My article “Saints or saints: Is There a Difference?” was published by Crisis Magazine HERE.
But below is the full text. You may be surprised how Scripture refers to saints — never to those in heaven, but those of us on earth!
For audio, click here: https://trinitymedia.ai/player/share/b365cf723c96819037066778dac7e4197ada
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Ask any average Catholic, “What is a saint?” and you will likely receive a puzzled look. The facial expression predicts their responding question, “What? You don’t know what a saint is? Everyone knows that? A saint is someone who is in Heaven!”
And they would be correct, but only half-accurate, since, biblically speaking, there is a whole category of saints we usually don’t consider.
In the Catholic world, the designation “saint” is part of our everyday language. We refer to St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or St. John Paul II. Our churches take the names of saints, and as Catholics, we adopt a favorite saint’s name at our confirmation. My confirmation saint is St. Athanasius. We pray to them and appeal to patron saints for everything imaginable. Who has not appealed to St. Anthony to find a lost item or to St. Jude or St. Rita for an impossible cause?
The ancient churches of the East and West have carried on this practice from the beginning. However, more recent Christian traditions following Martin Luther have rejected the canonization and intercession of the saints. For example, Luther wrote, “This misery has been helped by the shameful abomination which people call the canonization of the saints.”1 Virtually all Protestant groups followed his condemnation and rejection.
Catholics have a long-standing and well-developed theology concerning faithful believers who have departed this world with no unconfessed mortal sins and in friendship with God. Heaven is full of those who were faithful to Christ until the end. They expected to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant…Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).
In Heaven, there is no sin, and those in Heaven are holy; they are saints. In fact, addressing Christians, Hebrews 12:14 reminds us that without holiness we will not see the Lord. Those in Heaven are “holy ones,” the same word in Greek for “saint.”
Catholic theology explains the Church’s canonization of saints—the solemn declaration that a certain believer is known to be in Heaven. The Catechism defines canonization as
The solemn declaration by the Pope that a deceased member of the faithful may be proposed as a model and intercessor to the Christian faithful and venerated as a saint on the basis of the fact that the person lived a life of heroic virtue or remained faithful to God through martyrdom. (p. 869)
My wife and I took pilgrimage groups to Rome for the canonizations of Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. Everyone knew they were both saintly and led sanctified lives. However, on the day of their canonizations, something changed. One day, it was improper to call them a “Saint,” and the next day, it was not only proper but expected to refer to them as Saints.
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. In Greek, the word for “saint” is hagios (ἅγιος), which literally means “holy” or “holy one.” A saint is therefore a “holy one.” This then begs the question, what does holy mean? Though the word is nuanced, it can be distilled down to two basic meanings.
The first definition is sinless and pure, morally or ceremonially. In this case, holy means without sin, devoid of anything offensive to God. With this definition, Jesus was holy—completely without sin. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Those who are now in Heaven see God as He is (the “beatific vision”). They are now free from sin. There is no sin or evil in Heaven (Revelation 21:27).
The second definition of holy relates to the sacred rather than profane. To be holy in this sense is to be consecrated to God—being set apart from the profane and common in dedication to God’s sacred service. God’s holy people are not sinless, but they are the people who belong to God. For example, the Holy Ark of the Covenant was unable to sin, but it was “holy” because it was dedicated to the sacred service of the Temple.
I was confronted once by a young man who said we Catholics were wrong to call our pope “Holy Father” because he was a sinner like everyone else. I explained to him that “holy” can mean two things. The pope is not holy in the sense of being sinless. Popes know that, and they themselves go to confession regularly. It is said that Pope John Paul II availed himself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation every week. The Holy Father was not sinless, but he was holy in the sense of being called and consecrated by God for a sacred duty.
With this background, I now reach the main point of this article. As Catholics, we almost exclusively define “saint” as a canonized believer known to be in Heaven. In the Catechism, the word “saint” is used 122 times, and the vast majority correctly refer to the Saints in Heaven. But this is not the emphasis of hagios in Sacred Scripture.
In the New Testament, the word holy (hagios) is used 61 times. It does not refer exclusively to a saint in glory or to canonized saints. In each instance, it is plural, as in “saints,” and refers to those of us on earth whom God has called to a life of sanctity in His Church. Paul uses the word “saint” 40 times. In each case, it refers to living Christians, members of the Church.2 It seems that in a few instances in Revelation, it may refer to believers in Heaven and on earth united as in the communion of saints.
In Paul’s theology, “saint” refers to members of the Church who are still on earth. They are sanctified because they are “in Christ” and belong solely to God, not because of any inherent personal holiness. All members of the Church are referred to as saints, without qualification or distinguished by exceptional piety or moral achievement. This often surprises Catholics accustomed to thinking of saints as only those in Heaven.
Here are only three examples:
Acts 9:32: “Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.”
Philippians 4:22: “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.”
Colossians 1:2: “To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.”
The Catechism recognizes this when saying, “The Church, then, is ‘the holy People of God,’ and her members are called ‘saints’” (823). And again, “Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality” (1971).
It is important to distinguish between the canonized saints in Heaven and those of us called saints on earth. For those in Heaven, I use a capital S, as in “Saints.” And for those of us striving to achieve that lofty goal, I use a small s, as in “saint.” So, there are Saints, and there are saints.
Again, I refer to the Catechism, which says, “The Church is called the communion of saints, of the holy ones,” and in doing so, it is referring to “The unity in Christ of all the redeemed, those on earth and those who have died” (pp. 898, 871).
Yes, the Saints (with a capital S) are those in glory that we honor and venerate. They have reached their final reward and are before the throne of God in Heaven. But we on earth are also saints (with a small s) because we are called by God and members of Christ’s Church, set apart for God. It is good to make this distinction, and it reminds us of our lofty call and position as saints in the family of God as we strive to finish our earthly course and join the Saints in glory.