Companionship

One of the questions we get in RCIA all of the time is “Why do Catholics pray to the saints?” It’s a good question, and one indeed that probably many Catholics themselves could not answer. In fact, in the early Church, James Martin tells us, they did not relate to saints by asking for their intercession as we do today, but rather in a “companionship model”, where the saints were their friends, those who had struggled with many of the things with which the early community struggled, and they walked with them in their struggles as companions. We know today that saints were very real people with very real and similar problems to our own. For example, Dorothy Day had an abortion; Thomas Merton fathered a child out of wedlock; Francis of Assisi had a wild and wealthy lifestyle in his youth; Mother Teresa had doubts about her faith. Is there a place for us to befriend these people who overcame their missteps and moved on the path to God? They have shown us their own weaknesses, and in that, have taught us that these weaknesses do not lessen God’s love for us, but may strengthen our resolve to find our own paths to God in spite of this sinfulness. For a good treatment of saints and their power to inspire us today, pick up a copy of James Martin’s bestseller, My Life With the Saints. In this, Fr. Martin not only tells about the lives of these and other saints, but how their lives have had power in his own. It’s a good read, and one that may further your own spiritual life.