All Christians are called to be saints. Saints are persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation.

No precise count exists of those who have been proclaimed saints since the first centuries. However, in 1988, to mark its 4th centenary, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints published the first "Index ac Status Causarum." This book and its subsequent supplements, written entirely in Latin, are considered the definitive index of all causes that have been presented to the Congregation since its institution.

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We also recognize and celebrate All Saints' Day (Nov. 1) and "all the saints who from their labors rest. "All Saints' Day is a time to remember Christians of every time and place, honoring those who lived faithfully and shared their faith with us. On All Saints' Day, many churches read the names of their members who died in the past year.

However, our denomination does not have any system whereby people are elected to sainthood. We do not pray to saints, nor do we believe they serve as mediators to God. United Methodist believe "... there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human who gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:5-6a).

John Wesley believed we have much to learn from the saints, but he did not encourage anyone to worship them. He expressed concern about the Church of England's focus on saints' days and said that "most of the holy days were at present answering no valuable end."

On these facts critics have built various theories. Some hold the addition to be a protest against Vigilantius, who condemned the veneration of the saints; and he connects that protest with Faustus in Southern Gaul and probably also with Nicetas in Pannonia, who was influenced by the "Catecheses" of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Others see in it at first a reaction against the separatism of the Donatists, therefore an African and Augustinian conception bearing only on church membership, the higher meaning of fellowship with the departed saints having been introduced later by Faustus. Still others think that it originated, with an anti-Donatist meaning, in Armenia, whence it passed to Pannonia, Gaul, the British Isles, Spain, etc., gathering new meanings in the course of its travels till it finally resulted in the Catholic synthesis of medieval theologians. These and many other conjectures leave undisturbed the traditional doctrine, according to which the communion of saints, wheresoever it was introduced into the Creed, is the natural outgrowth of Scriptural teaching, and chiefly of the baptismal formula; still the value of the dogma does not rest on the solution of that historical problem.

In this vast Catholic conception rationalists see not only a late creation, but also an ill-disguised reversion to a lower religious type, a purely mechanical process of justification, the substitution of impersonal moral value in lieu of personal responsibility. Such statements are met best, by the presentation of the dogma in its Scriptural basis and its theological formulation. The first spare yet clear outline of the communion of saints is found in the "kingdom of God" of the Synoptics, not the individualistic creation of Harnack nor the purely eschatological conception of Loisy, but an organic whole (Matthew 13:31), which embraces in the bonds of charity (Matthew 22:39) all the children of God (Matthew 19:28; Luke 20:36) on earth and in heaven (Matthew 6:20), the angels themselves joining in that fraternity of souls (Luke 15:10). One cannot read the parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13) without perceiving its corporate nature and the continuity which links together the kingdom in our midst and the kingdom to come. The nature of that communion, called by St. John a fellowship with one another ("a fellowship with us"--1 John 1:3) because it is a fellowship with the Father, and with his Son", and compared by him to the organic and vital union of the vine and its branches (John 15), stands out in bold relief in the Pauline conception of the mystical body. Repeatedly St. Paul speaks of the one body whose head is Christ (Colossians 1:18), whose energizing principle is charity (Ephesians 4:16), whose members are the saints, not only of this world, but also of the world to come (Ephesians 1:20; Hebrews 12:22). In that communion there is no loss of individuality, yet such an interdependence that the saints are "members one of another" (Romans 12:5), not only sharing the same blessings (1 Corinthians 12:13) and exchanging good offices (1 Corinthians 12:25) and prayers (Ephesians 6:18), but also partaking of the same corporate life, for "the whole body . . . by what every joint supplieth . . . maketh increase . . . unto the edifying of itself in charity" (Ephesians 4:16).

Recent well-known researches in Christian epigraphy have brought out clear and abundant proof of the principal manifestations of the communion of saints in the early Church. Similar evidence, is to be found in the Apostolic Fathers with an occasional allusion to the Pauline conception. For an attempt at the formulation of the dogma we have to come down to the Alexandrian School. Clement of Alexandria shows the "gnostic's" ultimate relations with the angels (Stromata VI.12.10) and the departed souls (Stromata VIII.12.78); and he all but formulates the thesaurus ecclesiae in his presentation of the vicarious martyrdom, not of Christ alone, but also of the Apostles and other martyrs (Stromata IV.12.87). Origen enlarges, almost to exaggeration, on the idea of vicarious martyrdom (Exhort. ad martyr., ch. 1) and of communion between man and angels (De orat., xxxi); and accounts for it by the unifying power of Christ's Redemption), ut caelestibus terrena sociaret (In Levit., hom. iv) and the force of charity, stranger in heaven than upon earth (De orat., xi). With St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom the communion of saints has become an obvious tenet used as an answer to such popular objections as these: what, need of a communion with others? (Basil, Epistle 203) another has sinned and I shall atone? (Chrysostom, Hom. i, de poenit.). St. John Damascene has only to collect the sayings of the Fathers in order to support the dogma of the invocation of the saints and the prayers for the dead.

But the complete presentation of the dogma comes from the later Fathers. After the statements of Tertullian, speaking of "common hope, fear, joy, sorrow, and suffering" (On Penance 9-10); of St. Cyprian, explicitly setting forth the communion of merits (De lapsis 17); of St. Hilary, giving the Eucharistic Communion as a means and symbol of the communion of saints (in Psalm 64:14), we come to the teaching of Ambrose and St. Augustine. From the former, the thesaurus ecclesiae, the best practical test of the reunion of saints, receives a definite explanation (On Penance I.15; De officiis, I, xix). In the transcendent view of the Church taken by the latter (Enchiridion 66) the communion of saints, though never so called by him, is a necessity; to the Civitas Dei must needs correspond the unitas caritatis (De unitate eccl., ii), which embraces in an effective union the saints and angels in heaven (Enarration on Psalm 36, nos. 3-4), the just on earth (On Baptism III.17), and in a lower degree, the sinners themselves, the putrida membra of the mystic body; only the declared heretics, schismatics, and apostates are excluded from the society, though not from the prayers, of the saints (Serm. cxxxvii). The Augustinian concept, though somewhat obscured in the catechetical expositions of the Creed by the Carlovingian and later theologians (P.L., XCIX, CI, CVIII, CX, CLII, CLXXXVI), takes its place in the medieval synthesis of Peter Lombard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, etc.

Influenced no doubt by early writers like Yvo of Chartres (P.L., CLXII, 6061), Abelard (P.L. CLXXXIII, 630), and probably Alexander of Hales (III, Q. lxix, a, 1), St. Thomas (Expos. in symb. 10) reads in the neuter the phrase of the Creed, communio sanctorum (participation of spiritual goods), but apart from the point of grammar his conception of the dogma is thorough. General principle; the merits of Christ are communicated to all, and the merits of each one are communicated to the others (ibid.). The manner of participation: both objective and intentional, in radice operis, ex intentione facientis (Supplement 71:1). The measure: the degree of charity (Expos. in symb., 10). The benefits communicated: not the sacraments alone but, the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints forming the thesaurus ecclesia (ibid. and Quodlib., II, Q. viii, a. 16). The participants: the three parts of the Church (Expos. in symb., 9); consequently the faithful on earth exchanging merits and satisfactions (I-II:113:6, and Supplement 13:2), the souls in purgatory profiting by the suffrages of the living and the intercession of the saints (Supplement 71), the saints themselves receiving honour and giving intercession (II-II:83:4, II-II:83:11, III:25:6), and also the angels, as noted above. Later Scholastics and post-Reformation theologians have added little to the Thomistic presentation of the dogma. They worked rather around than into it, defending such points as were attacked by heretics, showing the religious, ethical, and social value of the Catholic conception; and they introduced the distinction between the body and the soul of the Church, between actual membership and membership in desire, completing the theory of the relations between church membership and the communion of saints which had already been outlined by St. Optatus of Mileve and St. Augustine at the time of the Donatist controversy. One may regret the plan adopted by the Schoolmen afforded no comprehensive view of the whole dogma, bur rather scattered the various components of it through a vast synthesis. This accounts for the fact that a compact exposition of the communion of saints is to be sought less in the works of our standard theologians than in our catechetical, apologetic, pastoral, and even ascetic literature. It may also partly explain, without excusing them, the gross misrepresentations noticed above. 0852c4b9a8

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