Benedict J. Groeschel - The Saints in My Life: My Favorite Spiritual Companions

THE SAINTS IN MY LIFE

THE SAINTS IN MY LIFE

My Favorite Spiritual Companions

Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR

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Dedicated to all the religious sisters who taught us to love the saints.

The Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Second Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965, 1966, and 2006 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2011 Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR Published 2011

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Knowing and loving the saints, studying their lives and words has been an important part of my more than seventy years on earth. In fact, I would say that devotion to the saints has played a role in almost every aspect of my life. The saints gave me wonderful models to follow when I was a young man hoping to enter religious life and eventually to be ordained to the priesthood. Whenever I arrived at a crossroad in my life, I could always find a saint who had been there before me, someone whose example I could follow, who could serve as a guide. The lives of the saints have given me courage when I needed it; the writings of the saints have given me insights that I never could have attained on my own; the friendship of the saints has given me hope and a kind of support that I could have found in no other way. Without devotion to the saints my life would have been immeasurably impoverished. It would have been like a life without friends, without mentors, without guides. I owe the saints quite a debt of gratitude.

As I look back on my life I cant remember a time when the saints were not there. Certainly I first heard of them from my parents, who showed me beautiful holy cards on which were pictured many of the most famous saints: Saint Joseph, Saint Francis, and most frequently, the Blessed Mother. As a small child, I was intrigued by these pictures, attracted by the mysterious glow that seemed to emanate from these people who were called saints and who lived so long ago. By the time I started Catholic school I already knew a little about the saints, and I was soon to learn a good deal more. The sisters taught us to love the saints and to read about them. It was then that I learned that some saints had exciting lives, that somelike Joan of Archad even led armies. The saints were a vital part of Catholic life and an especially vital part of a Catholic childs life at that time. Saints became our heroes; saints were the ones we wanted to imitate; they became our modelsand that is exactly what they should have been.

When I was ordained to the priesthood back in 1959, the beautiful Litany of the Saints was chanted, as it is at every ordination. I remember the slow and majestic rhythms of the Gregorian chant as one saint after another was invoked. This litany overflows with the names of saints, with the names of those who have prepared the way for us and given everything to God and the Church. It seemed to me at the time as if this catalog of holy names could have gone on forever, and so it could have. I heard the names of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, priests, hermits, virgins, widows. Every category was filled with the names of saints, and the prayers of each saint were implored for those to be ordained. Ora pro nobis, we chanted over and over again, asking each saint individually to pray for us. As we chanted the Litany of the Saints, we knew that as priests we would never be alone, that we had the support of countless saints in heaven.

Do we realize how very Catholic such a thought really is? Do we understand the great gift we are given in the saints? As Catholics we know that we are never truly alone in our journey to God. We are, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (see Heb 12:1). Thats what the saints really are for Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and even some Anglicans. They are a cloud of witnesses who help us and support us on our journey to Christ. This poetic term a cloud of witnesses is something on which we might meditate as we begin our contemplation of the saints. We could also use some other evocative and poetic terms that the Church has long employed when speaking of saints and their relationship to us on earth. One such term would be the Mystical Body of Christ and another would be the Communion of Saints. Although these terms are not identical they refer in a general way to the same wonderful reality: as we make our difficult journey to God we are linked tightly and lovingly to countless others who are making or have made the same journey. We are linked through Christ Himself. We must never forget that the Church is more than what we see here, more than its buildings, its clergy, and its faithful. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ and includes all the saints in heaven and all the holy souls in purgatory. We are one body, bound together by the love of Christ.

Through Christ we are so close to the saints in heaven that we have been given the great gift of prayer to them and the equally great gift of being able to receive the benefit of their prayer for us. A Catholic knows that saints are more than just good examples taken from history. They are living friends who are concerned about us, friends with whom we can form relationships, friends we will meet in eternal life, friends who yearn to help us. In much of Protestantism this is denied. For the Protestant each one of us is alone before God. For the Catholic and Orthodox Christian, however, we are never alone, for the love of Christ provides us with the Communion of Saints, with a cloud of witnesses.

In the decline of Catholicism and of religion in general during the present period, the devotion to the saints has diminished along with many other things, including devotion to the Eucharist and to the other sacraments. Many Catholics do not know the saints at all, and this is a great tragedy, a huge loss. The Church has always canonized saints, at least in part, to give us examples, to show us what the Christian life should be. If we do not know anything about the many holy lives that have preceded us since the time of Christ, how can we really know what it is to be a Christian, to be a real Catholic? Saints show us the heights to which we can soar if we are truly united to Christ; they show us what holiness is in this earthly life and what it is possible for us to attain.

So I thought it was time to write a little book about saints. And this is a little book. It makes no effort to cover all the great multitude of saints who have been canonized. Neither does it make an effort to look at saints from every period of Church history or from every area of the world. This is a very personal book. It is not a Litany of the Saints. It is simply a part of