Sanctity--what is it?

Sanctity--what is it?...

"In human understanding, My child, it must be made known to mankind that your saints who are now in the heavens, in the Kingdom of your Father, they have full knowledge of the trials of earth and mankind, and therefore will be of great solace to you. Learn by their example. They did not seek the treasures of the world, but they truly sought to store these graces of treasures in the Kingdom.” – Our Lady of the Roses, November 1, 1975

Taken from the booklet, “The Faith of the Saints,” Imprimatur + Joseph Cardinal Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis.

It is a well-known fact that Catholics, as a general rule, show honor to the “saints.” Who are saints and how they became saints are questions with which this pamphlet is chiefly concerned. Not everyone who leads a consistently holy life is called a “saint.” Even a more than normally holy or useful life is not sufficient qualification. The title is reserved only for those who have, during life, attained a heroic degree of Christian perfection and, after death, have been officially declared by the Catholic Church to be in heaven, enjoying the happiness of the vision of God.

The Catholic Church declares only Catholics to be saints since she has spiritual jurisdiction only over her own members. Human goodness may be found wherever men live; Christ-like perfection is to be looked for in the true Church of Jesus Christ. Christ’s Church was founded to make men holy. Within that Church the fullness of His design can be realized. That is why the heroic and integrally Christian life which makes a person a saint can be lived within the Catholic Church.

At the present time, the word “saint” in Catholic usage has come to have a very precise and technical meaning. The Bible uses it, too, but in a much broader sense. The book of Psalms has a hymn which begins “Sing to the Lord, O ye his saints” (Ps. 29:5). The saints spoken of in this passage were all the good Jews who came to pray.

St. Paul uses the word very often. He begins his Epistle to the Philippians with: “To all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi” (Phil. 1:1).

That was the usual way in which he addressed all his converts. Now it must be granted that the earliest Christians were extraordinarily good people. But they were not all so good as to merit the name of “saint” in its present sense.

At Corinth St. Paul could see with his own eyes that the Church had in it scheming rascals, weak brethren, money-grabbers, and even an incestuous Christian. Yet he addressed them as “saints.” It was more in hope than in reality. Indeed, he himself makes that clear at the beginning of his first letter to them when he calls them not “saints,” but “you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints” (1 Cor. 1:2).

Paul’s labors

St. Paul, however, deserved the title in the fullness of its meaning. All Christian tradition has agreed to that. It will be found in all copies of the Bible. By examining his life and the lives of a few others, we shall soon discover the essential quality of sanctity.

There is no doubt that Paul of Tarsus was an outstanding man. He began his work when the Christian community was so small that it was considered just a sect of the Jews. Paul, himself a Jew, undertook to destroy this new “heresy” while it was still a little thing in Jerusalem and Damascus and a few other towns.

He ended his work some thirty years later in a dark Roman prison as the chief organizer of Christian communities. By that time the Christian Church was a worldwide religious movement. Paul could look to Corinth and Thessalonica, Philippi and Boerea, and indeed to all of Greece; to Ephesus, Antioch of Pisidia, and the whole hinterland of Asia Minor; probably also to Spain and to the Roman population itself and say, “There is my work.”

Today Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus and many of the other cities to which his Epistles were addressed lie in ruins. But Paul’s influence has been lasting even when his churches have not been. His instructions live on and shape men’s lives today. He treated of almost all those world-shaking ideas which Christianity brought to men, and he did it with such profundity that men still weigh his words with scholarly precision to estimate their ultimate meaning.

Even more is due to him. Organization of churches is important, explanations of Catholic doctrine are more son. But all would have soon been lost had not Paul’s own love of truth been the spark of ignition which set a world on fire.

He was, indeed, a great man, one of that handful of genuises whose work has shaped our world. For that reason we respect him. But it is not for that we call him “Saint” Paul.

He was a saint because he was a holy man, not because he was a great one. Almost half his life as a Christian was spent alone, perfecting his own character. After his conversion he retired into the desert of Arabia and for fourteen years gave himself up to contemplating the things of God. How deeply he penetrated those mysteries is evident from his own account.

“If I must boast–it is not indeed expedient to do so–but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago–whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows–such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows–that he was caught up into paradise and heard secret words that man may not repeat” (2 Cor. 12:1-4).

Paul is, of course, speaking of his own self, but his saintly humility will not permit him to mention himself directly. It was by such daily striving to empty himself and seek only God, that he became a saint.

Paul’s sufferings

Zealous as he was for his own sanctification, he was bound to become zealous for other men. Years later he was to count up what it cost him to labor for others.

“From the Jews five times I received forty lashes less one. Thrice I was scourged, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was adrift on the sea; in journeyings often, in perils from floods, in perils from robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren; in labor and hardships, in many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides these outer things, there is my daily pressing anxiety, the care of all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:24-28).

A genius might have said this boastfully; Paul was a saint. He recounted these heroic sufferings with a simple and absolute humility, conscious of his own place before God.

“By the grace of God I am what I am, an his grace in men has not been fruitless–in fact I have labored more than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).

Perhaps the most graphic description of the saint emerges from his Letter to the Philippians. It was written from a prison in Rome by an old man who faced the prospect of death. It has a simple, almost gay keynote–Rejoice! It was Paul who consoled the Philippians, not they him. He thoughtfully thanked them for their concern over him, told them of new conquests for Christ even in the prison, urged them to be humble, and rejoiced again that God’s will was being done. That cheerful martyr was a saint.

It is not for natural genius that we call Paul “saint.” It is for that altogether extraordinary combination of all Christian virtues in his life which rose from the grace of God within him.

The men and women whom the Catholic Church calls by the title of “saint” are legion. They come from every walk of life, and their lives were lived in every conceivable circumstance. But one thing is common to all. They were superhumanly good.

St. Vincent de Paul

Two of them will give some idea of the common denominator in the midst of the most elaborate diversity. The first of them was a man whom the world would certainly consider saintly. He was a seventeenth century French priest, Vincent de Paul. Of simple, peasant stock, he was methodical and plodding in his ways; but he had a genius for organization. He was among the first and possibly the greatest of those who have labored in modern times for social betterment of the poor and the underprivileged.

What he accomplished can hardly be told briefly. He began one Sunday by asking his congregation to bring food to a sick family. So effective was his plea that the needy parishioners were flooded with perishable food stuffs–only to be left again in want when the sudden abundance had been used or spoiled. Vincent de Paul set out to draw up a simple but workable plan of continued relief which was effective, but not impersonal.

The little crises which he met led him to crises on a broader scale which he determined to attack. Step by step he felt his way. The rich he attracted to himself, and then for the love of Go stripped them of their surplus wealth to feed the poor. The poor he fed; the orphans he housed and clothed; institutions were established for boys to learn a trade; young girls were provided with an honest livelihood and a chance to marry; fallen women were brought back to decency; hospitals were filled with volunteer workers. So great did his charitable work grown that at one time during a civil war in France, he fed and clothed a considerable part of the country. He became a national hero, and his statue stands among the immortals of his country in the Pantheon of Paris.

But Vincent de Paul was not just a man who felt sorry for his neighbors because they were badly fed and badly clothed. He felt most sorry for them because they led bad lives. He knew that many were not deliberately wicked; but they were ignorant, and they lacked that contact with religion which could make them better. So he organized his attack on ignorance and weakness. He sent out trained assistants to preach to the poor and abandoned people of the countryside. And he set forth to reform the most important people of all, the clergy who should have been the reformers.

Anyone with human sympathy, Catholic or not, would know Vincent de Paul for what he was–a very good man. Vincent de Paul thought of himself quite otherwise. He considered himself honestly and surprisingly as the greatest of sinners. Others might be surprised at all the good he accomplished; he was utterly astounded. And he kept saying that it was not he who did all these things, but the good God Who used the weakest and most despicable human agents he could find. That is why he was much more than a merely good man, and is honored as a saint.

St. Theresa

Now let us look at another side of sainthood. The Catholic Church honors as a saint another native of France, this time a young woman who lived in the past century. She did nothing to help her fellow man; nothing, anyway, that the unobserving could see. She died when she was only twenty-four. Almost all of her adult life she spent in utter obscurity behind the walls of a convent.

Undoubtedly, people would have admitted that she lived a good life behind her convent walls. And some would say that it was a quite useless life. So why does the Catholic Church honor her as a saint?

She was a genius in bringing one human being to the peak of perfection—herself. She was ardent in the love of God as others are ardent in the love of human beings. Day by day she strove to make herself more humble, more resigned to God’s will, more interested in the things which would suit her to live in heaven.

Of course, in doing this she did actually help others enormously. That, in fact, was her only real interest in wanting to get to heaven in a hurry. She said that she could do more good for people when she was there. And she was interested in doing all sorts of good for people; not just for some people whom she liked, but for everybody. Though she lived all her adult life within one building, her concerns were as wide as the world.

The way in which this worked out cannot be described so neatly as in the case of St. Vincent de Paul. The process was completely supernatural. Theresa helped others by praying for them. Now every human being prays, and God listens to them. Sometimes the results of prayer are quite amazing. But when Theresa prayed, the results were most startling. Missionaries in far-off countries suddenly found conversion possible. The weak and despairing at home found strength they had not suspected. All this came from the prayers of one “useless” woman in a convent.

Once again the common denominator is present. Theresa never pretended that this startling holiness and effectiveness at prayer was due to some special genius of her own. It was due to God who accomplished all. For herself she would have chosen complete nothingness.

Why the Church honors saints

Here, then, is a common note of the utmost importance in showing why the Catholic Church honors some of her sons and daughters as saints. Saints are certainly good persons and in one way or another do good for others. But that is not the precise reason why they are called saints.

There are many persons in this world who do wonders for their fellow men. Sometimes they have religious motives in mind; sometimes they have only their own publicity in mind. Some of them are thrown into work for their neighbor as a rather desperate justification for their life; they want to leave the world a little bit better place to live than they found it. And some few of them have no religion at all. The Catholic Church is certainly not cynical about those who are sincere in their efforts; but she does not ever imagine that they are saints. Sanctity is a startling kind of goodness, well-rounded and complete, overflowing in good works only because of the God-given grace that makes all this possible.

Sometimes it is said, “The life of a saint just isn’t natural.” The lives of those saints who have given themselves wholly to prayer, particularly the women saints among them, seem to strike some as abnormal and warped.

Indeed, their lives are not natural. That is the precise point of sainthood. The virtues of the saints are as much above human achievement as heaven is beyond the unaided grasp of natural men.

The lives of the saints were supernatural, not natural. Aided by God’s help, they made an effort each day to do His will, steadily increasing their friendship with Him. They were cheerful. They were quite happy. They had developed to the highest degree possible the powers of human nature. They had the richest personalities.

The finger of God

And that is the common denominator which we have pointed out in the stories of St. Paul, St. Vincent and St. Theresa. It was not that they were good people, or vastly successful people in religious matters. It was that they were so good that the only explanation was that the finger of God was doubtless upon them. They were supernaturally good.

But supernatural goodness is not all that is needed to be a saint. What is needed in addition is an official pronouncement upon the matter. Who shall tell when a man passes that borderline between striving to be good and supernatural holiness? Only an officially designated judge can do so. That judge for Catholics is the Catholic Church.

The method by which the Catholic Church judges whether a person is truly a saint is called “canonization.” This means that the person meets certain requirements and his name is worthy of being inscribed in the list (“canon”) of the saints.

Before this declaration, no one can be honored by public prayers. The private persuasion of individuals is another matter. If a Catholic is in heaven, then certainly he can help others here on earth by his influence with God. But for the Church at large, there must be certainty for all and that certainty can come only with the solemn declaration of sainthood by the Catholic Church.

"My children, though these days can be called desperate, you are living in the times wished to be lived in by many saints; for they knew the challenge it was to their Faith, and they knew the value of living in these times for the redemption of souls for all Heaven.” – Jesus, May 3, 1978

Our Lady of the Roses awesome Bayside Prophecies... https://www.tldm.org/../Bayside/
These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

CROWNS THROUGH SUFFERING
"There are many saints, My child, in the Kingdom of the Father now who have won their crowns through suffering. The road to Heaven is not an easy one. It is filled with thorns.” – Our Lady, November 1, 1974

CRY BITTER TEARS
"My Mother and the saints in Heaven cry bitter tears of remorse and anguish for you. Your country and the world, My children, has become obsessed with immodesty and filth--all creations of satan, all soul destroyers. And how many of you go along your way--not My way, My children, but your way--to your damnation with your permissiveness, with your self-satisfaction, with your lust, and your desire for the material! Have you destroyed your soul so that you no longer recognize that one day each and every one of you must die in your body and come out of your body in your soul, your spirit eternal, that will live on forever?” – Jesus, December 31, 1976

INSTRUCT CHILDREN
"You must instruct and bring to your children the knowledge of your saints. Their example is in the light, My children. Those you have set up to idolize upon earth now are the creations of satan. You must accept and follow the example of your saints, those who have been given this honor by your holy Church. They, too, My child, did not win their crowns without trial, rejection, and often, martyrdom." – Jesus, June 5, 1975

BOOKS OF TRUTH
"My children, why do you not learn the value of suffering? The books of truth have been removed from among you. You must read the lives of the founders of My Son's House and those great saints who cry in Heaven for vengeance upon satan and his agents--now! For many souls are being taken into the abyss.” – Our Lady, February 10, 1974

SECOND COMING
"I must caution you in the days ahead to look not in vain for the coming of My Son. There will be many false christs among you. He will come to you in only one way: descending from Heaven as He ascended into Heaven, and He will come accompanied with the forces, the warriors of Heaven and the saints. Remember well, many false christs will come into your world. Reject them! Do not be misled by their false miracles. Reject them, knowing that Jesus will come down in view of all with the saints and the angels.” – Our Lady, February 10, 1974

CROWNS OF JOY
"There will be many saints coming out of the great tribulation. They will be called the latter-day saints, My children. There are crowns of joy, stars, and lights awaiting many who will come over the veil as martyrs.” – Our Lady, December 6, 1975

LIVES OF THE SAINTS
"The greatest trials are given, My children, to those who are on the narrow road to the Kingdom. You must all learn the value of suffering. The Eternal Father allows this for reason. If you will study the past lives of your saints, My children, you will understand why I say that penance and suffering are truly the way of the cross.” – Our Lady, October 2, 1976

DISOWNED
"Through countless earth-years, My children, I have wandered among you. The Eternal Father has sent Me as a Mediatrix between God and man, bringing you a warning from Heaven. It is a simple message of faith, My children. In the knowledge, the all-knowing knowledge of the Eternal Father, He foresaw the days ahead and tried to prepare you, My children, for these days. Prophets were sent among you, and what have you done with their message? You have cast it aside, disowned your prophets, your saints, and you have decided among you, O you of little faith, to bring about the rise of another church that is not of My Son. You are building, in your arrogance, a church of man. You scurry to and fro, crying love, love, brotherhood, and friendship, but the words come not from the heart but from the mouth!” – Our Lady, October 2, 1976

MAKE KNOWN
"You will ask Our children of good spirit to make known the lives of those who have gone before you, known as the saints. They have given good examples for your children. Satan wishes to take them from the minds and hearts of your children. Go, seek out the books of truth that still retain these stories of truth of these departed souls, those who have given themselves to the Eternal Father during their lifetime upon your earth.” – Our Lady, August 5, 1975

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D204 - The Saints PDF
D233 - Vocations, Part 1 PDF
D234 - Vocations, Part 2 PDF

Articles...

The sources of growth and decline in religious orders https://www.tldm.org/news7/Foley1.htm

The new Commandment of Jesus https://www.tldm.org/News7/Colin1.htm

Love of God and love of neighbor https://www.tldm.org/News7/Colin2.htm

"St. Paul, you revile and deride him" https://www.tldm.org/news6/st%5Fpaul.htm

We encourage everyone to print or email copies of this web page to all the Bishops and all the clergy. Also, email or send this web page to the news media and as many people as possible.

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