Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
Who were the saints? Are they legend, myth, or reality? Looking from the outside, there is no wonder why there is so much confusion about these figures in the church.
So let’s start at the obvious points who were the saints?
The saints were holy men and women, who have made it to heaven, and their mission in heaven is to pray for all of us on Earth who are in the middle of running our race. It is important to remember that just because a person is not canonized it does not mean that they aren’t in heaven. It just means that we don’t know where they are for certain. They may be in heaven, but we just don’t know at this time, because God has not revealed to us where they are yet.
They are people who lived at various points in the church’s history. During the early church, most saints who were given this title were martyrs. (dying for their faith in Christ) But after Catholicism became legalized, people were now able to open the door to another category of sainthood; a person who lived a holy life.
Tradition holds that martyrs, people who died for their faith in Jesus Christ, go straight to heaven. No stops in purgatory are needed. But I feel as though I must place one specific caveat, which is that only true martyrs get this gift.
What is a true martyr?
Well, a true martyr is someone who was killed for their faith and did not seek it out. for instance, if a person were to go to a pagan country and start telling them that their religion is wrong and they need to switch to worshiping the one true God with a specific purpose, not of converting men and leading them to the path of salvation but instead to get martyred. Then the person will not be considered a martyr when/if the pagans I am evangelizing to end up killing them.
But some saints lived a full and complete life, how do we determine if they are holy and in heaven?
After a point, we were able to standardize the process of canonizing saints.
The first step in the canonization process is to wait five years to let the dust and excitement settle around their lives. Then the second step is to open a formal inquiry into their lives. And this is to gather as much information about the person as they can. So they would interview anyone who knew the person, and they would read as much of their writings as they could get their hands on, anything that may begin to point them into what kind of person that the person in question may have been.
They then take all that information and they gather together and hold a large debate about it, really trying to get to the bottom of the person’s life to see if Sammy lived a heroically virtuous life or gave his life in service of others, and that he lived was worthy of imitation. So if another person lived a similar life would we say that they were a good and holy person?
Congratulations, Sammy was declared that he passed the first hurdle. Now Sammy is sent to be declared a venerated servant of God. Now the Vatican sends out for prayers, they ask the faithful to please ask for his intercession in things. and when they receive a miracle then the next trial begins.
The Vatican will proceed to discuss the miracle to rule out any other possible outcomes other than divine providence. They even assign someone to argue as the devil’s advocate so that they can make sure that they are not getting caught up in the excitement of it all and can more effectively touch on every other possibility. So was there any way that the cancer, for instance, could disappear overnight on its own?
When that stage is past Sammy would be declared among the Blessed. And a new call for prayers is now sent out. They would go through the same process of analyzing the miracle once again. A person who was martyred unlike Sammy would jump straight past the point of being a Venerated Servant of God and to being declared among the Blessed so they only would need one verified miracle to be declared a saint.
Once the miracle is sufficiently analyzed then Sammy would be canonized as a saint.
https://archny.org/wp-content/uploads/Catechetical-canonization-process.pdf
https://www.usccb.org/offices/public-affairs/saints