Dorothy Day, a Catholic lay worker once admonished people from calling her a living saint with a remark that she do not want to dismiss from her humanity that too early. Perhaps, she sensed that the tragedy of becoming a saint is the gradual separation of your humanity to the rest of the human race. When proclaimed by the Catholic Church as someone who now enjoys the eternal bliss of heaven, most people think that one ceases to be human. One becomes a God-like being. No wonder why majority of our people consider saints as lesser gods who can help them in times of trouble. Saints are turned to as intercessors, as bridges for our prayers. In every profession, there is a corresponding saint who can act as our heavenly advocates. We come to them depending on what we need and the type of problems do we have. i.e., Saint Isidore for farmers, Francis of Assisi for environmentalists, Thomas Aquinas for theologians, Teresa of Avila for headaches, Saint Jude Thaddeus for impossible and desperate cases with a female counterpart in Saint Rita of Cascia. Just name it, the Catholic Church has it. Saints are turned into medicines prescribed by the Church. Most of us reduce saints into symbols of veneration rather than imitation.

On the other hand, some of us find it hard to relate with saints. Some Christians see this doctrine of the church as plain idolatry and irreconcilable with the untainted teachings of the Bible. They quote the first law that is to have no other God but me to prove to us Catholics our serious violation to God’s law. We have wrongfully accused Catholics with our devotion towards the saints. Our filial devotion to our saints is an expression of an immortal communion between the triumphant church to us—the militant and pilgrim church. The Catechism states that worship belongs to God alone while saints are venerated not because of their remarkable works but because of the workings of the divine grace in their lives. So it is not because of Saint Anthony, Francis or Saint James that we venerate them per se. It is because of the grace of God to transform the lives of these people who willingly responded to God’s call for holiness that is our universal vocation as Christians.

Catholics do not worship saints, we venerate them and in venerating them, we are hopefully lead into a greater realization of the wonderful works of God. Looking at the lives of the saints we too are encouraged to become like them. When we venerate the saints, we are worshipping God. When we are venerating this particular saint, it is expected for us to imitate and pattern our lives to these people. But, I would like to believe that each of the saint’s divine experience is unique. The same thing is also true for us. Our own calling to sainthood will be more likely different from the experience of the medieval saints and even from the martyrs of the ancient of Rome.

Other people consider saints as distant entities, far away from us. They look at saints as someone who had never experienced problems in their earthly lives. They are cold stones. They’ve done nothing but to pray and pray, every day of the year until their last moment. They are too good to be true. They are too perfect that people find it hard to associate little relevance to their own struggles and concerns. With this kind of view, saints are put into the dustbin of oblivion. They are reduced to cold stones, statues, and stained glasses.