The Communion of Saints

The Creed confesses the communion of saints. It means the union of all the members of the Church in Christ: the faithful who still live on earth, the souls being purified before they see God, and the blessed who already contemplate him. This union holds beyond death, and it allows some to pray for others.

The communion in holy things

The communion of saints means first the communion in holy things: the sacred goods that all the members of the Church share. They hold one same faith received from the Apostles, receive the same sacraments that give grace, and above all the Eucharist, the common good par excellence, which makes of all one single body. “For we, being many, are one bread, one body: all that partake of one bread.” 1 Corinthians 10:17 To this are added the gifts that the Spirit distributes for the benefit of all, and charity, by which the good of each becomes profitable to the whole. From this communion in holy goods is born the communion of the holy persons.

One body in Christ

The Church is a body of which Christ is the head, and all the baptized are its members. “Now you are the body of Christ and members of member.” 1 Corinthians 12:27 From this comes their solidarity: “And if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it.” 1 Corinthians 12:26 This body reaches beyond death, and three states compose it. The Church on earth still walks toward God, in faith and combat; the Church being purified completes in purgatory what it lacks; the Church of heaven contemplates God face to face. They are called the Church militant, the Church suffering and the Church triumphant. The blessed surround us as “so great a cloud of witnesses” Hebrews 12:1 that sustains our race. All these dwellings hold to the same Christ and form one single body, which death does not divide.

The exchange of spiritual goods

Because the members make up one body, their spiritual goods circulate among them. The good of one profits all: the prayer, the merits, the sufferings offered by one sustain the others, and the abundance of the saints supplies for the poverty of those who struggle. Paul knew his sufferings to be fruitful for others. “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church.” Colossians 1:24 From this exchange is formed what the Church calls her treasury: the infinite value of the merits of Christ, to which are added the prayers and good works of the Virgin and of all the saints, whose merits themselves draw all their value from those of Christ. The Church, to whom the Lord entrusted the keys, “whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven,” Matthew 16:19 draws on this treasury to remit to her members the temporal punishment that sin leaves after pardon: this is the indulgence, whose use the Council of Trent confirmed. And each, by his charity, pours into this common treasury in turn.

The saints live in God

The blessed of heaven live fully in God. Jesus affirms it, speaking of the patriarchs dead for centuries. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Matthew 22:32 The saints contemplate him face to face, and from that vision they draw a life higher than ours. They know our prayers not by a power of their own, nor by an unlimited knowledge they do not have, but in God himself: seeing him as he is, they know in him what he discloses to them, and he discloses to them what concerns their charity. And this charity remains turned toward us. “Charity never falleth away.” 1 Corinthians 13:8 United to us in the same Christ, the saints continue to love us, and God, whom they contemplate, discloses to them our requests.

They pray for us

This life of the saints is wholly turned toward God and toward love. Their charity blossoms at the threshold of heaven and moves them to pray for those still on the way. The Apocalypse shows the elect presenting before God “golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.” Revelation 5:8 The Old Testament already foreshadowed it: Onias sees Jeremiah, long dead, appear as “he that prayeth much for the people, and for all the holy city, Jeremias, the prophet of God.” 2 Maccabees 15:14 And heaven rejoices over a single sinner who repents: “there shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.” Luke 15:10 The saints take part in our journey: they intercede.

The angels too take part in this communion. Spirits charged with a service, they watch over men and carry their prayers before God. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to minister for them who shall receive the inheritance of salvation?” Hebrews 1:14 Standing ceaselessly before the face of God, they see in him those they guard. “their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 18:10 The angel Raphael presented the prayers of Tobit: “I offered thy prayer to the Lord.” Tobit 12:12 One may therefore ask them to pray for us, as one asks the saints.

We pray for the dead

The communion also works in the other direction. Those who have left this world without being fully purified complete their purification before seeing God, in the state the Church calls purgatory. Scripture lays its supports: nothing defiled enters the city of God, “There shall not enter into it any thing defiled.” Revelation 21:27 and yet one whose work is burned “shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” 1 Corinthians 3:15 Between the defilement that excludes and the salvation that remains, a purification is needed. Merit belongs to earthly life, the time of the journey when the will can still choose, and which death comes to close. “I must work the works of him that sent me, whilst it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” John 9:4 The dead can therefore no longer merit for themselves; the Church, united to them in Christ, relieves them by its prayers, its almsgiving, and above all by the sacrifice of the Mass. Scripture already shows this gesture, when Judas Maccabeus has a sacrifice offered for the soldiers fallen in battle: “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” 2 Maccabees 12:46 The Church of the first centuries prayed in the same way: Saint Cyril of Jerusalem taught the newly baptized that the dead are named at the altar, and Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, asks that his mother Monica be prayed for. To pray for the dead is to extend beyond death the charity that unites the members of one same body.

A grace to receive

From this communion the prayer to the saints arises. To ask them to intercede is to do with them what Christians do among themselves on earth, entrusting one another in prayer. “Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another… For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.” James 5:16 Already Paul asked that others pray for him: “that you help me in your prayers for me to God.” Romans 15:30 To pray to the saints is not to adore them: adoration belongs to God alone, “The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve.” Matthew 4:10 We venerate the saints and ask their prayer, as one asked it of Paul. This intercession does not rival the one mediation of Christ; it flows from it: “there is one God: and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy 2:5 It is the same Paul who, just before, urges that “supplications, prayers, intercessions… be made for all men.” 1 Timothy 2:1 Far from setting aside the mutual help of the members, the one Mediator founds it. And the saints established in God are nearest to him. To pray to them is to enter into their friendship, to take as companions on the road those who have already reached the goal, and to taste even now the communion that unites the whole Church.