Some of My Best Friends

Today is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena, one of the three women Doctors of the Church. She also happens to be one of my favorite saints. This got me thinking about one of the great treasures of the Catholic faith~the Communion of Saints or as St. Paul refers to them, "that great cloud of witnesses."

Before I continue with my musings, I will insert a disclaimer here for anyone who is not Catholic. It is sometimes said that we Catholics worship the saints. Nothing is further from the truth. Worship belongs to God alone. However we do pray to the saints as our intercessors. Alright, now that we have that straight I will continue.

Before my return to my faith, I never really thought much about the saints or the importance of the Communion of Saints. This is one facet of my faith that I needed to learn more about. So in the very early days of my reversion, there was always some biography of some saint on my nightstand. Just to name a few that I have read: St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Padre Pio, St. Augustine's Confessions, as well as the woman whose feast we celebrate today.

In the course of reading the lives of these great men and women, what I learned was that what made them great and what would one day help to make them saints was that they were not superheroes but ordinary people struggling with ordinary everyday life. What set them apart from the masses was their tremendous faith and their humility to pick themselves up and begin again after they had fallen.

I now began to see them in a whole new light; they weren't any different than me. The saints have become, in a sense, my best friends. When I need a favor, someone to pray for me or with me, I can call on them anytime day or night just as I would any of my earthly friends.

My re-education about the saints may have come only in these last 7 years, but I remember always having a keen interest in them. As a little girl in Catholic school, I remember having these books that had a short biography of a saint and then there was a sticker with his or her picture that we would put next to their story. This was one of my favorite religion class activities. I'm sure the stickers had something to do with it. It's a girl thing guys~little girls and their stickers. Today I don't have the sticker books, but my bookshelves are lined with their biographies and autobiographies. And if you walk into my bedroom, my dresser mirror is lined with prayer cards bearing their images. I thank God for raising up these humble yet amazing men and women.

So when you need a friend remember to call on your patron saint, the patron of a certain situation or any one in the great cloud of witnesses, whether they are known to all or perhaps just to you. They stand before the throne of God ready and willing to intercede for us.

What follows is an excerpt from St. Catherine's The Dialogue.

Nor is the sacrament itself diminished by being divided, any more than is fire, to take an example. If you had a burning lamp and all the world came to you for light, the light of your lamp would not be diminished by the sharing, yet each person who shared it would have the whole light. True, each one's light would be more or less intense depending on what sort of material each brought to receive the fire. I give you this example so that you may better understand me. Imagine that many people brought candles, and one person's candle weighed one ounce, another's more than that, and they all came to your lamp to light their candles. Each candle, the smallest as well as the largest, would have the whole light with all its heat and color and brightness. Still, you would think that the person who carried the one-ounce candle would have less than the one whose candle weighed a pound. Well, this is how it goes with those who receive this sacrament. Each one of you brings your own candle, that is, the holy desire with which you receive and eat this sacrament. Your candle by itself is unlit, and it is lighted when you receive this sacrament. I say it is unlit because by yourselves you are nothing at all. It is I who have given you the candle with which you can receive this light and nourish it within you. And your candle is love, because it is for love that I created you, so without love you cannot have life.
~The Dialogue St. Catherine of Siena

Happy feast day St. Catherine. Pray for us!

*Picture St. Catherine Dictating Dialogue.