Communion of Saints

An acquaintance forwarded me an article today. It really made me think about the Communion of Saints. Many Catholics I know do not even know what this is more less practice it! An excellent and must read from the archives of the now non-existent Seattle Catholic can be found here.

Here an excerpt from the article about the protest at the annual meeting of the US Bishops:

Bishop Sheen once said, “We priests usually don’t lose our souls because we do evil. Rather, we lose our souls because we fail to do good.” This “failure to do good” was reflected in the latest Election. One of the greatest tragedies of the 2008 presidential race is that most bishops, with some exceptions, simply made a weak pro-life statement, or signed a joint pro-life document, or printed a pro-life article in their diocesan newspapers. They never mobilized the faithful to effectively fight for the unborn.

And then a reminder of some valuable Church teaching from Wikipedia:

CHURCH MILITANT AND CHURCH TRIUMPHANT

The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant
by Andrea da Firenze

The Catholic Church, or Church Universal, is traditionally divided into:

• the Church Militant (Ecclesia Militans), comprising Roman Catholics who are living,
• the Church Triumphant (Ecclesia Triumphans), comprising those who are in Heaven, and
• the Church Suffering (Ecclesia Penitens) or Church Expectant (Ecclesia Expectans), comprising those Christians presently in Purgatory. This last term is used mainly in Roman Catholicism.

These terms are often used in the context of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints; although Christians may be physically separated from each other by the barrier of death, they nonetheless remain united to each other in one Church, and support each other in prayer.

The Latin word militans has a primary meaning of "serving as a soldier, military", but it acquired a secondary meaning of "to struggle, to make an effort", which is the intended sense here. Christians on earth (the Church Militant) are still struggling against sin in order that, when they die, they might go to heaven and be members of the Church Triumphant, those who have triumphed over sin. However, if this struggle is successful, but not completely so, then after death they temporarily become members of the Church Suffering before ultimately joining the Church Triumphant.

The Catholic Church commemorates the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering on two consecutive days: All Saints Day on November 1 (the Church Triumphant), and All Souls Day on November 2 (the Church Suffering).