Saints

It's been a long time since I've written here. There have been many reasons, but a key one has surely been laziness. Let's see if I can remember how to write (if I ever knew).

I have a non-denominational Christian friend who shows far more enthusiasm for her faith than I've shown in recent years. I have faith, and I don't hide it, but I don't bring it up a lot either. I admire her enthusiasm, and her example has inspired me to at least be a little more vocal, do a bit more reading, and trade out some of the board game podcasts for Catholic podcasts.

It would wear me out if it were every day, but I enjoy when she asks me questions about what I believe as a Catholic. It's strange, I love this kind of religious discussion, but for some reason I end up stressed later. I think I dislike disagreeing with people. But for the moment, let's not dwell on that, and move on to our topic. I won't be using her exact questions, but this is based on questions she asked and related questions I asked when I myself was Protestant, and I'll answer them more fully than I managed in our short conversation.

First, what's a Saint?

A saint (lowercase S) is any believer, on Earth or in Heaven, who is in a state of grace, a living part of the body of Christ. Protestants would probably agree with this more general meaning of "saint."

A canonized Saint (capital S) is just one of those saints who is recognized by the Church as being in heaven and being a good example to believers. The current process involves an investigation of the candidate's life, and it requires two confirmed miracles attributed to the Saint's intercession.

Do only well-known people become canonized Saints?

Generally, simply because there needs to be enough enthusiasm to get the process started. Your grandmother might have been the most loving and devout person you ever met, and you personally might be confident she's in heaven, but unless her story is remarkable, or she touched the right people, it probably won't be recognized by the whole Church.

There are certainly many exceptions. The first example that pops in my head would be the Vietnamese Martyrs. Well over 100,000 Catholics were martyred in Vietnam in the 1800s (most were Vietnamese Catholics, but some were French and Spanish missionaries). 117 of these martyrs were canonized to represent the whole group, not because they were the only saints, but because we had some records of them. But few of these are very well known as individuals.

Do you pray to Saints?

This question carries with it questions of idolatry. Are we putting other gods before God? Are we making Jesus one among many instead of the one and only savior of the world?

The simple answer to the first question, "Do you pray to Saints?" is, "not really, it's more like we ask them to pray for us."

But there is more to it than that. This question is a bit less simple than a modern American Protestant realizes. To them "pray" is pretty much defined as "speaking to God." But the meaning of the word "pray" has changed over time. How, pray tell? The word used to also have a more general meaning of, "an earnest request or wish." In that sense, yes, we pray to the Saints. Everyone makes earnest requests of other people, but usually these requests are to people we can see. So we can't be blamed for making requests of a person, but can we be blamed for requesting something from a person in Heaven?

Is it wrong to speak to the dead?

It is wrong to practice necromancy, conjuring up the spirits of the dead, seeking to circumvent God in a desire to acquire secret knowledge or power.

But the Saints, by definition, are the people who are alive in the body of Christ. If we're speaking to them as members of the body of Christ, I find it hard to see how it's more harmful than speaking to the person sitting next to you. If however, you are somehow trying to circumvent God, I definitely see how that would offend Him. There surely are Catholics who have done this, just as there are Catholics who have committed every other sin, but this is a deviation from Catholic teaching.

Isn't Jesus the One Mediator between God and Man? Why go to the Saints?

Certainly, Jesus is the one mediator, and without Him there would be no saints. Saints are members of the body of Christ, and can do nothing without the head. But the head of the body doesn't desire to work alone. As 1 Cor 12:21 says, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'"

It is clear throughout the Bible, and through experience, that God desires to work with us and through us. From the beginning He has wanted us to share in many of the things that are rightfully His, both on Earth and in Heaven. God sent Moses to free his people in Egypt, to mediate between God and Pharaoh. Jesus sent his apostles to preach, to forgive sins, to heal, clearly mediating between Christ and man. Even in the simple act of sharing our faith with our children, we mediate grace God has given to us, and pass it on.

The Son is the one mediator between man and the Father, but He clearly wants our participation.

That said, Catholics do usually go straight to God in prayer. Of the many prayers during Mass, I can only think of one where we ask Saints to pray for us, and it's clearly in the context of asking the whole church in Heaven and Earth to pray for us:

"I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do; and I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God."

But, is honoring Saints idolatry?

If it became disproportionate or out of context, it could be. The Catholic Church recognizes different levels of honor due to God and to Saints. At first this sounded kind of odd to me. Using the less technical terms, we give "adoration" to God, and "honor" to the Saints. It can sound like we're just using different words for the same thing, but giving honor to the Saints makes sense given the Commandment to honor our father and mother. Besides, it is good to commend others for their good deeds. Not just for their encouragement, but also to help us learn from their example.

God makes himself clear that other people are due honor, and due our attention, but we must keep things in perspective, and remember that God comes first, and the good we love in any person is just a glimmer of the good in God.

Again, using the "body of Christ" analogy: If you love the head most, but love the whole body because of the head, you're good. But if you love the hand, and hate the head, you've got something really wrong.

Is it good to study the Saints?

Is it good to read or listen to the testimonies or stories of fellow Christians? Of course it is. They are good examples to us. Their stories certainly aren't as important or core to the faith as the Gospels, but they do have value.

When I was a Protestant, in some strange way I felt like there was the Bible, and then there was my church today, and I was ignorant of everything in between. That could be a whole other topic. But the fact is that Jesus's mission didn't end when He ascended into heaven. Every good deed done by one of his faithful followers, the members of his body, is the action of Christ in the world. Thus, the stories of the Saints are the continued story of Christ's action on Earth. To neglect them entirely is to neglect the good Jesus has been doing for the past 2,000 years.

If we need proof that imitating the Saints is a good way to imitate Christ, let's remember what Saint Paul wrote in 1 Cor 11:1, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ."


For more information, with more Biblical references, I recommend this article by Catholic Answers.

Seeing Jesus

Listening to a talk by Bishop Fulton Sheen the other night, he gave the reminder that we were taught to pray, "Our Father, not my Father," and that we, "see the face of Jesus in the face of the poor." This takes our invisible Lord and makes him visible. It helps calm our doubts, and helps us to feel the amazing warmth and love of God.

We can experience this most powerfully by going to help those who are the most needy: Feeding the homeless, counseling the despondent, bringing the gospel to the faithless. We need to do these things when we can (something some of my brave friends do far better than I). But we also need to recognize that everyone is poor or broken at times, in their own ways.

By recognizing the needs of those in our daily lives, and showing them compassion we can all feed the poor every day. Most of us eat several times a day. And we need emotional and spiritual sustenance each day as well. Be a friend, be a brother, look past what people ask for, and give them even more. "For if we can not love the people we see, how can we love God, who we cannot see."

A Step Toward Community

There was a time my wife and I dreamed of living in a lay Catholic community. We strongly believe that people are too isolated these days, too individualistic, trying to do everything on their own. There is so much we can do better together. And my wife and I feel a greater need for something like this, being separated from our families by a 7 hour drive. But some time ago we lost most of our hope in the matter.

The lay Catholic communities we have looked into seem too strict, not in terms of the necessary moral requirements, but more along the lines of a religious order, with required prayer times and other requirements that go beyond ordinary Catholic moral standards. 

Also, the two of us are very shy. We have difficulty connecting with others, especially in a deeper way. Just speaking for myself, when I let down my walls it exposes raw nerves, and I become hyper-sensitive, and I just end up hiding behind a dumpster.

So, our difficulty with connections limits our ability to sell the idea of a community, and our desire to try fitting in with an existing community.

But we do have a bit of a vision, and perhaps it will do some good for someone who actually gets along well with people.

I can see various possibilities, but I generally see a two-tiered structure with a more loosely tied large group, and more tightly bound small groups.

I think two (possibly three) families would be enough to form a small group. These two families would form a sort of partnership, doing things like cooking, cleaning, praying, and sharing much of life together. I could see this working in one shared house with a large common area, as well as separate areas belonging to one family or the other. Or, perhaps more likely, two separate homes next to, or very close to each other. These units would generally get together with the larger neighborhood community maybe once a week, perhaps a few times. Or to simplify things, they could just gather for ordinary parish functions, which are generally fine for a broad sense of community, just not so much the daily interdependence that would be the strength of the small groups.

One possible problem with the small group structure could be an issue of exclusiveness, but I think that would fade with a bit of time. The two small families would become like one large family, and wouldn't need be any more exclusive than any large family.

I don't think God intended this American spirit of self-reliance. He meant us to rely on each other. As brothers in a shared faith, we should be able to truly be part of each others' lives: helping each other with the difficult task of raising children, with the mundane tasks of keeping house, shopping, living, and most of all, with growth in our faith.

And the truth is, while such dreams of community may be beyond my reach, there are small steps I can take in that direction. Even if we don't live in walking distance, I can offer to help one or two of my close friends with ordinary tasks, whether accomplished together or apart. And if my gift is reciprocated, and it becomes regular, it will make life easier and happier for all our families. And I think we will live a little more like God intended.

Romancing the Rocks

For the longest time, I misunderstood romantic love to be the love between a man and a woman. The love properly ordered toward marriage. But I am beginning to understand that there is romance in everything.

Also, along the same lines, romantic love is often tied in with sex, as if the two went hand-in-hand. It's not that the two are entirely unrelated, but properly ordered, most romance is not sexual in nature (or perhaps, as taught in John Paul II's Theology of the Body, it might be better to say that not all our sexuality is ordered toward sexual activity).

Romance starts with our experience of the beautiful, whether something looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, smells beautiful, and so on. But it is not only from the experience of the senses directly, but also the mind. We can experience a beautiful idea or a beautiful personality.

Thus, we can "fall in love" with things as well as people. We see a beautiful mountain in the distance, and we want to get closer and climb it or touch it. At the least we want to take its picture, so we can preserve a part of our experience with the mountain to bring with us.

One of the things that helped me realize the greater dimensions of romance was having children. You fall in love with the beautiful little faces, the cute voices, the new personalities. You want to hug them and kiss them. You can sit and stare lovingly at them (when they aren't driving you crazy).

Of course, each love, for each person and each thing, is unique, but they are not an entirely different kind of thing. They are different in intensity, they have different components, they are associated with different roles and duties, but they are all loves of the beautiful.

And properly ordered this all points to God. As Plato discovered using pre-Christian philosophy, God is the perfect beauty, and the source of all beauty. And as the the scriptures tell us, Christ came as Lover, to be the bridegroom of the Church, to unite himself with us in a kind of heavenly marriage.

So all that is beautiful, all that we love, should remind us of God. We should be thankful for all the good that he presents to us here on Earth. And when we marvel at the beautiful things he has given us, we should feel even greater awe, wondering how much greater is the source of all beauty and love.

In the World

A while back I immersed myself in Catholic books (along with Catholic CDs, web sites, and smoke signals). I left behind ordinary television, deciding there wasn't anything good enough to watch to be worth the level of negative influence found in the worldly experience of the shows and their commercials. I also switched to primarily listening to Christian rock instead of popular rock, or whatever I listened to before. I didn't give up movies or other forms of entertainment, but I at least picked things where I might have more control (and by the way, if you can watch five movies, all five should be Man of Steel).

These days this means I'll watch things on Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube, but no broadcast TV. The flexibility and control works better with demanding children ("snack, water, snack!)", and when I'm sensible it allows me to still protect myself from the negative influences I prefer to avoid (except some violence-provoking toddler shows, which I just can't avoid).

I'm mostly happy with the setup, but there are some problems. First, I seem to have burnt out on Catholic media, and to an extent, my interest in the faith in general (though I still try to pray frequently throughout the day). I don't know if this is because the adventure of conversion is gone, and I am bored by the ordinary, or if it's because of disappointments in my experience of Catholic life and with my fellow Catholics, or something else. I do think I need to bring some of that adventure back by engaging in some ministries, maybe evangelization (because the faith is still true, whether I'm interested or not), and hopefully I can change my own heart, and also spend more time with engaging Catholics. Then, perhaps I will find a greater, more lasting, interest in the faith. I don't know.

Another problem is that by avoiding TV and radio and their commercials, I feel a greater disconnect with people. I'm slow to hear news, or discover the new shows and movies. And I don't have a liking for sports, so that's out too. In short, I don't know what people are talking about half the time (people, come on, what are you talking about??), and I get left out of conversations or I just seem weird and uninteresting (in reality, I'm weird and moderately interesting, come on!). Also, I am perhaps bothered too much by people who talk in a worldly manner, with lots of crudity, swearing, or other kinds of annoying immaturity.

In this respect am I living in the world while not being of the world, as I'm supposed to? Or am I managing, through my failings to just end up being of the world in a less common way, while avoiding my mission out in the world?

Don't answer that.

Pain and Darkness

For the first time since her mother died, my wife is spending time alone. And with the alone time comes the sadness. I have no experience with the death of someone close, but I have experienced the pain of loss. A few times my strange ways have lost me friends (thank God, I sometimes got them back). My situation was very different, and not something most people would even recognize as comparable, but I think perhaps the pain, the feeling of loss, was the same.

Think of what it is to lose even a little thing, like in the example our Lord gave about the woman with ten coins who lost one. When we lose something it becomes the most important thing in the world to us. Perhaps this lasts for just a moment when it's something small, but it can last for weeks or years if it is a family member or a friend.

The sadness of a lost loved one is a terribly lonely thing. Other people can help ease the pain, but each person who is important to us fills a unique role, holds a unique place in our heart, and nobody else can fill it entirely. So the pain of waiting for our loved one to come back to us, or waiting until we join them in Heaven, is ultimately between us, God, and the one we lost.

In this lonely time a shadow descends upon our lives. The emotional pain becomes tangible, like a stabbing in the heart. And while we may have prayed all along, now we call out desperately, knowing only God can comfort us. But where is he?

We need to see him. We need to hear him. But when does Jesus come down, and give us a hug? When does he speak up to us, and tell us our loved one is fine? When does he show us we will not be alone, and the hole will be filled?

The miracles of God are so hard to see. How can we find any peace in this life? Where is the joy we are promised? Is there a joy even in our sorrow? Can we find in our sadness the seeds of true love? The loved one we lost reminds us how precious our loved ones are... but can't God show us this truth a different way?

I do not begin to understand God's plan for suffering. I keep hope that he will one day answer me more clearly, and show me a love and a light that is more tangible than the pain and the darkness.

For now, in the shadow of death, I can only cry out in prayer:

Oh Lord, shine your light into this darkness. We know you are there, but we feel so alone. Help us find peace in our sadness. Help us to hear your voice. Help us to feel your invisible arms. Lord, comfort your broken children, and help us to comfort one another.

Hidden Bodies

My wife, Stephanie, is currently dealing with the death of her mother, and the subsequent plans of her family to scatter her ashes from a pier. This brings into focus the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic views of the body, and the resultant burial rituals. Following from this Stephanie had some insights on the value people place on a body's appearance.

When a dead body is whole, we treat it with a certain respect. We wouldn't just dump it off a pier or cut it in half to bury in two separate places (unless we were in the Mafia). But a cremated body no longer looks like a body, so we do all kinds of odd things with it.

Likewise, the Eucharist does not have the appearance of a body, which is part of why it is so easily disrespected, mistreated or forgotten. The Eucharist is not something I begin to understand, but it is a wonderful invisible gift.

But I suppose even potentially viewable living bodies are forgotten if they are hard enough to see. People hidden by distance or within the womb are not given the same value as those easier for us to see. Which makes me wonder if I am worth less to people, being so skinny you can't see me when I turn sideways?

I don't know... nor do I know how to rely less on what I see myself, and how to care more for what is invisible.

Let's pray that God might help us to treat lives and the bodies of all people with respect, especially the holy body of our Lord. And that we might focus less on the visible to better see the invisible things we do easily forget.

Hearing Voices

Every week I heard Stephanie's phone ring once or twice. It was Stephanie's mother, almost without fail. She has some friends that text top keep in touch, but the one person who called on the phone to hear her voice, the voice God gave us to share with our loved ones, was her mother. Now I hear Stephanie's ringtone, and my first thought is still that Sandy is on the phone. But it will never be her again, and that is sad and strange.

Now, I love my text messages, and I'm not going to stop using them (much to my friends' chagrin), but I wonder if I'm turning to them too quickly. I wonder if I should rediscover the telephone. And when I can manage it, even if I don't have much time to spare, I should go a little out of my way to quickly (or not so quickly) stop by and see my friends and family at work or at home.

I have friends living just a mile or two away that I email or text, but hardly see in person. What great difference might it make if I just stopped by for five minutes here or there? I might find myself at least a little closer to the dream my wife and I have of living in a close-knit Catholic community (something I'll have to go into more later).

The Best in People

While it does go against my belief that the joy of complaining is why God lets us suffer in life, I've been engaged in an interesting thought experiment.

What if we could look at our family and friends, and only see the good memories, and let go of all the bad?

I pick good family and close friends, so it's not like there's anything huge ruining our relationships, but it seems most every relationship has little annoyances or dark spots.

Yeah, I said I pick good family. "That makes no sense," you say? Well you're just saying that because you picked such a lame family.

Anyway, to clarify this idea about forgetting the problems, I'm not saying that if your lunatic brother threatens to kill you the next time he sees you, you should forget it, and invite yourself over for tea. I'm talking a bit more about issues that are clearly in the past or more minor issues in the present, like if someone forgot your birthday, they complain about your cooking (can you blame them?), they don't answer your emails, they don't show interest in some of your favorite things, or things like that.

If something is solidly in the past it could be a big issue, and you can still forget it, like the time your brother lit your hamster on fire (how could he do that?!?). Let it go. Also you can forget things on your own side. Forget the worries about being misunderstood, forget the embarrassing moments of the past, and don't worry about how much they like you.

Doing this, focusing on the kindness, the fun, the beauty of the person and your relationship with them, and removing the dark spots from the picture, I think you can find a greater happiness in your relationships, and love your friends and family more fully.

I even wonder if we might discover some hidden treasures this way. Maybe we'll see the people who might not have been the easiest or most exciting friends, and realize how much love they showed us while we weren't paying attention.

As for my actual experience, so far my results are mixed. I kind of do this by default with my wife. Next, I find it easier with my family and close friends, where there are lots of good memories and displays of love to draw upon. I've had moments of realization that friends were not just good friends, but great and wonderful friends. Other friends and acquaintances I'm finding that the kindness-to-difficulty ratio is still a more major factor.

But even if we still have difficulty loving, it doesn't hurt to prayerfully work with God to look at people with greater love. Remember, just as our love for God helps us love people, our love for people also helps us to love God.

This is part of why most of us are not called to be hermits. Most of us are supposed to be spending time enjoying the company of our family and friends, as well as touching the lives of others beyond our circle.

And if we are doing this with greater focus on what is right with the person, perhaps we'll love them a bit more, and we will all grow a little closer to God just being near each other.

Too Organized Too

"I don't believe in organized religion."

Really, is it that you don't believe in organized religion, or is it that you don't like organized religion?

If you don't believe in God, the supernatural, a world we cannot see, you could identify as an atheist of one sort or another.

If you don't believe truth is knowable, then I suppose you'd be a kind of agnostic.

If, however, you believe that there is something real beyond what we can detect with our senses, and there are potentially knowable truths about that unseen world, we would expect people to study the unseen world, and as they come to conclusions, we would expect them to organize into camps of sorts.

And if that unseen world had made itself known to man we would definitely expect those men to organize and pass down what they had learned, even if they were not instructed to do so.

If we look at the Bible, and find that it is an account of the contact between man and the supernatural, man and God, we see that God indeed established two organized religions. First God established Judaism, which was first more loosely organized, but eventually God gave his people specific rules, rites of worship, a formal priesthood, etc. Later, Jesus came and fulfilled the prophecies of Judaism and established the new Christian Church. We then see in Acts and the Epistles as Jesus Christ's chosen Apostles begin to expand the Church and formalize its hierarchy, rules, and rites.

In the end, if religion deals with truth, organized religion is a given, just as organized dentistry is a given. And whether we like organized religion or not has no more bearing on its validity than whether we enjoy root canals or not.

So, does God love us? Does he love us enough to share the truth with us? Does he love us enough to come down and die for us? That is what we need to know. And if he loves us that much, of course religion is organized.