getting to know the saints

who are they, and why are they worth knowing?

Dec 03, 2024

A depiction of saints by Fra Angelico. Source: Flickr

When I was a kid, pretty much everyone knew that the holiest living human being was a little hunchbacked nun in Calcutta named Mother Teresa. She worked tirelessly for decades to take care of the poorest, most wretched people in one of the most poverty-stricken places in the world. But she didn’t just take care of their general needs. She set up a home for people who were dying, but were so poor and outcast that they weren’t allowed in the local hospitals. Her goal was simply to give them a place to die as comfortably as possible and to show them the love of Christ in the process.

Everyone knew then that she would quickly become an official saint, even those of us who weren’t Roman Catholic and didn’t exactly know what a saint even was or how to become one.

And sure enough, when she died in 1997, the Roman Catholic church fast tracked her to be canonized as a saint. A process that often takes decades or even generations was finished in just 18 years, when she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2015.

But despite that process and the time it took, the truth is that Mother Teresa was already a saint before her death in 1997. Why did it take so long to “canonize” her? And what does “canonize” even mean anyway?

And why should we care who is or isn’t a saint?

what is a saint?

Let’s start at the beginning. In the New Testament, the word that is translated as “saint” literally means “holy ones.” It is actually the same word used in the name “Holy Spirit.” So, what does it mean to be holy?

To be holy or sanctified simply means to be set apart for God’s purposes. Something or someone that is consecrated to God is holy. Often times we think that it means perfect or sinless, but that’s not the case.1 Certainly someone who is set apart for God’s purposes will try to avoid sin, but when they sin, it doesn’t mean that they are not holy.

We see this in how the word is used in Scripture. Paul addresses the church in Corinth as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”2 He says that they are sanctified, or set apart for God, so they are already holy. But he also says that they are called to be saints, which indicates that they perhaps aren’t always living up to that holiness. He later goes on to describe and speak against division and sexual immorality in this particular church. We wouldn’t usually imagine that saints would have to be scolded for those kinds of behaviors!

Paul also starts several other letters by addressing the congregations as saints.3 But he still has to give these saints advice on how to live a Godly life.

So clearly, the Scriptural meaning of saint is not about perfection or sinlessness. It’s about a person’s devotion to God. If you have made the choice to set your life apart unto Christ, and you are trying to live up to that standard, then even if you sometimes miss the mark, you are a saint.

It sounds kind of presumptuous to say it that way, but that’s what Scripture seems to be telling us. At the very least, we should see ourselves as saints in training, striving for sanctification.

so, what is canonization, then?

In the early centuries of the church, Christians came to revere particular believers who had come before them, those they could look back on as having lived exemplary lives of service to Christ. Of course, the original apostles were included, as well as the other two evangelists,4 but they would also include martyrs of the early church, those who died for their faith.

But not everyone agreed on who qualified as a martyr or otherwise as a saint that was worth honor. So, they started to develop processes to ensure that the people they were honoring in their congregations actually lived (and in the case of martyrs, died) for Christ during their earthly lives. The process would be approved ultimately by the local bishop, until around the twelfth century, when the approval became reserved for the Pope alone.5 The process of recognizing a saint in the Roman Catholic church is called canonization. It is tied into some other Catholic beliefs that we’ll discuss in the future, but suffice it to say, it is a long and complicated process.

But even in the Roman Catholic church, the canonization process is not what makes someone a saint, but only how the church recognizes someone as a saint. As an example, Bishop Robert Barron preached a message on the Sermon on the Mount in 2023, in which he said that “the ordinary goal of the Christian life is to be a saint.”6 He does not suggest that this in any way involves canonization.

Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic church has canonized tens of thousands of saints. In fact, on May 12, 2013, the church canonized 802 saints in just a single day!7

Each saint that is canonized has a feast day, usually on the day of their death. This is probably related to the fact that most of the early saints died as martyrs, so the day of their death was an obvious choice. But it also relates to the idea that death here is birth into eternal life.

why are the saints worth knowing?

Our goal as Christians is to make Jesus Christ the center of our lives. There are so many pressures that would tempt us to push our faith to the periphery in favor of the concerns that seem more concrete, more real in both time and space. Putting Christ at the center is a daily struggle.

The modern church does itself a disservice by ignoring one very helpful resource, or a whole multitude of resources really, to help us in this task. We have two thousand years of history, two thousand years of our fellow Christians who have striven for the same goal: to put Christ at the center of their lives. Sure, some of them got it wrong, but even those we can learn from.

This is why both the church calendar and the lives of the saints are worth studying. If we could ask them what they tried, where they succeeded and where they failed, we would. We can’t ask them directly, but whatever we can learn about their lives would be worth learning, right?

As we go through the church calendar, I want to include short posts about some of the saints that are usually included in the calendar. I want to provide examples of what we can learn from their lives, and therefore why they are worth remembering.

I would also like to include some modern-day saints, even if they haven’t been recognized by any sort of “canonization.” The point is that anyone around us could be a saint worth learning from and emulating.

but aren’t there some concerning ideas about saints?

My goal in this post was to introduce the basic concept of saints and to explain why we should learn more about them. I therefore wanted to start with what we can all agree on.

But, you’ve probably heard of some concerning things about saints. Do Roman Catholics worship and pray to saints? What are icons, and why do Orthodox believers kiss them? And what is going on with Mary, the mother of Jesus?

There are definitely some ideas that Protestants have found concerning and alarming! And I think these are part of the reason that many of us just don’t talk about saints much at all these days. But this is an unfortunate overreaction.

I plan to address these issues in future posts. For now, suffice it to say: the saints are worth knowing!

What saints do you want to see in this series? Leave a comment and let me know!