What is a saint?

The word, and whom Scripture gives it to

In the New Testament, the holy ones is simply what Christians are called. Paul writes to the church of God in Corinth, "to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy", and greets the Christians of Rome as those "called to be holy".^[1] The word translates the Greek hagioi, the holy ones. It describes a people set apart by God, not a class of exceptional individuals.

Holiness is asked of everyone because it is God's own. "As he who called you is holy, be yourselves holy in every aspect of your conduct", the first letter of Peter says, quoting Leviticus; and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."^[1] The Second Vatican Council made this the teaching of a whole chapter of its constitution on the Church: all the faithful, of whatever rank or state, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.^[8]

All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity.^[5]

The communion of saints

The Apostles' Creed confesses "the communion of saints" immediately after "the holy catholic Church". The Catechism reads the second phrase as an explanation of the first.

What is the Church if not the assembly of all the saints? The communion of saints is the Church.^[2]

The phrase holds two meanings together: communion in holy things, above all the Eucharist, and communion among holy persons.^[2] That communion does not end at death. The Church lives in three states at once: some of her members are pilgrims on earth, some have died and are being purified, and some are in glory, seeing God as he is.^[3][8] Between them there is an exchange of spiritual goods. Those on earth pray for the dead; those in heaven, more closely united to Christ, "do not cease to intercede with the Father for us".^[3]

Whom the Church calls a saint

In its narrowest and most familiar sense, a saint is a person the Church has canonized: solemnly declared to be with God, to have lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree or died a martyr, and to be worthy of public veneration throughout the Church. The Catechism describes the act and its purpose in one sentence.

By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors.^[4]

The verb matters. The Church does not make a saint; it recognizes one. Canonization is a judgment about a life already lived and a glory already received, and the Council says why the Church makes it: in those who shared our humanity and were more perfectly transformed into the image of Christ, God shows his presence and his face to us, and speaks to us in them.^[8]

Law follows doctrine. The Code of Canon Law permits public veneration only of those servants of God whom the authority of the Church has entered in the list of the saints or the blessed.^[10]

The liturgy is where the recognition becomes visible. The Church keeps the memorials of the martyrs and the other saints through the year, proclaims in them the paschal mystery, proposes them to the faithful as examples, and through their merits pleads for God's favours.^[7][9]

How the Church recognizes one

Since 1983 the procedure has been governed by the apostolic constitution Divinus Perfectionis Magister of John Paul II, and since 2007 by the instruction Sanctorum Mater on the inquiry a diocese conducts.^[11][12] A cause opens in the diocese where the person died. The request may be presented to the bishop no sooner than five years after the death, and the diocesan inquiry gathers the person's writings and the sworn testimony of witnesses.^[12]

Four titles mark the way. A person whose cause has been opened is a Servant of God. When the Holy See judges, after the study of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, that the person practiced the Christian virtues to a heroic degree, or died a martyr, or freely offered his or her life for others, the pope declares the person Venerable.^[11][13] Beatification follows a miracle attributed to the person's intercession, or martyrdom alone, and permits public veneration in a particular place or community; the person is called Blessed. Canonization ordinarily requires a further miracle after beatification and extends veneration to the whole Church; the person is called Saint.^[11][16]

Every step is a judgment about evidence. The Dicastery's historical consultors examine the documents, its theologians examine the virtues or the martyrdom, physicians examine a claimed healing before theologians ask whether it can be attributed to the intercession, and the pope alone makes the final decision.^[11]

What a saint is not

A saint is not a person who never sinned. Augustine spent his youth far from the faith; Peter denied his Lord three times. Holiness in the Church's sense is a life that let grace do its work, and the Council measures it by charity, not by the absence of faults.^[8]

Canonization is not a census of heaven. The Church does not claim that the canonized are the only ones with God. Francis writes of the saints next door: the holiness lived by parents raising their children, by men and women working to support a family, by the sick, by elderly religious who never lose their smile. Their lives may not have been perfect, and they kept moving forward.^[14]

Nor is a saint the property of one country or one age. The calendar holds fishermen and empresses, hermits and physicians, a Sudanese woman sold into slavery and a Lebanese monk, and it is still being added to.

Why the Church proposes them

The Catechism gives two reasons in one phrase: models and intercessors.^[4] As models, the saints show that the Gospel can be lived in a particular body, place and century; "the saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history".^[4]

As intercessors, they pray. The Church asks the saints to intercede as one asks a friend on earth to pray, and the honour paid to them takes nothing from the adoration owed to God alone.^[6][8]

We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.^[6]

Benedict XVI put the whole matter in one question at a general audience: what is the essence of holiness? It does not consist in extraordinary deeds, he answered, but in union with Christ, in living his mysteries and making his thoughts and his conduct our own.^[15]

Saint and Blessed in this library

The labels used here follow the Church's own. A page marked Saint is a person the Church has canonized; a page marked Blessed, a person the Church has beatified. A memorial or feast on the calendar is kept on the day the Church keeps it. How a cause moves from a diocese to the altar is the next page.