How To Push Past the 3 Barriers to Intimacy With the Catholic Saints
Do you know the 3 biggest barriers that block more Catholic adults from forming intimate relationships with the Catholic saints?
Despite our belief in the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) of the Church Triumphant who support us with their prayers, many Catholic adults live their spiritual life largely in spiritual isolation. They may have a passing devotion to the saints, but they don’t really see the saints as their brothers or sisters in Christ. They come up against three barriers in this area of Catholic spirituality. If you’re a Catholic adult who wants to bypass these barriers and push on to partner with the saints, discover a deeper relationship with the Family of God and gain spiritual support for your spiritual project, then you are going to benefit from this article. I am going to show you the three most common barriers to a deeper devotion to the saints and how to overcome each one.
Barrier #1: Choosing which saints to partner with out of the thousands to choose from
There are so many saints! You and I don’t even know most of them. It would seem that such an abundance of holiness would be anything but a barrier to your spiritual project. But it can be.
Forming an intimate relationship with the saints means forming a person-to-person relationship with individual Catholic saints. Choosing which saints to partner with out of the thousands to choose from can easily become overwhelming. It’s so much easier to keep a general devotion to the saints or to honor the most popular saints in a vague way. Let’s face it — everyone loves Saint Francis of Assisi and the Little Flower, right? But general, vague devotions will keep you from getting to know the saints deeply and intimately.
Don’t let overwhelm keep you from digging deeper! You can get around this barrier by choosing saints that you have a lot in common with. Choosing saints to have a devotion to is a lot like choosing your friends. There are many great people in the world that you could choose to befriend. How do you narrow your choices? You start by developing friendships with people you have a lot in common with. Why? In the end, you know that having things in common is not the same as being true friends. But the commonalities make friendship building easier. The same is true of building a relationship with a saint. The more you have in common, the easier forming your relationship with be.
Barrier #2: Knowing enough about Catholic saints to build an intimate relationship
If the goal of devotion to the saints is to build a real relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s very important that we get to know them. Intimacy is part of any relationship. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, you cannot love what you do not know. That’s why reading the Bible and learning the Faith (continuously) is such an important part of spirituality. Likewise, if you’re going to truly partner with saints in your spiritual life, you need to know them.
The problem is that much of what we think we know about the saints is cultural mythology.
- Saint Francis is the “nature saint” and the patron saint of Earth Day
- Saint Jude is the saint of lost causes (but do you know why?)
- Saint Anthony is the saint you turn to when you lose something (again, do you know why?)
While there is some truth to these facts, if we don’t know much more about our favorite saint than these cultural tidbits, we don’t really know these saints at all.
There are many popular myths surrounding Catholic saints that tell only part of the truth about how they are.
What should you know about the saints? To make real connections with them, we want to know what kind of person they are. What are their personalities like? We want to know how they struggled in their relationship with God — and all of them struggled! We want to know how God worked in their lives to bring them closer to Him, and how they responded to that call. We want to know in as much detail as possible about their process of conversion. And of course, we want to know how God worked in their lives for the sake of the Church (this is usually where their patronage comes from).
So how do we get a real knowledge of the saints? Sorry, but there is no way around it. You have to read. You need to read good, solid, extensive biographies of your saint. Now, that doesn’t mean that you need to read biographies of all the saints. Start with a good encyclopedic work and read the short biographies of any of the Catholic saints that catches your attention. Use those biographical sketches to choose saints that you want to get to know more intimately, and find extended biographies for those saints.
There are also more fun ways to learn about your saint, but you should do these things in addition to reading the biographies. Find a good fictional book based on your chosen saint. These books usually fall under the category of “historical fiction,” a fictional story based on historical fact. Novels can help personalize what you know about the saint. While it may be more difficult, another wonderful option is to find an audio program or a good movie about your saint. The Augustine Institute is putting out some wonderful audio programs on the lives of the saints. Ignatius Press has a number of movies about saints — some of them excellent, others a matter of personal preference — but worth checking out!
Don’t be afraid of doing the work of getting to know the saints. You will find the time you “waste” reading and studying their lives will be some of the best time you spend.
Barrier #3: Knowing how to engage the Catholic saints in your spiritual project as a partner
Now that you have chosen specific saints to form a relationship and have gotten to know them, you may run into one more barrier to true intimacy with the saints. True intimacy with the saints means that you are able to pray with them in an intimate way. This can be perhaps the largest, most difficult barrier you face. Intimate prayer can seem not only difficult but even scary.
So when we choose to have a devotion to a saint, we immediately seek out a printed devotion. By the way, there is no problem with these devotions. In fact, they are a great place to start! But they can become a crutch if we’re not careful. Mechanically rattling off a printed prayer can actually keep us from building an intimate relationship with the Catholic saint (and with God).
But if you start with a printed devotion, take the time to study the words. Read the devotional prayer slowly. Mean every word. Find phrases or sentences that really speak to you and focus intently on those phrases.
To go beyond the written prayer, use what you learned about the saint in your reading and study and bring that knowledge into your prayer. By the way, don’t be afraid to bring your notes into your prayer. Study the notes meditatively and find parts of the saint’s life that relate to your own or that speak to you most strongly. Then talk to the saint about those parts of his or her life. Finally, ask the saint to pray for you for something related to that area of his life.
Here’s an example:
“Saint Francis of Assisi, you had such a fire to preach the Gospel to the people that when they wouldn’t listen you went and preached to the fish and the birds. I know how you must have felt. I have friends who just won’t listen to the Gospel. They are making themselves miserable, but they just don’t see it. Sometimes I feel like preaching to the fish and the birds would be more effective. I get so frustrated! I know you understand this frustration. Please pray for me that I won’t give up on my friends. Pray that Jesus will give me the same passion for the Gospel that you have. And please pray for my friends that they might one day accept the Gospel and find true happiness. Amen.”
Can you see how much more intimate that prayer is than simply reading the prayer of Saint Francis from a prayer book? Again, such a prayer is a great starting place. But the goal is to speak personally and intimately to the saint. Focusing on what you know about the Catholic saint and connecting his or her life to your own can lead you to a truly intimate connection with the saints.
Would you like to build a deep, intimate devotion to the saints?
If you’re ready to build an intimate devotion to the saints, I’d like to invite you to download my eBook “Assembling Your Spiritual Construction Crew” and to participate in the free mini-course that accompanies it. This eBook and mini-course will teach you how to assemble your “spiritual construction crew” — members of all three parts of the Church (including the saints) and then how to engage them more intimately and personally in your spiritual project (your quest for holiness).
