Saint Dymna In The Chatolic Church
Catholic Devotion to the Saints, in the Light of Jewish Scripture and Tradition
As a Jew who has gratefully entered the Catholic Church (which is really nothing other than the continuation of Judaism after the coming of the Messiah), I find it curious to see the objections which some non-Catholic Christians have to the Catholic devotion to the saints. For this, too, seems an organic continuation of Judaism, well supported by the Jewish scriptures as well as tradition.
"If anyone should object to the veneration of the saints as a form of idolatry, it is the Jews"
The rejection of idolatry is at the very heart of God's revelation to the Jews. There are over one hundred vehement prohibitions against idolatry in the Jewish scriptures, including, of course, the very first of the Ten Commandments: "I am the LORD your God, You shall have no other gods before me;" (Exodus 20:2-3). Jesus Himself names this as the most important—the "first and greatest"—of the commandments in Matthew 22:38. Other stringent prohibitions against idolatry also appear in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 29 and 32, Psalms 31, 97, 106, 115, and 135, and elsewhere as well. So obviously if anyone should object to the veneration of the saints as a form of idolatry, it is the Jews.
"Yet profound veneration for saints permeates the Jewish scriptures"
Yet profound veneration for saints permeates the very same scriptures in which one finds the prohibitions against idolatry.
God even identifies Himself in reference to the greatest of the Jewish saints, the three Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob : "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Exodus 3:6).
Abraham is considered the first and greatest of the Jewish saints. How could the Jews not hold Abraham in the highest veneration, since he was the sole source of the extraordinary blessings which they have received ever since? (Genesis 22, 16-18). Not to do so would be the rankest ingratitude, as well as being a violation of the Fourth Commandment, "Honor your father and your mother" (Exodus 20:12), since the Jews are the "seed of Abraham".
The same principles can be applied in understanding the Catholic veneration of the Saints. As the Jews owe Abraham veneration as the source of all of their blessings, certainly no less do all Christians owe Mary veneration as the source of all of theirs. For as it was Abraham's pleasingness to God which brought about the Jewish blessing, so it was Mary's pleasingness to God which enabled the greatest blessing known to mankind—the birth of God as Man, Jesus—to come about. The Catholic who embellishes his prayers to Jesus with references to Mary thus is doing the same thing as the Jew who makes repeated reference to Abraham.
"Queen of Heaven"
The role of Abraham in Judaism provides a parallel which can shed some light.
At the time of Jesus, the Jews called their "heaven" the "bosom of Abraham" (this was, in fact, not heaven proper but what is known in Catholic theology as the "Limbo of the Fathers"). It was to this "bosom of Abraham" that Jesus made reference in his parable about Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16.
If the blessedness of the "Jewish heaven" flowed from intimacy with the greatest of the Patriarchs, Abraham, how logical that the joys of the ultimate Heaven should flow, in part, from intimacy with the most perfect human being ever created, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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Roy Schoeman
Saint Dympna
So much of Dympna's story has the ring of a folk-tale that it is impossible to separate fact and fiction.This seventh century saint was supposedly the daughter of a pagan Celtic chieftain, probably Irish, and a Christian mother. After his wife's death the grieving chieftain conceived a passion for his daughter because she resembled her mother, and he sought to marry her. Horrified, Dympna fled with her chaplain, Saint Gerebernus. They settled at Gheel, near the Belgian city of Antwerp, where Dympna devoted herself to helping the poor and the sick. They were discovered by her father, who had traced them through coins spent on their journey. When Dympna continued to reject the unnatural marriage, her father slew Gerebernus and severed her head.
According to legend, many miracles occurred where the martyrs' blood was shed. Local people also discovered two marble tombs which they believed angels had brought in honour of the saints. Many cures for madness and epilepsy were attributed to Dympna's intercession and in the thirteenth century the bishop of Cambrai commissioned a life of Dympna which drew on oral tradition. Today she is Belgium's patron saint of the insane, and for centuries Gheel has been noted for the care and treatment of the mentally ill.
From the Appletree Press title: A Little Book of Celtic Saints.
