CAUSES OF HOLINESS Today, what society offers to young people as models are many idols and many false values: from the overpaid footballer, to the super transgressive singer, to the super rich entrepreneur, to the famous youtuber, to the famous blogger-influencer who has many fans with millions of like. … Instead, the Church has always proposed the Saints as a model.
They are those who put God in the first place and testified to Love with their lives. To define the holiness of a person, the Church has a Congregation that verifies its veracity through a procedure.
At the end of this canonical process, the Pope grants the cult. The procedure of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has developed over time.
In the first three centuries of the Christian era, martyrdom was the only form of holiness recognized by the Church. The martyr was the faithful imitator of the Christ-model and their remains were considered important and places of worship were built on their tombs or where they had suffered their martyrdom.
After the persecutions, the idea of ”white martyrdom” spread – without the shedding of blood – applied to the life of some monks for their tireless penance, prayer and virtue. Their testimony became as worthy of worship as the martyrs. The concept of “heroic virtue” was gaining ground.
In more recent times, the Second Vatican Council thematized the universal vocation to holiness: “All the faithful of any state or degree are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity …” (LumenGentium 40)
The Middle Ages had invented the voxpopuli statement, vox Dei used to define how canonizations took place, up to the first millennium, that is, by popular proclamation. Subsequently the ecclesiastical hierarchy worked to verify the validity of this voice in different directions and established criteria for the demonstration of heroic virtues.
The Instruction Sanctorum Mater of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and the Apostolic Constitution DivinusperfectionisMagister of St. John Paul II are a point of reference for deepening the knowledge of the recognition of holiness by the Church.
