Understanding The Catholic Church

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@(name removed by moderator),

I just hope my sons will pray for my soul after I die.
 
I remember someone saying here that Saint Augustine said: “ Every Saint has a past; every sinner has a future. “
 
@Crocus @Michael16 @(name removed by moderator) @SPBlitz
Thank you for answering my questions, I am grateful to be a part of this discussion, it’s opened my eyes to a whole new world with God and He has allowed me to share my thoughts with you. I appreciate your kindness! God bless!
 
God bless you too, @skyjoy00!

If you have anymore questions, please feel free to ask publicly or in pm. Door’s always open, Sister.
 
skyjoy00 said:
So who are all the saints that Catholics pray for other than Mother Mary? (Forgive my ignorance)
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We don’t “pray for” saints, we ask their intercession, as in we ask them to pray for us. (The Catholic shorthand colloquial expression for this is “we prayed to Saint so-and-so”, which means we asked Saint so-and-so to pray for us.) Saints are already in Heaven, so we don’t need to pray for them.

As for which saints we pray to, there’s approximately 10,000 saints. Of those, I would say there are probably about 200 to 300 who are well-known today and popular with Catholics in the United States.
These saints would include:
  • New Testament figures such as the 12 Apostles, St. Paul, St. Mary Magdalene, St. John the Baptist, and St. Stephen;
  • Other early Christian disciples and martyrs, such as St. Agnes and St. Lawrence;
  • St. Michael the Archangel, invoked to help us fight the devil and as a patron of law enforcement;
  • Saints who contributed to Church theology like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
  • Saints who founded major religious orders like St. Benedict, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius Loyola;
  • Saints who were missionaries like St. Francis Xavier;
  • Saints associated strongly with cultural or ethnic groups such as St. Patrick, St. Anthony, and St. Kateri Tekawitha;
  • Saints who were mystics like St. Padre Pio, St. Faustina, and St. Bernadette;
  • “Modern day” saints who lived in the late 1800s or during the 1900s, such as St. Therese, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Pope John Paul II, and St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
If you go in any Catholic church that’s named after a saint, you’ll usually see a statue inside of the saint that the church is named after. In addition there are other saints whose statues tend to be in many churches in USA, such as St. Therese, St. Anthony, St. Patrick, and St. Francis of Assisi. There also might be many saints with the ethnicity of the group who typically attended that parish or founded it. For example, I went to a parish that was founded by Polish-Americans, and all the statues and pictures in it were Polish saints.

If you want to read about the saints for the day in the USA, you can go here where they will show you a saint for almost every day (except Sundays, as we don’t typically celebrate saint feasts on Sundays).

www.catholicculture.org

Optional Memorial of St. Sylvester I, pope - December 31, 2019 - Liturgical Calendar

Today is the seventh day in the octave of Christmas. The Church celebrates the optional memorial of St. Sylvester I, pope and confessor. He ruled the Church during the reign of Constantine when the Arian heresy and the Donatist schism had provoked great discord. He convoked the first Ecumenical
www.catholicculture.org www.catholicculture.org

This is for today’s saint, St. Sylvester. You can see the saints for subsequent days by clicking the “Liturgical Year” tab at the top of the page and choosing “Today”, it will always show you the saint for the day.
 
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The Saint issue is another one of those “Catholic-ese” language things. The Bible says we’re all saints as long as we’re striving to follow Jesus. True - lowercase s. Saints (capital S) are those where there has been reasonable “proof” or justifiable belief that they made it through the Gates of Heaven.

Here’s a website organized by dates (or other options, as you prefer). It’s one of the most comprehensive lists I’ve seen so far - but the Church officially admits that we don’t know them all! Also, I think it’s worth noting that many of the “patronages” we attribute to Saints are based on popular opinion - if someone was notable in some way, people start calling upon that person in prayer related to those issues, and through time, it just sticks.

 
skyjoy00 said:
Thank you for answering my questions, I am grateful to be a part of this discussion, it’s opened my eyes to a whole new world with God and He has allowed me to share my thoughts with you.
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RE: praying for saints’ intercession, I would add that it is a very old tradition. For example, we read in the martyrdom of St Polycarp (2nd century) that Christians kept the relics of the saint with great veneration, so it is implied they sought his intercession.
 
Michael16 said:
1: Mother of God
2: Perpetual Virgin
3: Immaculately Conceived. She was conceived without Original Sin and didn’t have temptations to sin like we do. In other words, Our Lady is and always was sinless.
4: Assumed Body and Soul into heaven. That means she is in heaven, body and soul. All other Saints in heaven are there as souls only.
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I thought only Jesus could be sinless because He is/was God on earth and when Jesus was crucified what did he mean when he said to the person being crucified next to Him “Behold your Mother” and when He turned to His Mother “Behold your son”. Furthermore why don’t other Baptists acknowledge Mary as their Mother if it was our Lord’s will? I see no problem with praying to saints for intercession or acknowledging Mother Mary as our Mother if it was her Son’s will.
 
@skyjoy00,

The Behold your Mother passage refers to His Crucifixion in which Our Lady was praying and suffering at the foot of the Cross as He was dying.

He looked down at the Beloved Disciple, Tradition holds this is Saint John the Evangelist; and told him: “ Behold your Mother “ and then to His Mother: “ Woman, behold thy son “ and the Beloved Disciple took her into his home.

The reason why Protestants downplay any devotion to Our Blessed Mother is that they have a mistaken fear that such a devotion would distract from the adoration due to Christ.
 
Michael16 said:
The reason why Protestants downplay any devotion to Our Blessed Mother is that they have a mistaken fear that such a devotion would distract from the adoration due to Christ.
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Wouldn’t it enhance our relationship with Christ due to us carrying out His will?
 
Yes, @skyjoy00 it would.

A simple way to explain to Protestants our love and devotion to Our Mother is this:

The Commandment says: Honor thy father and thy mother.

Jesus certainly honored and loved His Mother. Am I any better than Christ to not do the same?
 
skyjoy00 said:
So who are all the saints that Catholics pray for other than Mother Mary? (Forgive my ignorance)
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I amuse myself sometimes by trying to find out who the patron saint of . . . . whatever . . . is, because there IS a patron saint for nearly everything you can possibly think of. 😆

Internet? St. Isidore of Seville
Automobiles? St. Frances of Rome
Barbecue? St. Lawrence of Rome
Explosives? St. Barbara
Bridges? St. Bénézet
 
Michael16 said:
A simple way to explain to Protestants our love and devotion to Our Mother is this:

The Commandment says: Honor thy father and thy mother.

Jesus certainly honored and loved His Mother. Am I any better than Christ to not do the same?
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Before I got on this forum, I started to pray the rosary and joined to get more information on it, praying the rosary everyday helped me put structure in my prayer life and to understand the life of Jesus more fully. Once I started to understand the prayers and mysteries I was meditating on, I wondered why Catholics put so much emphasis on Mother Mary(I didn’t study the bible much before) then when I got to Jesus’s crucifixion and read the “Behold your Mother passage” I understood. Then I started to wonder why Baptist’s didn’t do this as well, as we follow our Father’s will through the Bible so thank you for explaining!
 
Not a problem, @skyjoy00.

Praying the Rosary and honoring Our Lady as the Mother of God and my spiritual Mother in heaven led me home into the Church.

Thank you so much for sharing and your kind words. God bless you and Mother Mary keep you.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in public or in pm.
 
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Michael16 said:
Purgatory is a place of purification. Purgatory comes from the word, purge; as to clean and purify.

When we die, we go to either of three places:

A: Heaven. If we die in a state of grace and lived a Saint’s life. Boom; we go straight to heaven.
B: Purgatory. If we die in a state of grace but still were attached to sins; we undergo the purifying fire of Purgatory to purge those attachments to sin. Once the purging is done, we ascend into heaven clean and pure.
C: We die in a state of mortal sin and unrepentant; we go to hell. God doesn’t condemn people to hell. People freely choose to go to hell and God gives us that free choice.
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How does purgatory purify you? Is it like the burning of sin from your soul? And if everyone sins wouldn’t everyone just go to purgatory or is that what confession is for? To clean sin from one’s soul on earth?
 
@skyjoy00,

Confession absolves us from sin; God forgives us sins. Confession doesn’t take away the temporal consequences of sin.

Think of Confession like this:

I break my Dad’s window. I say I’m sorry. He forgives me. I still have to make up for breaking that window. That’s penance. But, I still have to deal with the consequences of that broken window.

Purgatory purges from us our attachments to sin. Cleanses us so our souls can enter heaven; as only pure souls can enter heaven.

Does that help?
 
Michael16 said:
Confession absolves us from sin; God forgives us sins.
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So the two are different. The forgiveness of sin is just that and confession cleanses our sin from us but we still face the consequences of our sins which is where purgatory comes in? Didn’t Jesus die on the cross to receive purgatory in our place so we wouldn’t have to face the wrath of God?
 
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Confession takes away the damnation of our sins and restores us to a state of grace.

Temporal consequences of sin we never escape.

What’s meant by attachments to sin, if I’m not mistaken; is our clinging to the inclination to sin. We must be detached; or dead to sin as Saint Paul taught us in Romans.

Jesus died on the Cross so we can be reconciled to the Father, gain access to grace and receive the interior helps of the Holy Spirit to be righteous and avoid mortal sin.

Here’s the thing: God isn’t wrathful and hating on us humans. He loves us and wants to spend eternity with us. So, He sent His Son Jesus to save us from our sins.
 
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