Saints in the Church

The general term “saint” does not just include canonized saints of the Catholic Church. At first in the early church, this was the term used by the New Testament writers for all Christians through the gift of Baptism and living the Faith, but soon it became a term to distinguish those whose life stood out for eminent holiness, especially martyrs. The Church uses the term “Communion of Saints” to include all souls in heaven, those in Purgatory and all of the pilgrim faithful on earth.

But the term “saints” in the strict sense are those whom the Church honors by canonization. This is an official Church process that recognizes the sanctity of the person. The person is now in heaven and public cult or invocation is allowed.

Why the Cult of the Saints?

We are all called to holiness. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium detailed this “universal call to holiness.” The Church doesn’t just exhort us to holiness and leave us to work alone. She provides helps along the way, and one help is providing the example of the saints. The Church has canonized saints to elevate their lives as heroic and to present a message in every age for all people. These are the witnesses of the Gospel, those that share our humanity and were transformed into the image of Christ.

We are presented a long line of men and women who cooperated with Christ’s grace to triumph over their human frailty and sin to reach sanctity. These saints arise from every age, showing that the Holy Spirit has always been working in human lives and leading them to God. The Church provides us these examples of saints as “fitting examples for our imitation” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 111).

Not only are the saints for our imitation, but they are also reminders of our heavenly destiny. The saints reveal a little of the promised glory that is to come for those who walk in the path of Christ.

Finally, saints are not just plaster images, but our brothers and sisters in Christ. They love us and want to help us, thereby interceding to God on our behalf.

Saints in the Liturgical Year

The Liturgical Year or Liturgical Calendar of the Catholic Church is Christ living in His Church with the Paschal Mystery (Christ’s passion, death, resurrection and ascension) as the heart and kernel of the Liturgical Year.

The events of the Liturgical Year are different than observing memorials, or remembering past events. The Liturgical Year “is not a cold and lifeless representation of the events of the past, or a simple and bare record of a former age. It is rather Christ Himself who is ever living in His Church” (Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 65). This is the Temporal Cycle or Cycle of Time of the Liturgical Calendar.

The martyrs and saints are included in the annual liturgical calendar in the Sanctoral Cycle, but they do not take center stage; they play the role of a supportive cast.

The minds of the faithful should be directed primarily toward the feasts of the Lord whereby the mysteries of salvation are celebrated throughout the year. For this reason, the Proper of the Time shall be given due preference over the feasts of the saints so that the entire cycle of the mysteries of salvation may be suitably recalled (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 108).

It was in Sacrosanctum Concilium of Vatican II that the Church decided to revise the Liturgical Calendar once again (there have many revisions) to make sure the focal point of the unfolding of the year are the mysteries of Christ. The saints should not take precedence over these feasts; many saints’ days were moved to local calendars. The universal calendar, also known as the General Roman Calendar, tries to include saints that have universal appeal.

It has been estimated that there are more than 10,000 canonized or recognized saints in the Catholic Church. As there are only 365 days in the calendar year and the Temporal Cycle takes precedence, not all these saints can be honored and celebrated. The General Roman Calendar has about 200 saints honored throughout the Liturgical Year, with 20 more on the US National Calendar. These saints’ days are not all the same priority. Some can be a feast, others Memorial, and the majority are Optional Memorials, which means just that the priest has the option to celebrate that saint for Mass or praying the Divine Office. If a saint’s feast falls on a Sunday, the celebration of the Saint is “bumped” or omitted to allow the Sunday or Liturgical season to take precedence. See Universal Norms of the Liturgical Year and Calendar for more information.

Saints in the Home

The saints are our brothers and sisters in Christ; we are all connected through the Mystical Body or the Communion of Saints, so it makes sense to try and know our family more intimately. But the Church doesn’t expect us to know and individually honor 10,000 saints in a year. We aren’t even expected to know and honor all 220 saints in a whole year.

The Church provides a variety of saints from every walk of life so that we find the saints that can inspire us personally. We can choose the saints that dealt with the same weaknesses as we have, saints with our same name, saints from the same heritage as us, saints that have similar vocations or interests, saints with patronages of our needs, saints with red hair, saints who were short, saints who exemplify the virtues we are trying to practice

[Credits: catholicculture.org]