Can you recognize people you know that can be described as Saints?

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Can you recognize people you know that can be described as Saints?

Or do you only recognize people that the Catholic church has deemed as such.
Like mother Teresa

Would you have recognized her as a saint?

Or just a good person like “Gandhi”
 
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Saints are in heaven. So while she was alive, Mother Teresa was not a saint yet. She was a very good person and I recognized her as such.

The Church has a rigorous canonization process, so there are many, many people who have made it to heaven that will never be canonized by the Church. I even have some of my own family members who I’m hopeful are saints in heaven now.

The Church does not teach that people who have been canonized are the only saints in heaven, just that for those who are canonized, it can be said with certainty that they are in heaven. That way we know that it is ok to ask for their intercession, etc…
 
No doubt, we are surrounded by more saints than we’ll ever recognize on earth. Much that is holy is often overlooked. Much that appears holy is far from holiness.
 
I recognized Padre Pio and Mother Teresa as Saints even before the Church canonized them.

People I know? My now late priest who was instrumental in bringing my mother into the Catholic Church.

But really, we are all Saints. The Bible says so.
 
Technically a “saint” is anyone who is in Heaven. Presumably there are a lot of souls in heaven who are not canonized saints and who perhaps got to Heaven after spending time in Purgatory.

The Church limits some forms of public devotion to canonized saints only (or in some cases, beatified). So I would not be able to have a public devotion to my mom, even if I think she is in heaven (which I do).

However, if I have good reason to think my mom is in heaven right now (which I do), it is fine for me to pray privately to her myself and ask her to pray for me (which I do).
 
No, because death is part of the process for all of us humans to go to Heaven. Christ did it and none is above Him. So no one alive can be called a saint. We can say he or she lives a saintly life. We cannot pray to them as if they are saints tho.
 
This is true. We cannot pray to any living people. We can admire them and use their saintly behavior as a model for ourselves to improve, but we can only pray to people who are deceased and who we have good reason to believe are saved.

There is also a theological controversy over whether souls in Purgatory can pray for us while they are there, or whether they are only able to pray for us once they get out and reach Heaven. It does not hurt to ask the souls in Purgatory for prayers, but usually people will direct their requests for intercessory prayer to people they know are in heaven (in other words, canonized saints) or other people they have good reason to believe are in Heaven (people on the path to sainthood, deceased relatives who lived good lives, etc. )
 
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Scripture repeatedly refers to all Christians as “saints.” We are all “holy ones” by virtue of our baptism. It is only when the word is capitalized that it refers to a special class of those who have already attained the Beatific Vision. I guess we could say the Saints are saints who are already in heaven 😄
 
You need to be careful to differentiate between the Roman Catholic use of the word saint and the scriptural use of the word (which is in the original Greek, “hagios” or something like that).

The Catholic church uses the word “saint”, capitalized or not, to denote a deceased soul in heaven. It teaches that we here on earth are all called to become saints. It does not say we are already saints by virtue of being baptized.
 
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A priest I know joked about us being saints after a sincere confession until we start sinning again.
 
Well I believe we are all potential Saints, but we won’t know until we get to our final destination.
 
Yes and no. According to the Catechism (#946), “The communion of saints is the Church.” It doesn’t say the Church Triumphant, but simply “the Church.”
 
It’s true that the Catechism says that, but sections 947 and 948 make clear that the phrase is referring to the communion of people for receiving Christ’s sacraments and other gifts. Section 948 further notes that there is a dual meaning which refers in part to people receiving holy “things”.
948 The term “communion of saints” therefore has two closely linked meanings: communion in holy things (sancta)" and "among holy persons (sancti).

"Sancta sancti’s! (“God’s holy gifts for God’s holy people”) is proclaimed by the celebrant in most Eastern liturgies during the elevation of the holy Gifts before the distribution of communion. the faithful (sancta) are fed by Christ’s holy body and blood (sancta) to grow in the communion of the Holy Spirit (koinonia) and to communicate it to the world.
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This may be a fine point, but in the context of the term “communion of saints”, the persons are holy people in that they are joined in communion with the Church, whatever their status of personal holiness may or may not be.

The distinction is important for Catholics because of our devotional practice of asking saints in heaven for intercessory prayer. As stated above, we cannot have devotions to people still living on earth. We can ask them to pray for us, or admire their apparent (to us) personal holiness, while recognizing that we do not know all the person’s actions or state of mind as to how personally holy they actually are.

Contrary to your first post, the Church does not follow a practice of always capitalizing the word Saints to refer to those persons in heaven. Sometimes the word is capitalized and sometimes it is not.

I am making kind of a big deal out of this because a lot of non-Catholics read these threads, and we need to be careful about saying “every baptized person is a saint” because that muddies the waters as to what the Church actually teaches about sainthood, especially in view of the fact that many Protestants have used the Bible passages you noted to come up with all sorts of interpretations that differ from the Church teaching.
 
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