Busy week for important feast days! Today is the Feast Day of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. This is a fabulous opportunity to discuss how a person becomes a saint and what it means to be a saint, since in fact, St. Christopher never existed. At all, ever. At yet he remains one of the world's most popular saints, hanging from every key ring and luggage tag and clipped onto visors everywhere.
How does a man who never existed become one of the most famous saints ever?
You did it.
Let's take a moment and look at the story of St. Christopher so you can understand why he was booted off the calendar of saints back in the 60's. You can find the story of St. Christopher (written by your's truly) here by clicking on our shop icon to your left and look at St. Christopher. He's at the top of the shop today, of course. Go ahead and read that.
I'll wait.
So you see, the story of St. Christopher is a little like the three pigs or the three bears. It has that fairy tale "3" thing at the beginning and then the Christ child story, which seems charming and then on further examination makes no sense. Why wouldn't He have been heavy the whole time?
Let me explain how this happened. In the first place a saint is someone who is dead and in heaven. Period. Everyone who ever lived and is now in heaven is a saint. But since we don't know who made it and who didn't for a fact, in order to call a specific person a saint we need proof the person is in heaven. So we look for miracles performed by the person. The devil is up to no good. He doesn't do good things. Something miraculous happening after praying for the intercession of a person you think was good enough to make heaven proves that person is really there. See? Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
But not so fast. It has to be a miracle. Not "wow, my mother didn't say anything nasty when see called today!" Not a dimestore miracle. Not even "all those people died in the bus crash on the bus I just stepped off of." That's great for you (AND bad grammar) buit it's not a miracle. It has to be instant and unexplainable.
A saint needs three of these to be canonized, which means the person is worthy of veneration and is in heaven.
And how does this happen? That's where YOU come in. You get to pick who you think is worthy, pray for their intercession and report those miracles. For example, you could look up the list of people who have been beatified (almost a saint but waiting for the third miracle) and jump on the band wagon. Your miracle could seal the deal. AND you'd have a miracle. It's a win-win situation.
So how did Christopher get in? The church didn't used to go through so much trouble. If the faithful were into the person, and the church had no objections to the person and miracles were reported and more and more people jumped on the bandwagon...saint. The same way reality TV became so popular, I imagine. It's really not very good, is it? But you watch because everyone else does and you won't be able to keep up your end of the conversation tomorrow at work if you're left out.
You made reality TV popular and you made St. Christopher so popular we can't get rid of him anymore than they're going to cancel "Survivor."
I don't mind. It's good story. I especially like the part where the hermit tells Christopher he has to serve others. He didn't mean wait tables.
5 comments:
you might be delighted to know there is no st.christopher on my keyring, sister. thanks for keeping it real.
I say, go with St. Joseph. He's got travelers on his list, too, because he got the Holy Family away from evil Herod (on an ass! now THERE'S a travel plan) and all the way to Egypt. On foot. Better than carrying the heavy baby across the stream and not existing in the first place any day.
Interesting. I knew people had to have done miracles to be called Saint. I thought it was because they had to be specially used of God. You're saying that miracles prove they're in heaven.
But I am very sure of certain people being in heaven, because they converted and believed Jesus Christ to be Our Savior and Lord. Don't you know you're going to heaven? I think about this verse in I John 5:13--"These things I have written unto you that believe on the name (nature, salvation-mission, etc., of course) of the Son of God, that you may KNOW you have eternal life."
I know I have eternal life. It's not arrogant. I believe in Jesus as my savior, I repented of all sin and stay 'fessed up, and I believe the Bible. It says I can know.
Don't you know that you do?
St. Christopher is a saint because people BELIEVE he is. Same reason people BELIEVE Jesus is the son of God. When it comes down to it, they are all just stories passed down throughout the ages. There is no proof any of the above is true. The basis of faith is believing in that which is unproven. Unless there is proof to say otherwise, let us hold on to that which brings us hope.
St. Christopher was indeed a real person, he simply wasn't named "Christopher," which was more a title than a proper name. Look up St. Menas sometime. Nobody who has done their research on St. Chris has anything to "get over" here.
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