| The Communion of Saints (part 1) |
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by Ronald Knox It s a very odd thing, but if you had asked St. Paul what he meant by "the Communion of Saints ", I think he would have said, without much hesitation, "I mean that when one set of Christians is hard up another set of Christians, in a different part of the world, sends round the hat and takes up a collection for them". That principle of give and take between Christians is a very good illustration of what we mean by the Communion of Saints. The Church is divided into three large bits; part of it is on earth, part of it is in heaven, part of it is in Purgatory. The Church in heaven is All Saints. The Church in Purgatory is All Souls. The Church on earth is all sorts. We, on earth, are poorer than the saints in heaven, so we ask them to give us something. But we, on earth, are richer than the souls in Purgatory, so they ask us to give them something. It s the same old principle St. Paul used to preach, of give and take between Christians all round. Some people, when they die, go straight to heaven. Suppose an atheist gets baptized, and then gets killed in an air-raid on his way home, he has to go straight to heaven; there s nothing to prevent it. His sins have all been forgiven, and there he is. You may think it s rather bad luck on you that you were baptized when you were quite small, so you haven t got the same chances. Still, if you were to get a plenary indulgence just before you died which involves not only being sorry for your sins, but being without any affection for your sins, which isn t so easy you would go straight to heaven. And I expect one way and another there are a lot of people there. Some, no doubt, have been through their Purgatory and got finished with it, and now they re in heaven just the same. I should think there are lots and lots of people in heaven. And last Monday s feast I hope the nuns remembered to make you all go to Mass, because it s a very important feast was All Saints Day, which is meant to remind us of that. In some ways I think it s the jolliest feast in the year. Crowds and crowds and crowds of people all perfectly happy, and all doing God s will without having to think twice about it. Among those people are some who didn t just scrape in by happening to die at exactly the right moment; who didn t have to wade through Purgatory to get there. They are God s special friends, people who spent a whole life-time, many of them, trying to please him, and who died, many of them, most uncomfortable deaths for love of him. We don t know all their names by any means. The Church says she can tell us the names of some of them, and she canonizes them. That is to say, some time after they are dead she holds a kind of inquest on them; and somebody gets up and says what wonderful people they were and somebody else gets up he has to do it, because he s paid to and tries to pick holes in their characters. That doesn t sound a very nice thing to do, because it s beastly to pick holes in people s characters even when they are alive. But it s this man s job to do it, and it s all right because he s only trying to make sure that the other man can prove his case. And if she s satisfied at the result of that process, the Church tells us we can be certain that this particular soul has gone to heaven, and we put "St." in front of the person s name and all the rest of it. Mark this, I think there are probably lots of saints whom the Church never does canonize. Lots of people, I mean, who are real friends of God and live very very holy lives without anybody taking much notice; and when they die they go straight to heaven and shine there with a glory not less than some of those others only God didn t wish them, for some reason, to be known as saints on earth. The floor of heaven is like a window with a muslin curtain across it; we can t see in, but the saints can see out. They see what we are doing, and are interested in what we are doing; the Epistle to the Hebrews compares them to spectators looking on at a race. If you are ever feeling rather down-hearted about your second-rate efforts to live a good Christian life, think of the saints in heaven bending over the balconies in front of them and shouting out "Stick it it!" as people do when they are watching a race. As I say, there are lots of people in heaven who are not canonized Saints, and there is nothing to prevent you, if you want to, asking for the prayers of any good person you ve known or read about; they may be in heaven already. But, if you want to be on the safe side, you ask for the prayers of somebody who is CERTAINLY in heaven the Church has told us so. The Saints are the rich people, you see, helping out the needs of us, their brothers and sisters, who are poor. They are rich in merits; that is, they have a high claim to a reward from God for all the holy things they did and all the uncomfortable things they suffered for love of him. I dare say some of you have rich uncles who give you tips in the holidays; and this is the same sort of idea, only the way the Saints do it is to pray to God for us, and get him to give us the graces we need. And the richest of all, and surely the most generous of all, is our blessed Lady. It s odd how we all think of her as a special friend, isn t it? I mean, if you were called Emerentiana, or Eustochium (which sounds like a boy s name, but it s a girl s name really), you could say" Dear St. Emerentiana, or Dear St. Eustochium, do please pray for me" when you were in a tight place, and feel fairly certain that your patron saint, whichever it was, would be listening, because there couldn t be very many people of that name praying to her at that particular moment. It seems much more odd that we should pray with such confidence to our blessed Lady, who must be deafened, one would think, with the sound of "Hail, Mary s" going up all over the world. But we re quite right. You, as a Christian, are the sister of Jesus Christ, and therefore our Lady is your Mother. I suppose it was because he wanted us to see that that our Lord gave her to St. John from the Cross. He didn t talk much on the Cross; he was in terrible pain, you see, and every word cost him an effort; after "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do "he only said twenty-two words altogether. But five of those words were addressed to our Lady, and to St. John, the baby of the Apostles, who stood there with her; "Behold thy Mother" was meant for every Christian. So we all treat her as if she belonged to us; one always does treat one s mother like that. Those are our rich friends, then, the people in heaven. And if they are so generous to us with their prayers, you and I ought to be generous with our prayers for our poor friends, the poor souls in Pur gatory. We always do think of them, don t we, as the poor souls in Purgatory. That seems curious, from one point of view; from one point of view they are so much better off than we are. You and I might go to hell; they can t. We sometimes think of them enviously, for that reason. They are like friends who have gone on ahead, and successfully jumped over the precipice that lay in our path; we haven t jumped it yet how much better off they are than we! Yes, but from another point of view they are hard up, the holy souls, desperately hard up. We can still merit; they can t. Nothing they can do can give them any relief, can bring them any nearer to the heaven which is their only desire, their only dream. If you will, they are like people who have got plenty of money at the bank, but no cash in their pockets; what is the use of money if one can t get at it? So they ask for our prayers, which can help them; our prayers, which we ought to give generously, just as the Saints give their prayers to us. So, each year, November reminds us about the Communion of Saints; about the help we can get, about the help we can give. You remember the fable about the lion which was caught in a net, and the mouse that helped it by eating through the net so that it could get out? You and I are like that when we pray for the souls of Christians departed. They are much more splendid people than you and I are; they are already on the last lap of their journey home. But they are held up on that journey, and they can t help themselves; we can help them, and it isn t presumptuous to think of ourselves as helping them, even splendid people who have fallen gloriously in battle - we are the mice nibbling away at the bonds which hold them, that is all. Taken from The Creed in Slow Motion, Chapter 23; by Ronald Knox. |
