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| January 6, 2009 |
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JUBILEE TEACHINGJubilee teaching: A community of saints
Saints are the spiritual leaders and role models of the Catholic community, those who have lived a life of great piety and sacrifice and set a shining example of pure and immaculate spirits. The first saints were martyrs — those who died for their faith. These martyrs were inspiring and the faithful lavished devotion on them. In the days of the early church, Christians would gather on the anniversaries of their deaths to honor them. When persecution ended, there was an outpouring of love and honor, complete with immense tombs and special liturgies. The liturgical calendar was deluged with feast days for the saints. Devotion to the saints, long a cherished Catholic tradition, seems to have waned in recent years. The Scripture does not really dwell on the mystical bond with the saints in any depth. Today, it may be harder to believe in the existence of such “supernatural” beings who can intercede for Catholics with Christ. Or it may be hard to think about martyrs of 2,000 years ago in any meaningful way, when there may not be much more than a myth and a few shreds of cloth or a shrine to remember them by. But many in the church ask if this is only a temporary state.
VENERATION OF SAINTSVeneration of the saints has long been an issue both within and outside the Catholic Church. In the days of the early church, holy men and women who were martyred for their faith gained the respect and veneration of the other Christians. Gradually, this practice threatened to become idolatry, and many ecclesiasts warned that excessive veneration of saints detracted from worship of the Lord. By the time of the Council of Trent, the church decided that prayer to saints is acceptable as long as the faithful ask the saints to intercede with God on their behalf and understand that saints do not have divine powers. Furthermore, the church saw the saints as shining examples of sanctity for the faithful to observe and emulate. There are thousands of saints and little is known about many of them. It wasn’t until 1171 that the Catholic Church made official the process of canonization of saints and decreed that only the Holy See had the right to determine this sainthood. In the 1960s, Pope Paul VI undertook a reassessment of saints as part of Vatican II. What Paul did was to review the saints’ feast days, which he felt were crowding the ecclesiastical calendar at the expense of feast days devoted to worship of the Lord. He wanted Catholics to properly refocus their attention and decided that since the church is universal, the church should celebrate only universally important saints with official feast days. In 1969, the pope reordered the ecclesiastical calendar, in which 58 obligatory and 92 optional saints’ days were included, in addition to the more significant figures of Christ and his contemporaries.
THE GLORY OF HEAVENThose who die in God’s grace and are purified get to live with Christ forever. They see God as he is, face to face. This communion of life and love with the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the angels, and all the blessed is heavenly — the ultimate object of the deepest human desire and the state of supreme happiness. In heaven, men live with and in Christ, but they still retain their true identity. By his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ opened heaven to all who choose to accept it. Good people benefit fully from Christ’s redemption. Those who have believed in him and have remained faithful become partners in his glory. Heaven is a community of all who have lived in Christ. When will the Last Judgment occur? The church teaches that only God knows when the Last Judgment will be, when Christ will return in glory. At that time, Christ will pronounce the final word on all history.
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