The Communion of Saints

In the Apostles' Creed, Christians say: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints." That short phrase holds a large and consoling truth. The Church is not only the people gathered in your parish this Sunday. It is one family that spans earth and heaven, the living and the dead, all joined in Christ, and death does not break that bond.

Holy things and holy people

The phrase "communion of saints" has two meanings that belong together (CCC 948). In Latin, sanctorum communio can mean communion in holy things (sancta) and communion among holy people (sancti).

The holy things are the goods Christ gives his Church to share: the one faith received from the apostles, the sacraments, above all the Eucharist, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and charity itself (CCC 949–953). The early Christians in Jerusalem held all things in common (Acts 2:42–47), and in a deeper way every Christian still does. A grace given to one builds up all; a sin committed by one wounds all (CCC 953).

The holy people are all those joined to Christ by Baptism and love. In the New Testament, "saints" is a name for ordinary believers: Paul writes to "the saints" in Corinth and Rome. The Church today uses the word especially for those who have reached heaven, but the older sense is not lost. All the baptised are called to be saints.

Three states of one Church

The Catechism, following the Second Vatican Council, describes the one Church in three states (CCC 954):

• Pilgrims on earth: we who are still on the journey, struggling, praying and growing.
• Those being purified: those who have died in God's friendship but still need cleansing before they see him face to face. The Church calls this purification Purgatory (CCC 1030–1031).
• The blessed in heaven: those who already see God as he is.

These are not three Churches but one, united in the same love of God and neighbour (CCC 954). The union between those on earth and those who have died in Christ is not interrupted by death; it is strengthened by the sharing of spiritual goods (CCC 955). That is why Catholics pray for the dead, and why they ask the saints to pray for them (CCC 956, 958).

Why Catholics ask the saints to pray

Christians ask one another for prayers all the time. Catholics simply believe that this does not stop when a friend of God dies. The saints in heaven are more alive, not less, and more closely united to Christ. They do not stop interceding with the Father for us, offering the merits they won on earth through Christ, the one mediator (CCC 956; 1 Timothy 2:5).

Scripture gives glimpses of this. The Letter to the Hebrews, after recalling the heroes of faith, says we are surrounded by "so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1). In the Book of Revelation, the elders around the throne hold golden bowls of incense, "which are the prayers of the saints" (Revelation 5:8). The Catechism notes that the witnesses who have gone before us share in the living tradition of prayer, and that we can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world (CCC 2683).

Asking a saint to pray is not a detour around Christ. It is like asking your mother or your pastor to pray for you: every prayer goes to the Father through the Son, and the saints pray with us.

Honour, not worship

Catholics distinguish carefully between adoration, which belongs to God alone, and veneration, the honour we give to the saints because of what God has done in them. To venerate a saint is to admire and love God's grace at work in a human life.

The same applies to statues, icons and images. The Church teaches that the honour paid to an image passes to the person it represents; it is a respectful veneration, not the adoration due to God alone (CCC 2132). Even the special devotion the Church gives the Virgin Mary differs essentially from the adoration given to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (CCC 971).

How the Church canonises a saint

The Church does not make saints; God does. When the Church canonises someone, it solemnly declares that they practised heroic virtue and lived faithfully by God's grace, and so proposes them as a model and an intercessor (CCC 828).

The process is careful and usually long. It generally begins at least five years after a person's death, in the diocese where they died. In brief:

1. Servant of God: the cause is formally opened and the person's life, writings and reputation for holiness are investigated.
2. Venerable: the Pope recognises that the person lived the virtues to a heroic degree (or, for a martyr, that they gave their life for the faith).
3. Blessed: after beatification, which ordinarily requires a miracle attributed to the person's intercession (martyrs may be beatified without one), they may be honoured publicly, usually in a particular place or community.
4. Saint: after a further recognised miracle, the Pope canonises the person, and they are honoured by the whole Church.

Patron saints and feast days

Many saints are honoured as patrons, special protectors of a place, a profession, a cause or a person. Catholics often take a saint's name at Baptism or Confirmation as a friend and model for life. Each saint also has a feast day in the Church's calendar, usually the day of their death, their birthday into heaven. Following the calendar is a simple way to meet a new friend in faith almost every day of the year.

Going deeper

• Mary, Mother of God: the first and greatest of the saints.
• St Carlo Acutis: a saint of our own time, and this library's patron.
• The Life of the World to Come: heaven, Purgatory and the resurrection.
• Read next in the Catechism: CCC 946–962 and 2683–2684.