Communion of Saints

Communion of Saints



Communion of Saints




A friend recently expressed an idea that praying to the Saints can open a door for Satan to enter in. I wasn’t quite sure that I had heard him correctly. Actually I am still not sure that what I heard was his intended thought. It was an odd moment for me and in my own impatience and certain pride I did not listen, as I should have. Only In writing this am I seeing clearly that in my own monumental desire to convince otherwise, I lost the opportunity to really understand his fears about the Catholic practice of praying with and through the saints.

As a Catholic who loves the Church in all of its seemingly odd and sometimes confusing practices, I readily admit my desire to share the Catholic view and indeed to convince the ill-informed and sometimes even the hostile, to that view. I have recently been praying a beautiful Litany of Humility. “Deliver me oh Lord from the desire of being consulted . . . That in the opinion of the world others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus grant me the desire to desire it.” There are many other beautiful ejaculations within this particular litany but this is the one the strikes me in the heart. It is a sword that reveals the true state of my healthy and still thriving Ego. As my priest expressed in his Sunday sermon past, the Ego is the ever present “I”. It is this very “I” that the Lord wishes to slay within the soul of the Christian and indeed in every man.

If there is one area that I truly lack humility more than another, it is in this: “Listen to ME my friend for I know better than you.” How many opportunities have I personally missed when I, like the quoted fool, “rushed in where angels feared to tread”? One day, when I gain some humility of heart, I will be able to truly listen to the souls I am privileged to spend time with.

“Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart. ” Can anyone quote another place in scripture where Jesus specifically directs us to a virtue of His own heart that he wishes for us to imitate? It must be this particular quality that is most essential to our becoming "holy" as God wishes us to become. It is strange that as I have journeyed this life of faith, having tread many different paths, from nominal Catholicism to fervent Evangelicalism, back to devout Catholicism, that only recently have I begun to grasp the need for humility in certain areas of my life. The more readily I have submitted my mind to the mind of the Church that Christ founded, the more aware that I have become of the great and evil pride dwelling within me, so much so, that I hesitate today to describe myself as a devout Catholic, falling as I do, so short of the expressed desire of the Savior.