I Do Believe in the Communion of Saints

On the Eve of All Saints day, creedal Christians celebrate the continuing fellowship that extends beyond the confines of time and space and death. We take time out on All Saint's Day to commemorate the lives of the Saints, both known and unknown. We, like the early church, believe that the folks that have gone before us can continue to intercede for us while they are in heaven. We can ask them to intercede for us or using the old english term for ask, "pray". The saints are not divine, nor omnipresent or omniscient. They are not to be worshipped. All of this communion between them and us has been facilitated by the grace of God released through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Not only can they pray for us, we can pray for those being perfected in purgatory as Maccabees in the Old Testament illustrates, and St. Paul's comments about Onesiphorus his helper suggest. Purgatory isn't a "second chance" to get into heaven. If a soul is in purgatory, they are already "in" so to speak, but need a little purifiying since no unclean thing can see God, so as CS Lewis suggests needs a "bit of cleaning up." Purgatory is kind of like "heaven's washroom", where we go for purification before we see the Holy One face to face.

I blogged a bit more on this here in the past.