Saints and other fine souls

When November rolls around, thoughts turn to those feast days that start the month: All Saints Day and All Souls Day. The feasts complement each other beautifully.

We all want to be saints. That’s our goal as Catholic Christians – to live a holy life worthy of heaven.

So, we celebrate all the saints – all who have reached heaven, regardless of whether they are part of the liturgical calendar of feasts or even if they are not formally declared saints by the church. While we tread the earth, we cannot know for certain who is in heaven.

That’s why we have All Souls Day, which remembers those who have died but might not yet reached heaven.

I’ve had a chance to meet and even converse with two people who have been declared saints, St. Teresa of Kolkata and St. Pope John Paul II. Having touched each of these saints, does that make me a third-class relic?

I’ve also encountered quite a few others whom I am convinced are saints.

I think of people such as Monsignor Art Valenzano, who exuded the love of Jesus so much it was hard not to feel that you were in the presence of a great friend of the Lord whenever you were with him. He died in 2015 after a long battle with acute myeloid leukemia. Despite the disease that ravaged his body, his spirit didn’t waver. He always greeted folks with his trademark “Praise Jesus.”

I’m fairly certain that Monsignor Art is in heaven, waiting for the rest of us to catch up with him.

I may be biased, but I think my parents, Harold and Therese Gunty, are saints in heaven. Perhaps they deserve it for no more than having put up with all the noise I made as a child. More importantly, they taught their 10 children about the Catholic faith at home and made sure we were able to attend Catholic schools so that we could soak in all that the church had to offer.

But it’s not just teaching us about the Scripture, especially the Beatitudes, but living them, that convinces me they are sitting with God now. They lived the faith that enriched their lives in good times and in bad, including the death of my infant brother Matthew before I was born.

Dad wrote once about how his faith and the parish community sustained the family in a very trying time after Matthew passed away.

There are lots of worthy deceased loves ones for whose souls I pray because I don’t know whether they are in heaven or not. It can’t hurt, right? That’s especially poignant on All Souls Day, as we acknowledge those who might not have seen yet the pearly gates.

This year, one of those is our friend, Peggy, who died this year two months shy of her 95th birthday. In her last few months, she had a couple of falls and strokes. As my wife and I talked to her while she was in the hospital in Pennsylvania near her home, we reminded her that we were praying for her, and that we had asked others to do so as well. She thanked us profusely, saying, “Prayer makes all the difference.”

We had been sending care packages, and she let us know she was running short on chocolate bars. “Don’t forget the Hershey’s,” she said, as we hung up for what would be the last time. Peggy, we hope that you have all the chocolate you desire in heaven.

The thing is, we don’t know who’s in heaven and who’s not. We don’t know what it will be like to join the communion of saints. But we can hope – and pray.

We can pray that we live a life worthy of joining that number. We can pray to those who have already achieved that goal – Monsignor Art, I’m talking to you. And we can continue to pray for those fine souls who need a little boost to get there.

Email Christopher Gunty at editor@CatholicReview.org

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