In this article I would like to offer some reflections on the Catholic understanding of the communion of the Saints, particularly on why we pray to them, how they can hear our prayers, and why this is not something that competes with our love and worship of God. Firstly I would like to reflect on friendship from a theological perspective, secondly on the effects of Christ’s redemption, thirdly on the nature of heaven, and finally on the intercession of the Saints.
If I reflect on the experience of friendship in my life I realize that the closer I am to someone the less I have to explain myself to them. In friendship there is a more interior relation to the other person, which we call “intimacy.” In fact, this word comes from the Latin for “inmost.” Thus, friends are those who speak to each other from their inmost heart (cor ad cor loquitur, heart speaks to heart). Now, we all know in our experience that sin makes intimacy with others break down. It divides us from others because we are closed in on ourselves as opposed to open to the other. Saint Augustine describes this as being curvatus in se (bent in on oneself). Indeed, the experience of shame reveals to us that our capacity for intimacy is wounded from the start, that bending in on ourselves is a tendency that characterizes our earthly existence. This means that at the origin of my existence can be discerned an aboriginal wound in my capacity to love, in my capacity for intimacy.
In the characteristic beauty of his language, Saint Augustine describes God as intimior intimo meo (he who is more intimate to me than I am to myself). This description has deep theological implications that would take us far afield if we pursued them. Suffice it to say that it means my capacity for intimacy is inextricably tied to my capacity for friendship with God. This means that the wound found at the origin of my existence is a wound of separation from God. And so, if my capacity for inmost friendship with others is wounded because of my separation from God, then the restoration of friendship with God is the condition for inmost friendship with others.
As it so happens, Jesus Christ has come to restore this friendship with God by redeeming the human race. The unity of hearts we are all made for and that we all seek as social beings is made possible through the redemption of the God-man. And so, just as sin breaks down communion and the communication of the heart, redemption restores and elevates both. In redeeming the hearts of men Christ unites them in his Sacred Heart. This unity is a breaking down of those barriers which cut us off from God and from each other. The Apostle Paul lists some of these barriers throughout his letters: ethnicity, status, gender, and… even death. This is why when a Christian dies, he does not enter the realm of the dead like in the Old Testament, but enters into a unity with Christ that we describe as eternal life. And so, in Christ, death is no longer a barrier between myself and others. Through faith we participate here and now in a future fulfillment of this unity where we will no longer see in a mirror, dimly, but face to face, as Paul says. In fact he adds “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It’s worth noticing this last description and how shocking it is: we will know as we are known. A full knowledge of the heart is opened up to the faithful friend of God when he enters into the embrace of the Trinity.
And so, to use Paul’s words, those who are away from the body and with the Lord, those who see face to face and know fully, are not separated from us but are rather more united to us insofar as they have entered into a fuller unity with Christ—to whom we are united here below through faith. This means that Christ is the “space” of communion, so to speak. By giving himself to all, Jesus assimilates all into himself where we are able to participate in his love for all. For we say, with Paul: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Notice how it’s in me that Christ lives, and this is because my life is a life in Christ. The inner dwelling of Christ in me and me in Christ echoes the inner dwelling of the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” This participation is a communication of hearts, it is a participation of all believers in the communication of the Son with the Father in the Spirit. This is why the Son taught us to pray “Our Father.”
Christian unity is therefore founded upon unity with Christ. As we’ve seen, this unity extends beyond death to those who have entered into full unity with Christ. Thus, our unity with them is more intense, more intimate, than with our pilgrim fellows. This unity of heart with those in heaven is not a communication with the dead, but a communion with the truly living (those in eternal life, as opposed to a life that passes away). Thus, conversing with the Saints is not a matter of supernatural beings sensibly hearing the words of our prayers, but of brothers and sisters being so united to us in the heart of Christ that they can perceive the desires of our hearts (which our words express). It is not that they have the attribute of omniscience in the sense of knowing about various details of the growth of plants and world history, but rather that they are really and actually united to our joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties.
To use a limited analogy, if in a certain family the Father is the one with the final say when it comes to a child’s request, the child can ask his brother to ask the Father with him, or he can ask his mother to ask for him. None of this makes it not the request of the child to the Father, nor does it make the brother or the mother to be the Father. There is no competition, as there is no competition in a healthy family. Helping each other and praising what is good in each other is all a way of glorifying God who is the author of all that is good. Marveling at the flowers on the bank of a river is not attributing to them the source of life, but precisely marveling at what the source of life has brought about by watering the banks on which these flowers have blossomed. Just as a father is not jealous when we love our siblings, just so God is not jealous when we love the Saints. Of course, we love them because God loves them, because his love makes them lovable, not because they are love and goodness itself (only God is love). It is precisely because God is not a being among other beings, but being itself, that we can adore God by loving our neighbor. To see the Saints as competitive with God is not to raise the Saints up, but to lower God down.
And so, since God redeemed humanity as a communion in the new Adam, he does not redeem us as isolated individuals, but as a communion of Saints. Some of us are still in this valley of tears, so we hope through faith, and we are united to those in the homeland through love.
Comentarios