with any life, there was mystery and mysticism, but somehow I feel that most men and women of the saintly accord are acutely aware of such experiences, seeing them where we do not, and in some cases, knowing why they occur. One of the best examples is likely Simeon Stylites, described best by Mr. Edward Gibbon in History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 37, “Conversion of the Barbarians to Christianity,”
In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret (anchorite - ed.) resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column.
Another story I heard from a friend seems to sum up the matter beautifully.
I remember hearing a story about a monk named Ajaan Panya.
A younger monk was sitting next to him, and a Thai laywoman was talking to Ajaan Panya.
Eventually the young monk stops, does a double take, and realizes what they were saying. "Ma'am, did you say that the molar (the tooth) of Ajaan Panya's that he gave you split into three pieces?"
She said, "No, venerable sir: there are now three versions of the same molar."
The young monk looks at Ajaan Panya, who is staring into the middle distance with the expression of a wry, seemingly knowing, but utterly silent smile.
The young monk says, "...any explanation, Ajaan?"
Ajaan Panya takes another sip of tea and says nothing.
I love G.K. Chesterton with all my heart, but there are no tales of such things with him. Not even the most isolated fleeting mentions in his own works give notice, and all his friends - well-read and most of them famous authors themselves (George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Hilaire Belloc, etc.) - give no mention of them. It is very safe to say they simply never occurred. Every last thing Chesterton did, which is part of the reason why I have such a sincere and deep admiration for him, was well within the bounds of reason. It seems that with most saints, such was not the case.
He had the love of Fred Rogers and the wit of Shakespeare, but somehow I do not think he shall be, or should be counted among the colossal stoic fury of the saints. Perhaps he would rather make a tremendous chronicler of Heaven; but a saint, I cannot quite agree.
As he said when receiving the title of ‘Honourary Crusader’ on his visit to Worcester College, “I am not so sure I am a Crusader, but I am at least sure I am not a Mohammedan.”
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