St. Paul refers in his writings to the fundamental event of his life, which we read about in today’s first reading at Mass. It had remained forever ingrained in his mind. Then on his journey, when he was nearly at Damascus, a light from heaven shone suddenly about him. He fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him: ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are You, Lord?’ he asked. And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you persecute. ’In this first revelation, Jesus shows himself as personally and intimately united to his disciples whom Paul is persecuting. Later on, the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, one of the central topics in his preaching, would show this profound unity among Christians, on account of their being united to their Head, who is Christ.

If one part is suffering, all the rest suffer with it; if one part is treated with honor, all the rest find pleasure in it. This unbreakable faith in the union of the faithful with one another led the Apostle to ask for prayers from the first Christians at Rome, whom he did not yet know personally, in order to be freed from the unbelievers he was going to meet in Judaea. He always felt very united with his brothers in the Faith, whom he always addressed as ‘saints’ in his letters: Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, who are at Philippi. From the earliest times of the Church, Christians have professed as one of the principal truths of faith in the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in the Communion of Saints. It consists in a community of spiritual qualities, of spiritual possessions from which everyone benefits. It is not a sharing in worldly benefits, of a material, cultural or artistic nature, but a community of imperishable goods, with which we can offer one another help of an incalculable value.

Today, offering Our Lord our work, our prayer, our joy and our difficulties, we can do an immense good to people who are far from us, and to the entire Church. Live a special Communion of Saints: and, in the moments of interior struggle, just as in the hours of professional work, each of you will feel the joy and the strength of not being alone. St Teresa, aware of the destruction caused by Protestant errors in the Church, knew also of this support we can give one another: The things of God’s service are so bad, she said, that those of us who do serve Him have to stand back to back in order to make progress at all. This doctrine was always practiced throughout the history of the Church. What does the Communion of Saints mean for us in practice? It means that all of us who are united in Christ – the saints in Heaven, the souls in purgatory, and we upon earth – must be mindful of the needs of one another ... The saints ‘must’ love the souls whom God loves. The love that the blessed in Heaven have for the souls in Purgatory and the souls on earth is not a passive love. We might call it an active, ‘hungry’ love. The saints long to help onward to Heaven all souls, whose precious value they now realize as never before. And if the prayer of a good man on earth has power with God, there is no estimating the power of the prayers which the saints offer for us. They are God’s heroes, his intimate friends and familiars.

The Communion of Saints extends even to the most unfortunate Christian: however much he finds himself on his own, he knows that he never dies alone: the whole Church stands beside him to give him back to the God who created him. The Communion of Saints is a fact that goes beyond time. Each act which we perform in charity has limitless repercussions. On the Last Day we will be given to understand the incalculable reverberations which the words, actions or institutions of a saint, and of ours, have had in the history of the world. We all need one another. We can all help one another. In fact we are continually sharing in the spiritual goods common to the whole Church.

At this moment, someone is praying for us, and our soul is being vitalized by the suffering, the work or the prayer of people whom we perhaps do not even know. One day, in the presence of God, at the moment of the particular judgment, we will see these immense contributions which kept us afloat on many occasions, and on others helped us draw a little closer to God. If we are faithful, we will also contemplate with immense joy how our sacrifices, work and prayers were effective in helping other people. Perhaps we will see the salvation of others as due in great measure to our prayer, our mortification, our good deeds ... We share in this communion of spiritual benefits in a singular manner through the Holy Mass. The unity of all the members of the Church, even of those furthest away, is perfected every day around the Body of the Lord, which is offered for his Church and for the whole of humanity. All Christians, by the Communion of Saints, receive the graces of every Mass, whether the celebrant offers it before thousands of people, or is helped by a server who is a child, perhaps distracted.

St. Gregory the Great expresses in a graphic and pedagogic manner the marvelous effectiveness of the Mass. It seems to me, he says in one of his homilies, that many of you know the story I am going to tell you now. It is said that not very long ago a man was taken prisoner by his enemies and led to a distant part of the country. Since he was a long time there, and his wife did not see him coming home, she thought he was dead. So she had Mass said for him every week. And as many times as his wife had Mass offered for the forgiveness of his sins, on each occasion, the chains of his captivity loosened. When he came back later to his own town, he told his wife with wonderment how on certain days of the week, the chains which bound him in his cell loosened by themselves. When his wife thought of the times and the days this happened, she recognized that he was freed when the Holy Sacrifice was being offered for his soul, as far as she could remember. Many chains are broken for us every day, thanks to the prayer of others.

A privileged moment of that unity takes place in the sacrament whose name is precisely Communion, in that august Sacrifice which is the same all over the world. One is the priest who offers it, one the Victim, one the people also who offer it, one the God to whom it is offered, and one the result of the offering. The one bread makes us one body, though we are many in number; the same bread is shared by all. Just as yesterday that bread was a handful of separate grains of wheat, so too Catholics, in the measure of their unity with Christ, are fused into one body, even though they come from very different conditions and places. In the Sacrament of the Eucharistic Bread, says the Second Vatican Council, the unity of the faithful is represented and reproduced. It is the sacrament of charity, which presupposes unity among the brethren.

It is also a truth of faith that the same interchange of spiritual benefits exists between the faithful who make up the Church triumphant in Heaven, the Church suffering in Purgatory and the Church militant on earth. We can commend ourselves to, and so receive help from, the saints in Heaven (whether canonized or not), from the angels, from the souls who are still being purified in Purgatory (and we can help them to alleviate their burden from where we are on earth) and from our brothers and sisters who, like us, are still on pilgrimage towards our ultimate homeland. When we fulfill the pious duty of praying and offering suffrages for the souls of the faithful departed, we must take particularly into account those with whom we had stronger bonds on earth: parents, brothers and sisters, friends and relations. They count on our prayers. The Holy Mass is also the best suffrage we can offer for the faithful departed. On this dogma of the Communion of Saints the doctrine of indulgences is based.

Through indulgences the Church administers authoritatively the graces gained by Christ, Our Lady and the Saints; under certain conditions, the Church makes use of these graces to make up for the punishment due our sins, and also to make up for what the souls in Purgatory need. This doctrine on the exchange of spiritual benefits has to be a great stimulus for us to fulfill our duties faithfully, in order to be able to offer all our deeds to God and to pray devoutly, knowing that all our tasks, sicknesses, difficulties and prayers are a considerable help to others. Nothing we do with rectitude of intention is ever lost. If we were to put that reality of our faith into practice better, our lives would be more fruitful. Here is a thought to help you in difficult moments: ‘The more my faithfulness increases, the better will I be able to contribute to the growth of others in that virtue.’ How good it is to feel supported by each other. If we remind ourselves that someone is interceding for us at this moment, and that someone else will be hoping for our prayer in order to overcome a bad situation or to help him make up his mind to stay closer to Our Lord, then we will be inspired to practice our Faith more deeply today. (END)

In Conversation with God, Vol 2 by Francis Fernandez, Scepter Pub (footnotes edited out)

“From long experience, I have learned that there is nothing like holy water to put devils to flight.” St Teresa of Avila

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