So, yesterday was St. Patrick's day, and as we sat around the dinner table eating our Rueben sandwiches and learning about the man who drove paganism out of Ireland, my husband asked a very good question.
What is a saint, exactly? Easy answer: believers in Christ in heaven and on earth. But he was wanting to know about canonized saints, and the use of the same word to describe two things was confusing him. "I mean, we're not naming churches after my aunt Dorothy right now". So we talked about the canonization process, and what that entails, and how Christians have from the beginning raised up certain people as extraordinary examples of how to follow Christ during our time on earth. And they honor and remember them, and ask for their prayers.
So that led to a discussion about the communion of saints. I've always understood that to mean that all believers, both living and dead, are connected. The church isn't just made up of those of us who happen to be alive and walking around on the planet. It also includes all those who went before us, who still pray and intercede for us here on earth. And in turn, we can also pray for them. "Brothers and sisters in Christ" and all that.
But Rob was struggling with the idea of indulgences, and I have to admit... I struggle with that idea, too. "If a person is being cleansed to be in the presence of God, I really don't think someone else doing something or praying to God should effect that. It's an individual thing." That's what makes sense in my mind, too. We're responsible for ourselves, and our choices. But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that we are all parts of one body, the body of Christ. That is the Church. His body. Now, we can think that's all really nice figurative speech, but what if it isn't? What if that "body of Christ" is far more literal than I understand it to be? When Christ struck Paul blind on the road to Damascus, He didn't ask "Why are you persecuting the church?" He asked "Why are you persecuting ME". ME. Christ himself. Singular. Rob said, "Oh, like one organism?" And I stopped to pause to process that for a moment.
So there was a really big AHA moment for me. When Rob mentioned "one organism", not just a loose, figurative "club" made up of individual people and figuratively acting as one.... that made things fall in to place. ONE ORGANISM. It's why, in the early church, when a person sinned, he didn't just have to confess to a priest individually, but to the entire congregation, to restore himself to the whole group. And it's why those "victim souls" who offer their suffering for the intentions of others - why that works. Why my prayers of intercession for others, my actions of love, effect the Church as a whole, and not just me individually. So many things making up one unified thing. Like cells of the same body. If a poison or disease enters one part of the body, it effects the whole body. Likewise, if one part of the body is hurting, the other parts (immune system, blood supply, neurological) rush in to help heal. Many things in one. Like a father, mother and child make up a family. Like three beings in one God: the Trinity. Which means we are in the image and likeness of God in a way I'd never understood before. Not just individually. But together.
The Communion of Saints. One organism. Here to do the work set before us by Christ to transform the world.
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