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In every age of the Church, God raises up saintly men and women whose holiness builds up the community of the Church. These saints are living reflections of the face of Christ in the world, and their lives invite our imitation on the path of holiness aided by God’s grace. In our own time, the Church continues to raise up for our imitation saintly men and women who respond to our baptismal vocation to Christian discipleship. They remind us that the Christian life is lived out precisely within the community of the Church and the Communion of Saints.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, highlights our communion with the saints when it teaches that:
It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself. (CCC 957; quoting Lumen Gentium 50; cf. Eph 4:1–6)
Each liturgical year on the fourth day of October, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Francis of Assisi. This beloved saint embraced radical discipleship through poverty and the preaching of the Gospel to all—rich and poor, lowly and exalted. St. Francis was, and continues to be, a builder of the community of the Church through his radical witness to holiness of life and missionary discipleship. As we join the Church in celebrating his saintly life and in imitating his saintly virtues, an exquisite illuminated manuscript from the early 14th century offers a stirring visual catechesis for our contemplation.