In Australia today when we think of saints we are likely to think of Mary MacKillop. [Canonised in Rome on 17 October 2010] she joins St Clare, St Catherine of Sienna and all the other saints. Each year, too, the Feast of All Saints reminds us that we are all called to be saints. We can remember the hidden saints we have known who have made faith attractive to us. So how do public saints like Mary MacKillop and our personal saints fit together? That is the topic of this Explorations.
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
In the New Testament, all Christians were called saints. There were the saints of Ephesus, of Corinth, of Antioch and so on. The name showed that when people were baptised and became Christians, they came close to God, and so were holy. Their faith in Christ made them God's family. Christ would gather them with him when he came again at the day of judgment.
Being called saints did not mean that they had led remarkable lives or had been very pious. They were saints because God had called them and had made them holy. They were members of Christ's body, Christ's brothers and sisters, and children of God.
They formed the communion of saints. This phrase implied that Christ had joined them together in his body. It also implied that they shared the body of Christ in the Eucharist. Holy things were given to the holy. So to be saints was a gift. It was not an achievement.
But for Christians, to be saints was a gift to be displayed and given to others. The Christian community attracted people to Christ by the ways in which Christ had changed their lives. When people looked at the Christians they were amazed by what God had done in them. They said, for example, 'See how these Christians love one another'.
MARTYRS
What amazed people most about Christians' lives was the way they acted when persecuted. Christians were offered the option of denying Christ by sacrificing to the Roman Gods, or facing the certainty of torture and a slow, public, agonising death. Few people at the time would have chosen to die so painfully when they could avoid it so easily. So they were amazed to see many go courageously and serenely to their death for their faith. Christians saw the willingness of women and children to suffer as one of the greatest proofs of God's work in those who followed Jesus.
The martyrs were the pride and glory of the Christian communities. Their names were remembered in the churches, particularly on the date of their martyrdom, which Christians called their birth into eternal life. They were also remembered in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist. People saw them as their companions in the communion of saints. They believed that the martyrs could support them in the prayers they made to God. The communion of saints gathered together the living and dead saints.
The confessors played a similarly important part in the church. They were Christians who had been tortured for their faith but not killed. They were greatly respected in the church, and people who had offered sacrifice to idols out of fear during persecution often asked them to represent their case when they wanted to return to the church.
Martyrs were not the only people who were remembered in the church. The great figures of the Old Testament like Moses and Abraham and the Apostles were seen to be loved by God and to show what God could do in the saints. Later on, too, hermits, like Anthony, who went into the desert to find God through prayer were remembered. So were missionary bishops like Martin of Tours.
The lives of these holy people were so attractive that they drew many people to faith. People saw their Christian faith as real and attractive in their lives, and they confirmed their belief that God was close to them and working in the community. They felt that in them the heavens opened and God was close to his people.
In the early church, holiness was the business of the whole community. Christians were called saints because their faith brought them close to God. Holiness was not simply a private accomplishment, but a public gift through which God could invite others to welcome Christ into their lives.
RECOGNISING SAINTS
Because holiness was so public and so central to the church, it was important that the martyrs and holy people who were remembered in public prayer were genuine followers of Jesus. You can imagine how discrediting it would be if someone reverenced as a martyr turned out to be a bandit, or if a man held up as a model of piety was discovered to be a sexual predator.
Because generally small groups saw people as holy, it was always possible that the respect given them could be ungrounded or have nothing to do with holiness. They could be leaders of a local clan, for example. So it was important for saints to be recognised and approved for inclusion in worship.
Initially the local bishop used to decide which martyrs to mention in the worship in his own church. He also wrote to surrounding churches to inform them of his decision and to invite them also to include them in prayer. So some martyrs and holy people were remembered widely through the churches. Later, particularly in the Western church, the Bishop of Rome, who had a ministry to the whole church, approved the inclusion of holy Christians in the worship of the universal church.
Until the Reformation, there were two processes by which holy people could be remembered in the public worship of the church. Bishops could approve them for their local churches. This process was later called beatification. The Pope could approve them for worship in the whole church. This process was later called canonisation.
After the Reformation, a period of centralisation within the Catholic Church, both beatification and canonisation were reserved to the Pope. Beatification allows the person to be included in worship in particular places and for particular communities. Canonisation allows worship across the whole church. Those canonised are commonly called Saints. Those who are beatified are called Blessed.
In time the process by which people were beatified and canonised became more complex. It involved a rigorous examination of their lives, assurance that a martyr died because of their faith, and miracles to support the claim to holiness. The enquiry showed that God had clearly worked in the lives of people with a reputation for holiness, and that their lives reflected closeness to God.
Because the process was so complex and the investigation required such great resources, people who were proposed by strong groups in the church, like religious congregations, were more likely to be canonised than others. These groups looked to their saints for support in their life.
PERSONAL SAINTS
When we reflect on the reasons why the church came to approve remembering holy people in its worship, we can see that canonisation does not mean that public saints are better or holier than people of their day who are not canonised. It is helpful for the Church to have some saints included in its prayer. And the process by which people are canonised does enable us to be confident that they are virtuous and faithful Christians whom Catholics can safely adopt as companions and with whom they can associate their prayers. We can also see in the public saints God's work in making all Christians holy, and see a glimpse of what is possible in Christian life.
It is equally important for us also to respect our own personal saints. In the Australian Catholics Young Journalist Award, in every year many students describe as saints people whose stories and love have been significant in their lives-their mothers or fathers, grandparents or old teachers they loved. They are people who showed them what it means to be faithful and to live as Christ lived. Our personal saints show us an attractive and ordinary picture of being holy. So we should treasure them.
Our personal saints, too, often remain alive in our minds and hearts even after they have died. We might find it helpful to talk to them when we pray, and to join them to our prayers to God, in the same way that we pray to the public saints of the Church. They are saints of the home who live in the homely places of our hearts.
For many of us, too, people we do not know personally and have never met can inspire us to live generously. Although they have not been canonised, they have lived good lives and have shown us what it means to follow Christ and to live fully as members of his body.
Many people, for example, are devoted to the memory of the Latin American bishops Oscar Romero and Dom Helder Camara. They have found in their lives an understanding of Christ's call to love our fellow human beings simply and generously at the risk of our own lives. Others have been struck by the life of Dorothy Day, John Henry Newman or Thomas Merton, and have found the holiness of the church embodied in them. These are public figures within the church. Individuals and small communities within the church have adopted them as their personal saints. Some of them may in time be named public saints in the Church. But to those who find in them a model of being a Christian, there is not reason why that should make much of a difference.
THE PLACE OF SAINTS
It is helpful to have people in our lives, both dead and living, near and close, in whom we see the kind of faith and life that God invites us to share. We may also find it helpful to have as part of our lives saints to whom we can talk, and whom we can bring into our prayers. They give us a rich, living sense of the Church. We see the Church as more than a collection of individuals. It is a community of people spread through time as well as space, who are never lost from memory simply because they live in another continent and another century.
The fact that we have public 'canonised' saints reminds us that the Church is a body in which Christ lives, gives us life and makes us all holy. We are all saints, not simply as individuals who struggle alone to follow God's law, but together as Christ's body. What God has done in the canonised saints, God will do in each of our lives if we allow it.
Like the Gospels, the sacraments and all else in the church, saints keep our eyes fixed on what matters in life. They show us that what matters is what God can do in our lives. They invite us as a community to make evident the attractiveness and power of Christ in our lives and world, and to be what we are – saints.
RESOURCES
Index of patron saints
http://saints.sqpn.com/
Congregation for the Causes of Saints
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/csaints/index.htm
[This article was updated to record that Mary McKillop had been canonised on 17 October 2010 – a year after the article first appeared when Mary McKillop was still Blessed.]