One of the beautiful doctrines of the Church that I truly love and appreciate is the doctrine of the communion of the saints. When I was younger I find it so difficult to comprehend the idea why we Catholics pray to the saints, honor the virgin Mary and honor their relics. I thought then that if it was plain idolatry, then it is something that deviates our attention and worship of the One True God. But when I went to high school and began reading the Baltimore Catechism, the more that I understood this doctrine. This faith was enrich when I went to the University and had the chance to read the Fathers of the Church. Our devotion to the saints are grounded in our confession of faith in the Nicene Creed. Many of our protestant friends say it is wrong to pray to the saints because they are dead, and that we should not communicate with the dead. But they have forgotten the fact that Christ said: All things Live unto God. For God is not the God of the dead. For if we invoke the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then He is the God of the Living.
There is a corporate aspect to our faith. When we live and when we die we do not only do it for ourselves but we do it for others and with others. When we are in the state of Grace we are bound by a spiritual union to the living, to those in purgatory and to those that are in heaven. For the Church is one. When we invoke the saints and the souls in purgatory we are simply expressing that union we have with one another.
If there is one saint that is close to my heart, I would say that it is Saint Therese. Friday is her feast and I would like to honor her through this blog. She has granted a lot of my prayers both spiritual and material and in her simple and quiet ways she has showered me with roses from heaven. I want to share with you some beautiful quotes from her autobiography:
"Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that the Church being a body composed of different members, the most essential, the most noble of all the organs would not be wanting to her; I understood that the Church has a heart and that this heart is burning with love; that it is love alone which makes the members work, that if love were to die away apostles would no longer preach the Gospel, martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that love comprises all vocations, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places because it is eternal!"
Story of A Soul, Chapter XI
You can read more of this from the webpage of the Society of the Little Flower
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