The communion of saints is the spiritual solidarity which binds together the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven in the organic unity of the same mystical body under Christ its head, and in a constant interchange of supernatural offices. The participants in that solidarity are called saints by reason of their destination and of their partaking of the fruits of the Redemption (1 Corinthians 1:2 &151; Greek Text). The damned are thus excluded from the communion of saints. The living, even if they do not belong to the body of the true Church, share in it according to the measure of their union with Christ and with the soul of the Church. St. Thomas teaches (III:8:4) that the angels, though not redeemed, enter the communion of saints because they come under Christ's power and receive of His gratia capitis. The solidarity itself implies a variety of inter-relations: within the Church Militant, not only the participation in the same faith, sacraments, and government, but also a mutual exchange of examples, prayers, merits, and satisfactions; between the Church on earth on the one hand, and purgatory and heaven on the other, suffrages, invocation, intercession, veneration. These connotations belong here only in so far as they integrate the transcendent idea of spiritual solidarity between all the children of God. Thus understood, the communion of saints, though formally defined only in its particular bearings (Council of Trent, Sess. XXV, decrees on purgatory; on the invocation, veneration, and relics of saints and of sacred images; on indulgences), is, nevertheless, dogma commonly taught and accepted in the Church. It is true that the Catechism of the Council of Trent (Pt. I, ch. x) seems at first sight to limit to the living the bearing of the phrase contained in the Creed, but by making the communion of saints an exponent and function, as it were, of the preceding clause, "the Holy Catholic Church", it really extends to what it calls the Church's "constituent parts, one gone before, the other following every day"; the broad principle it enunciates thus: "every pious and holy action done by one belongs and is profitable to all, through charity which seeketh not her own".
In this vast Catholic conception rationalists see not only a late creation, but also an ill-disguised reversion to a lower religious type, a purely mechanical process of justification, the substitution of impersonal moral value in lieu of personal responsibility. Such statements are met best, by the presentation of the dogma in its Scriptural basis and its theological formulation. The first spare yet clear outline of the communion of saints is found in the "kingdom of God" of the Synoptics, not the individualistic creation of Harnack nor the purely eschatological conception of Loisy, but an organic whole (Matthew 13:31), which embraces in the bonds of charity (Matthew 22:39) all the children of God (Matthew 19:28; Luke 20:36) on earth and in heaven (Matthew 6:20), the angels themselves joining in that fraternity of souls (Luke 15:10). One cannot read the parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13) without perceiving its corporate nature and the continuity which links together the kingdom in our midst and the kingdom to come. The nature of that communion, called by St. John a fellowship with one another ("a fellowship with us"--1 John 1:3) because it is a fellowship with the Father, and with his Son", and compared by him to the organic and vital union of the vine and its branches (John 15), stands out in bold relief in the Pauline conception of the mystical body. Repeatedly St. Paul speaks of the one body whose head is Christ (Colossians 1:18), whose energizing principle is charity (Ephesians 4:16), whose members are the saints, not only of this world, but also of the world to come (Ephesians 1:20; Hebrews 12:22). In that communion there is no loss of individuality, yet such an interdependence that the saints are "members one of another" (Romans 12:5), not only sharing the same blessings (1 Corinthians 12:13) and exchanging good offices (ibid., xii, 25) and prayers (Ephesians 6:18), but also partaking of the same corporate life, for "the whole body . . . by what every joint supplieth . . . maketh increase . . . unto the edifying of itself in charity" (Ephesians 4:16).
Recent well-known researches in Christian epigraphy have brought out clear and abundant proof of the principal manifestations of the communion of saints in the early Church. Similar evidence, is to be found in the Apostolic Fathers with an occasional allusion to the Pauline conception. For an attempt at the formulation of the dogma we have to come down to the Alexandrian School. Clement of Alexandria shows the "gnostic's" ultimate relations with the angels (Strom., VI, xii, 10) and the departed souls (ibid., VIII, xii, 78); and he all but formulates the thesaurus ecclesiae in his presentation of the vicarious martyrdom, not of Christ alone, but also of the Apostles and other martyrs (ibid., IV, xii, 87). Origen enlarges, almost to exaggeration, on the idea of vicarious martyrdom (Exhort. ad martyr., ch. 1) and of communion between man and angels (De orat., xxxi); and accounts for it by the unifying power of Christ's Redemption), ut caelestibus terrena sociaret (In Levit., hom. iv) and the force of charity, stranger in heaven than upon earth (De orat., xi). With St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom the communion of saints has become an obvious tenet used as an answer to such popular objections as these: what, need of a communion with others? (Basil, Ep. cciii) another has sinned and I shall atone? (Chrysostom, Hom. i, de poenit.). St. John Damascene has only to collect the sayings of the Fathers in order to support the dogma of the invocation of the saints and the prayers for the dead.
But the complete presentation of the dogma comes from the later Fathers. After the statements of Tertullian, speaking of "common hope, fear, joy, sorrow, and suffering" (De poenit., ix and x); of St. Cyprian, explicitly setting forth the communion of merits (De lapsis, xvii); of St. Hilary, giving the Eucharistic Communion as a means and symbol of the communion of saints (in Ps. lxiv, 14), we come to the teaching of Ambrose and St. Augustine. From the former, the thesaurus ecclesiae, the best practical test of the reunion of saints, receives a definite explanation (De poenit., I, xv; De officiis, I, xix). In the transcendent view of the Church taken by the latter (Enchir., lvi) the communion of saints, though never so called by him, is a necessity; to the Civitas Dei must needs correspond the unitas caritatis (De unitate eccl., ii), which embraces in an effective union the saints and angels in heaven (Enarr. in Psalmos, XXXVI, iii, 4), the just on earth (De bapt., III, xvii), and in a lower degree, the sinners themselves, the putrida membra of the mystic body; only the declared heretics, schismatics, and apostates are excluded from the society, though not from the prayers, of the saints (Serm. cxxxvii). The Augustinian concept, though somewhat obscured in the catechetical expositions of the Creed by the Carlovingian and later theologians (P. L., XCIX, CI, CVIII, CX, CLII, CLXXXVI), takes its place in the medieval synthesis of Peter Lombard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, etc.
Influenced no doubt by early writers like Yvo of Chartres (P. L., CLXII, 606l), Abelard (P. L. CLXXXIII, 630), and probably Alexander of Hales (III, Q. lxix, a, 1), St. Thomas (Expos. in symb. 10) reads in the neuter the phrase of the Creed, communio sanctorum (participation of spiritual goods), but apart from the point of grammar his conception of the dogma is thorough. General principle; the merits of Christ are communicated to all, and the merits of each one are communicated to the others (ibid.). The manner of participation: both objective and intentional, in radice operis, ex intentione facientis (Supp., 71:1). The measure: the degree of charity (Expos. in symb., 10). The benefits communicated: not the sacraments alone but, the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints forming the thesaurus ecclesia (ibid. and Quodlib., II, Q. viii, a. 16). The participants: the three parts of the Church (Expos. in symb., 9); consequently the faithful on earth exchanging merits and satisfactions (I-II:113:6, and Suppl., 13:2), the souls in purgatory profiting by the suffrages of the living and the intercession of the saints (Suppl., 71), the saints themselves receiving honour and giving intercession (II-II:83:4, II-II:83:11, III:25:6), and also the angels, as noted above. Later Scholastics and post-Reformation theologians have added little to the Thomistic presentation of the dogma. They worked rather around than into it, defending such points as were attacked by heretics, showing the religious, ethical, and social value of the Catholic conception; and they introduced the distinction between the body and the soul of the Church, between actual membership and membership in desire, completing the theory of the relations between church membership and the communion of saints which had already been outlined by St. Optatus of Mileve and St. Augustine at the time of the Donatist controversy. One may regret the plan adopted by the Schoolmen afforded no comprehensive view of the whole dogma, bur rather scattered the various components of it through a vast synthesis. This accounts for the fact that a compact exposition of the communion of saints is to be sought less in the works of our standard theologians than in our catechetical, apologetic, pastoral, and even ascetic literature. It may also partly explain, without excusing them, the gross misrepresentations noticed above.
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