Saints Row 2 Free Download
May Sobczak
On these facts critics have built various theories. Some hold the addition to be a protest against Vigilantius, who condemned the veneration of the saints; and he connects that protest with Faustus in Southern Gaul and probably also with Nicetas in Pannonia, who was influenced by the "Catecheses" of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Others see in it at first a reaction against the separatism of the Donatists, therefore an African and Augustinian conception bearing only on church membership, the higher meaning of fellowship with the departed saints having been introduced later by Faustus. Still others think that it originated, with an anti-Donatist meaning, in Armenia, whence it passed to Pannonia, Gaul, the British Isles, Spain, etc., gathering new meanings in the course of its travels till it finally resulted in the Catholic synthesis of medieval theologians. These and many other conjectures leave undisturbed the traditional doctrine, according to which the communion of saints, wheresoever it was introduced into the Creed, is the natural outgrowth of Scriptural teaching, and chiefly of the baptismal formula; still the value of the dogma does not rest on the solution of that historical problem.
In this vast Catholic conception rationalists see not only a late creation, but also an ill-disguised reversion to a lower religious type, a purely mechanical process of justification, the substitution of impersonal moral value in lieu of personal responsibility. Such statements are met best, by the presentation of the dogma in its Scriptural basis and its theological formulation. The first spare yet clear outline of the communion of saints is found in the "kingdom of God" of the Synoptics, not the individualistic creation of Harnack nor the purely eschatological conception of Loisy, but an organic whole (Matthew 13:31), which embraces in the bonds of charity (Matthew 22:39) all the children of God (Matthew 19:28; Luke 20:36) on earth and in heaven (Matthew 6:20), the angels themselves joining in that fraternity of souls (Luke 15:10). One cannot read the parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13) without perceiving its corporate nature and the continuity which links together the kingdom in our midst and the kingdom to come. The nature of that communion, called by St. John a fellowship with one another ("a fellowship with us"--1 John 1:3) because it is a fellowship with the Father, and with his Son", and compared by him to the organic and vital union of the vine and its branches (John 15), stands out in bold relief in the Pauline conception of the mystical body. Repeatedly St. Paul speaks of the one body whose head is Christ (Colossians 1:18), whose energizing principle is charity (Ephesians 4:16), whose members are the saints, not only of this world, but also of the world to come (Ephesians 1:20; Hebrews 12:22). In that communion there is no loss of individuality, yet such an interdependence that the saints are "members one of another" (Romans 12:5), not only sharing the same blessings (1 Corinthians 12:13) and exchanging good offices (1 Corinthians 12:25) and prayers (Ephesians 6:18), but also partaking of the same corporate life, for "the whole body . . . by what every joint supplieth . . . maketh increase . . . unto the edifying of itself in charity" (Ephesians 4:16).
Recent well-known researches in Christian epigraphy have brought out clear and abundant proof of the principal manifestations of the communion of saints in the early Church. Similar evidence, is to be found in the Apostolic Fathers with an occasional allusion to the Pauline conception. For an attempt at the formulation of the dogma we have to come down to the Alexandrian School. Clement of Alexandria shows the "gnostic's" ultimate relations with the angels (Stromata VI.12.10) and the departed souls (Stromata VIII.12.78); and he all but formulates the thesaurus ecclesiae in his presentation of the vicarious martyrdom, not of Christ alone, but also of the Apostles and other martyrs (Stromata IV.12.87). Origen enlarges, almost to exaggeration, on the idea of vicarious martyrdom (Exhort. ad martyr., ch. 1) and of communion between man and angels (De orat., xxxi); and accounts for it by the unifying power of Christ's Redemption), ut caelestibus terrena sociaret (In Levit., hom. iv) and the force of charity, stranger in heaven than upon earth (De orat., xi). With St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom the communion of saints has become an obvious tenet used as an answer to such popular objections as these: what, need of a communion with others? (Basil, Epistle 203) another has sinned and I shall atone? (Chrysostom, Hom. i, de poenit.). St. John Damascene has only to collect the sayings of the Fathers in order to support the dogma of the invocation of the saints and the prayers for the dead.
But the complete presentation of the dogma comes from the later Fathers. After the statements of Tertullian, speaking of "common hope, fear, joy, sorrow, and suffering" (On Penance 9-10); of St. Cyprian, explicitly setting forth the communion of merits (De lapsis 17); of St. Hilary, giving the Eucharistic Communion as a means and symbol of the communion of saints (in Psalm 64:14), we come to the teaching of Ambrose and St. Augustine. From the former, the thesaurus ecclesiae, the best practical test of the reunion of saints, receives a definite explanation (On Penance I.15; De officiis, I, xix). In the transcendent view of the Church taken by the latter (Enchiridion 66) the communion of saints, though never so called by him, is a necessity; to the Civitas Dei must needs correspond the unitas caritatis (De unitate eccl., ii), which embraces in an effective union the saints and angels in heaven (Enarration on Psalm 36, nos. 3-4), the just on earth (On Baptism III.17), and in a lower degree, the sinners themselves, the putrida membra of the mystic body; only the declared heretics, schismatics, and apostates are excluded from the society, though not from the prayers, of the saints (Serm. cxxxvii). The Augustinian concept, though somewhat obscured in the catechetical expositions of the Creed by the Carlovingian and later theologians (P.L., XCIX, CI, CVIII, CX, CLII, CLXXXVI), takes its place in the medieval synthesis of Peter Lombard, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, etc.
Influenced no doubt by early writers like Yvo of Chartres (P.L., CLXII, 6061), Abelard (P.L. CLXXXIII, 630), and probably Alexander of Hales (III, Q. lxix, a, 1), St. Thomas (Expos. in symb. 10) reads in the neuter the phrase of the Creed, communio sanctorum (participation of spiritual goods), but apart from the point of grammar his conception of the dogma is thorough. General principle; the merits of Christ are communicated to all, and the merits of each one are communicated to the others (ibid.). The manner of participation: both objective and intentional, in radice operis, ex intentione facientis (Supplement 71:1). The measure: the degree of charity (Expos. in symb., 10). The benefits communicated: not the sacraments alone but, the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints forming the thesaurus ecclesia (ibid. and Quodlib., II, Q. viii, a. 16). The participants: the three parts of the Church (Expos. in symb., 9); consequently the faithful on earth exchanging merits and satisfactions (I-II:113:6, and Supplement 13:2), the souls in purgatory profiting by the suffrages of the living and the intercession of the saints (Supplement 71), the saints themselves receiving honour and giving intercession (II-II:83:4, II-II:83:11, III:25:6), and also the angels, as noted above. Later Scholastics and post-Reformation theologians have added little to the Thomistic presentation of the dogma. They worked rather around than into it, defending such points as were attacked by heretics, showing the religious, ethical, and social value of the Catholic conception; and they introduced the distinction between the body and the soul of the Church, between actual membership and membership in desire, completing the theory of the relations between church membership and the communion of saints which had already been outlined by St. Optatus of Mileve and St. Augustine at the time of the Donatist controversy. One may regret the plan adopted by the Schoolmen afforded no comprehensive view of the whole dogma, bur rather scattered the various components of it through a vast synthesis. This accounts for the fact that a compact exposition of the communion of saints is to be sought less in the works of our standard theologians than in our catechetical, apologetic, pastoral, and even ascetic literature. It may also partly explain, without excusing them, the gross misrepresentations noticed above.
That the Anglo-Saxons held the doctrine of the communion of saints may be judged from the following account given by Lingard in his "History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church." They received the practice of venerating the saints, he says, together with the rudiments the Christian religion; and they manifested their devotion to them both in public and private worship: in public, by celebrating the anniversaries of individual saints, and keeping annually the feast of All-Hallows as a solemnity of the first class; and in their private devotions, by observing the instructions to worship God and then to "pray, first to Saint Mary, and the holy apostles, and the holy martyrs, and all God's saints, that they would intercede for them to God". In this way they learned to look up to the saints in heaven with feelings of confidence and affection, to consider them as friends and protectors, and to implore their aid in the hour of distress, with the hope that God would grant to the patron what he might otherwise refuse to the supplicant.
Like all other Christians, the Anglo-Saxons held in special veneration "the most holy mother of God, the perpetual virgin Saint Mary" (Beatissima Dei genitrix et perpetua virgo.-Bede, Hom. in Purif.). Her praises were sung by the Saxon poets; hymns in her honour were chanted in the public service; churches and altars were placed under her patronage; miraculous cures were ascribed to her; and four annual feasts were observed commemorating the principal events of her mortal life: her nativity, the Annunciation, her purification, and assumption. Next to the Blessed Virgin in the devotion was Saint Peter, whom Christ had chosen for the leader of the Apostles and to whom he had given the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, "with the chief exercise of judicial power in the Church, to the end that all might know that whosoever should separate himself from the unity of Peter's faith or of Peter's fellowship, that man could never attain absolution from the bonds of sin, nor admission through the gates of the heavenly kingdom" (Bede). These words of the Venerable Bede refer, it is true, to Peter's successors as well as to Peter himself, but they also evidence the veneration of Anglo-Saxons for the Prince of the Apostles, a veneration which they manifested in the number of churches dedicated to his memory, in the pilgrimages made to his tomb, and by the presents sent to the church in which his remains rested and to the bishop who sat in his chair. Particular honours were paid also to Saints Gregory and Augustine, to whom they were chiefly indebted for their knowledge of Christianity. They called Gregory their "foster-father in Christ" and themselves "his foster-children in baptism"; and spoke of Augustine as "the first to bring to them the doctrine of faith, the sacrament of baptism, and the knowledge of their heavenly country". While these saints were honoured by the whole people, each separate nation revered the memory of its own apostle. Thus Saint Aidan in Northumbria, Saint Birinus in Wessex, and Saint Felix in East Anglia were venerated as the protectors of the countries which had been the scenes of their labours. All the saints so far mentioned were of foreign extraction; but the Anglo-Saxons soon extended their devotion to men who had been born and educated among them and who by their virtues and zeal in propagating Christianity had merited the honours of sanctity.
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