Editorial

Feasts celebrate the communion of saints

This week, the Catholic Church celebrates two feasts that Protestant churches do not: All Saints on Nov. 1 and All Souls on Nov. 2. Actually, both feasts celebrate saints because we believe that all the souls in purgatory will be saints.

The Church has honored people who lived heroically holy lives since the beginning of Christianity when it began to venerate St. Stephen as the first martyr. For centuries, local Churches remembered holy people after their deaths, calling them saints and praying to them to ask for their intercession with God. Finally, the popes reserved for themselves the right to declare someone a saint.

The Catholic Church canonizes people not only to honor them but, more important, to offer them as role models. Those of us who are still trying to work out our salvation can try to emulate some of the virtues displayed by those who were recognized for their holiness.

There are many more saints than just those the Church has officially canonized. To be a saint means simply that that person is in heaven where he or she is enjoying the beatific vision of God. Naturally, we hope that all of us will be saints after we die.

There are various classifications of saints in our liturgies. The Blessed Virgin Mary is in a classification by herself since she is the mother of the person who was both God and human. Next are the Apostles, followed by the martyrs, those who died rather than deny Christ.

Next are pastors, and these include especially holy popes, bishops, priests, abbots and missionaries. These are followed by the doctors of the Church. These 36 people (32 men and four women) are considered the Church’s most accomplished teachers, whose combination of intellectual brilliance and sanctity has been of extraordinary importance in the development of doctrine or spirituality.

After the doctors of the Church come virgins, women who never married and devoted their lives to serving the Church or people. Finally, we have the category of holy men and women, which covers those who don’t fit into one of the other classifications. They could be men or women in religious orders, or those who worked with the underprivileged, or teachers. This is the category that married men and women are in.

With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there are no groups of saints that are ranked higher or lower.

One of the things some people object to regarding Catholics’ devotion to the saints is the idea of praying for their intercession. That practice comes from the doctrine of the Communion of Saints that is part of the Apostles Creed. Catholics believe that the saints in heaven—and that includes anyone in heaven, not just those who have been canonized—can pray for us, just as those on Earth can do.

The doctrine of the communion of the saints also teaches us that we can pray for those who have died before us. They might be in a state of purification, which we call purgatory, before entering heaven.

The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is misunderstood not only by Protestants, but also by many Catholics. For example, they sometimes think of it as a place somewhere between heaven and hell, and it is not. Purgatory is the name given to a process of purification, not to a place the soul might go to after death.

Sacred Scripture says that nothing impure will enter the kingdom of heaven. But you and I know that not everyone who dies is worthy to enter into perfect and complete union with God. Nor has he or she rejected God’s mercy enough to sentence himself or herself to hell. In the process of purification we call purgatory, every trace of sin is eliminated and every imperfection is corrected.

The Catholic Church doesn’t say when this will occur. The concept of time is meaningless in eternity. Perhaps it occurs immediately after death or even in the process of dying. We don’t know.

We do know, though, that, because of the doctrine of the communion of saints, the souls in purgatory are not separated from the saints in heaven or from us on earth. We all remain united in the Mystical Body of Christ.

—John F. Fink