I started half a dozen other stories in writing or in my mind before this one. I stopped each before finishing because they felt a little too much like diary entries. We can observe many people sharing their truth on every imaginable outlet, and I’m sure I’ve done plenty of this myself. While individual story can be powerful, if it is not rooted in a deeper truth, it may ultimately be an addition to the noise with which we are constantly bombarded.
So, I want to share something that is not simply my truth or something in which I’m an expert. Rather, it’s something we have the opportunity to participate in and behold—it’s the communion of saints.
If you want the thorough, theological description of the communion of saints, read this section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is truly a wealth of riches.
In brief, the expression that the Church is a “communion of saints” refers to a unity found amongst believers through the Eucharist and in Christ, so that the good each person does or the sufferings each person has for Jesus bears fruit for all (CCC 960, 961).
What does this actually mean? I’ll share two stories from the past month that helped put flesh on this beautiful and mysterious gift for me. I hope they’ll do the same for you.
First—There is a family I don’t know that I’ve been praying for. My family, extended family, and friends have also been praying for them. They have many people praying for them, many strangers praying for them.
Isn’t this something to behold from the get go? Imagine being personally prayed for—prayed for by name—by many strangers.
Hundreds of people have been praying for this family because the mother carried a baby who had a condition deemed “incompatible with life” to full term. The parents’ prayer was that their child would live long enough outside the womb to be baptized. So, many people shared this prayer with them. Many people’s hearts and minds surged toward God with this petition. And when that sweet baby was born and held and baptized, many people praised God. And when an email with photos of that baby was shared, many people wept at the baby’s beauty, that baby who had been deemed “incompatible with life.”
How is it that so many people could come closer to God through that baby? The communion of saints. And whenever that baby passes from earth and goes to heaven, we will still be connected, because she’ll be praying for us from there.
Second—my husband recently had the opportunity to stay at Girlstown in Chalco, Mexico for work and to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe when he was there. Since he had just been gone for a week for work, we both felt tired at the thought of him being gone for another week.
But that changed as soon as he arrived to Girlstown. In a different country, with a different language, among thousands of young women with a very different life experience from his own, my husband found the peace and joy of Christ. Sharing in the Eucharist, time in Adoration, time gardening and cooking, and time at play, my husband found communion. There is a deep and true solidarity that’s source can only be in and from Christ.
A mystery of the communion of saints is that it’s not just about one person—like my husband having a nice personal experience. No, it’s like a beautiful web that expands, connecting leaves from different trees and capturing graces like diamond droplets on its silk threads.
My husband’s experience comes into our marriage and family life as we reflect on how we can life in closer solidarity with the poor through charitable giving and actions, intentional simplicity, and prayer. The experience of our family flows out to other families as we take up the meditation together. And it goes back to women many of us will never meet, but with whom we are connected to through Jesus, the Church, and the sacraments.
I have no concrete answers or profound closing statement, but only a shout of praise—what a gift it is to be a member of Jesus’ beautiful body.