We’re considering the holy Saints of the Church in this series of ti morceaux. These are the blessed ones who already live with God in the eternal bliss of heaven.
Before starting to mention individual saints, it’s probably a good idea to mention a bit about how the Church recognizes saints. The process of verifying the sanctity and indeed eternal glory of any individual believer is far, far different nowadays than it was in our early centuries.
In the Church’s first centuries, the “sainthood” of the faithful departed usually was a description that arose spontaneously. The fame of someone’s holiness, or his or her contribution to the faith, was something that was simply but rather universally recognized among believers, often before they died! The Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, and the Apostles, by their personal relationships to Christ Jesus are obvious examples here. Many of Catholicism’s earliest leaders and theologians – often called “The Fathers of the Church” – were so personally faithful and holy that they were recognized as and called saints soon after their deaths: think of St. Ignatius of Antioch (died A.D. 107) but also of St. Augustine (354-430) and many, many others.
For much of the Church’s history, saintly recognition was a pretty local affair. Often spontaneous acclamation by the populace was the most determining factor, accompanied by an eager devotion within the local area. When I was a student in Belgium years ago, I was surprised to discover that over in his home town of Aachen, Germany, about 45 minutes away, the first King of the Franks, Charlemagne (742-814) – who also styled himself the first “Holy Roman Emperor”! – was considered a saint there! Similarly, I’ve heard that Christopher Columbus is thought of as a saint in his native Genoa, Italy. There are many other such examples.
Nowadays – and for the past few centuries – the Church has had a more bureaucratic process for verifying and announcing the certainty of sainthood. In fact, it was developed partly in reaction to the very varied, always enthusiastic, but quite likely inexact methods used previously by local communities! In the next morceau, I’ll briefly describe the “saint-making process” today, including who is involved and the various works that go into it.
