Catholic Church - Angels and saints: a biblical guide to friendship with gods holy ones

A LSO BY S COTT H AHN

Consuming the Word: The New Testament and the Eucharist in the Early Church

The Lambs Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth

Hail, Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God

First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity

Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession

Swear to God: The Promise and Power of the Sacraments

Letter and Spirit: From Written Text to Living Word in the Liturgy

Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace: My Spiritual Journey in Opus Dei

Understanding the Scriptures: A Complete Course on Bible Study

Understanding Our Father: Biblical Reflections on the Lords Prayer

A Father Who Keeps His Promise: Gods Covenant Love in Scripture

Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism
WITH K IMBERLY H AHN

Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians
WITH M IKE A QUILINA

Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

Many Are Called: Rediscovering the Glory of the Priesthood

Catholic Bible Dictionary, G ENERAL E DITOR

Copyright 2014 by Scott W. Hahn

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Image, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

IMAGE is a registered trademark and the I colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-307-59079-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-307-59080-0

Jacket design by Jean Traina
Jacket photograph: Francesco Dazzi

v3.1

To our beloved grandchildren, future saints:

Josephine Mirelle Hahn

Leo Gregory Reinhard

Lucy Josephine Hahn

Gabriel Kolbe Hahn

Bernadette Martha Hahn

Elizabeth Coeli Hahn

Naomi Thrse Hahn

Veronica Margaret Hahn

T HE C HURCH AND THE H OLY O NES

When people talk about the Church, we know what they meanor at least we think we do.

Its the parish we attend on Sundays that has really good preaching and music (or maybe not).

Or its that big old institution that were part of, thats kind of hard to explain, and that lets us down sometimes.

This book is about the Church we sometimes forget: the heavenly Church.

The heavenly Church is not a different Church or yet another denomination. Its the true Church, the Church in its essencein its essential perfection. Thats how we see the Church in the last chapters of the Book of Revelation: as a radiant bride, presented to Christ her groom, amid a great marriage supper. But its not just off in the future. Its now. Its the Church where Jesus, the Blessed Mother, and all the angels and saints live todayin glory. And we are united with themby gracejust as they are totally invested in usby love, to help the pilgrim Church to live on earth more and more like they do in heaven.

When I was a new Catholic, I was also a young theologian, just getting acquainted with the great tradition. Reading the theologians of centuries past, I reveled in their expositions of the Churchits four marks (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) and its three states (militant, suffering, and triumphant). But I also noticed something strange. I noted that they rather consistently used a curious phrase to describe the Church. The Church, the old books said, is a perfect society.

It struck me as odd because the Church that I knewthe Church that had received me as a grateful convertseemed beautiful and even awesome but far from perfect. It had rich history, glorious art, intellectual coherence, and demonstrable apostolic succession. But it was also rocked by scandals and run by pastors with varying degrees of competence and differing levels of grouchiness. Many of its members seemed indifferent to its glories and, at best, intermittently engaged.

Yet the old theologians were plainly telling me not simply that this is the best society youre likely to find, so grin and bear itbut rather that this is indeed the perfect society.

Perfect? I wasnt seeing it.

And thats the point. The essential perfection cant be seen. Its heavenly. God has shared his life with the Churchdivinized itand divine glory is, for now, invisible to our mortal eyes.

Yet the perfect society is also the Church we know. Even the Church on earth is perfect, because it possesses all the means necessary for perfecting its membersand among those means are the holy angels and the saints.

None of us is canonizable till we get home, till we die. Until then, we look to the heavenly Church, whose members bear the four marks more vividly and truly than we do. We want to become more like them through all our days on earth. And we do that by growing in friendship with them.

There are not two churches, one earthly and one heavenly. God does not segregate his finished, heavenly elite from the multitude of ordinary schleps who warm the earthly pews. No, you and I believe in a Church that is at once heavenly and earthly. In that Church the saints are present and available to us. They are family to us. They are elder siblings, only purified of all rivalry, impatience, and irritability. They want to help us become as they are (holy). They want to help us get all the way home.

That is why God presents his Church to Christ as a bride, in the midst of a wedding feast. Its a family matter. A family affair.

This book is a celebration of that perfect society, that raucous family, the heavenly Church. Well begin with a few introductory chapters on sanctity in general before proceeding to a number of chapters on saints in particular. These later chapters are short meditations that focus on only one or two aspects of a saints thought or accomplishments. There are many more saints and much more to learn, so I hope Ill inspire you to take up your own research.

This book contains not a catalog of saints, but just a tiny sampling. I tried to include a representative variety, including angels and regular folks, characters from the Old Testament and the New, lay and clergy, ancient and modern. But, as I prepare the book for press, I notice that my chosen saints tend to be those with whom I have something in common. Most are teachers, scholars, and writers. There is far greater diversity in the saintly communion than Ive let on in this book. Should you decide to write your own book, Im certain youll have a different list.

With each chapter Ive included writings by or about the saints under discussion. I tried to choose the passages that will best inspire prayer and rouse us to imitation of the virtues of that particular person. Youll find these under the heading Ponder in Your Heart, a line Ive taken from St. Luke, who said of the Queen of All Saints: Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart (Luke 2:19).

I pray that these saints will lead us all to a deeper understanding of the Church, the perfect society they share with us.