The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Saints: The Spiritual Mutual Fund (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Do you have a relationships with the saints? In this two-part series, Jeff fouses on the concept of the 'communion of saints' and compares it to a 'spiritual mutual fund.' He explains the importance of the saints, their role in heaven, and how they intercede for us on Earth. With references to the Catechism and the teachings of St. John Paul II, Jeff delves into why the saints are essential along our faith journey. Snippet from the Show The Communion of Saints is a spiritual union of all the members of the Church. In Christ, we cannot be separated from each other. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kavens show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is show 432, Saints, the Spiritual Mutual Fund. Welcome to the show this week. I'm Jeff Kavans. Thank you for joining me. Hey, I know that your time is valuable. And so I just want you to know that I really value our time together. And I thank you that you've carved out a little bit of the time in your week to come together and talk about the things that I think are most important. And that is the word of God and discipleship, walking in obedience to God's will and taking a look at the treasure in the church that we have. We have so much to celebrate. And I've always said this. And that is that we can study all of this. And we can buy books and go to conferences and listen to YouTube videos and podcasts. But the bottom line is that faith without works is dead.

And if you listen to the Word of God and don't do it, you deceive yourself. And so really the goal of all of this is to put our faith into practice so that we are pleasing to God. We do His will. And, you know, the fruit of that is we live a happy life. And that is, that's just the fruit of it, right? That's what happens when we walk with God, and we're in union with God. Well, today I want to talk about, and next week, by the way, this is a two-part series,

is I want to talk about the communion of saints and particularly this aspect of building a posse. Now, a posse is, in modern vernacular, you might say crew, right? People that you hang with, you walk with. Some people have this image of a posse. Maybe it's an NBA player, you know, and they go out to eat and they've got six, or seven people with them, everywhere they go. They call them their crew or their posse. And they have particular advantages and things that are desirable as far as a group moving together. But I want to take that and I want to put that into the setting of the church. Now, I'm not sold on necessarily the

term posse or crew. You can name it whatever you want. It's your gang. It's your people that you that you walk with. And they are the saints. And so on this first show, I want to talk about the nature of the communion of saints and why they are important and what we can do with them. And what does it mean to ask for prayers and what are they doing in heaven? And what does the church have to say about saints? I think that's an important thing to get a little deeper understanding of because I think that there is a general agreement that there's a consensus with the saints. We believe the same things. We're moving in the same direction. We have as our goal doing the will of God. But what does the church actually say about this? And what does St. John

Paul II, for example, say about this idea of your relationship with people who have gone before us, like St. Augustine or St. Teresa of Calcutta, or Gregory, St. Gregory, or St. Raphael or Augustine, Jerome, you name it, Athanasius. What is our relationship with them? So I want to take a look at that today. And if you, by the way, if you want show notes, because I do have quite a bit of information here, and I know that that's very difficult to take down notes when you are driving or you're riding your bike or walking or whatever you might be doing.

So I put together the notes for you, and all you have to do is text my name, Jeff Kavens. that's one word, Jeff Kavans, and text it to the number 3377. It's 3377. We'll get you on board and get those notes to you every week. So let's talk about this. Now, what I'm going to do is talk about the very nature of the communion of saints today. And then next week, I'm going to reveal to you my posse. I'm going to reveal to you my crew, my gang of saints that I walk with every single day. And why? Why did I choose to walk with those? Out of the thousands of saints, why those five for me? And I do have some others that I'm incredibly interested in, obviously, but there are five that I really, that's my core, that I ask for prayers every day. I look to their life as an example

for me. Their particular vocation has something to do with mine. We'll go into that next week and I'm going to provide for you a list of about a hundred saints and what they are patrons of or patroness of. And that means that somehow, some way, we have come to understand in the church that certain people that went before us are particularly gifted, interested, effective, whatever word you want to use, in certain areas of your life. And this just evolved, you know, it isn't that I think that one saint became a saint and then stood before St. Peter and Jesus in heaven. And they said, well, what's your specialty going to be? You know, well, let's see. St. Jude. It's the hopeless. But we don't know exactly how that took place, but we do know it's part of our culture, part of our family tradition. And so it's something that we can celebrate. Right. So let's talk about this a little bit. I'm going to be drawing from the catechism. And by the way, if you do not have a catechism, the new Ascension Press catechism, beautiful white catechism, is superb. It is color-coded. It is like the Bible timeline, the Great Adventures, color-coded. And it has a few things, parts of it, not the actual paragraphs, but parts of it that I would put under the category of helps, they are introduced into this new catechism.

So I'll put a show link for you, a link to the catechism in the show notes. That's what I'm trying to say. But it's a beautiful catechism. I'm going to draw from it, starting with paragraph 946. We're going to be taking a look at that. So let's look at this, the term communion of saints. Now, you and I are going through life right now together. And in life, there are many times when you need help.

and you are looking for advice, you're looking for somebody who has experience in a particular area and you wish you could talk to them. You know, you wish you could just call them up or have a cup of coffee or a text string, you know, you could text them and then ask a question and then they could give you their insights into that particular area. It could be marriage, it could be purity, it could be mental wellness, whatever it might be. And that would be such a nice thing. well, congratulations. We have that in the church. We are the body of Christ. We cannot be separated from Christ. We will always be together. And that means that simply dying on earth, our body giving way to eternity does not separate us from one another. We are the body of

Christ. And there's nothing, nothing in the Bible, nothing that would suggest that when St. Augustine died, you and I are just out of luck. We have no relationship with him whatsoever. There's nothing in the Bible like that. But that is a prevailing thought, oftentimes among our Protestant friends or non-denominational friends, is that somehow, some way, there is no relationship to the people that have gone before us. However, if you read the magazines of some of these organizations, one of him was my own alma mater down in Dallas, Texas, Christ for the Nations Institute years ago, had in their magazine that was distributed stories about people sensing their loved ones who had gone before them.

That's grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, and they had sensed their presence and even talk to them. Now, we call that the communion of saints. Outside of the Catholic Church, there's all kinds of names for it, but nevertheless, it's It's a concept. It's an idea. It's an experience that many people are familiar with, even outside of Christianity. We talk about in Japan and in China and other places where people talk about this phenomenon, this sense of loved ones and an awareness of people. And I think for us as Catholics, we have great teaching and guidance in this in the catechism of the Catholic Church. So when we talk about the term communion of saints, it refers to the spiritual. union of all members of the church. That's what the communion of saints means. It's a union, a spiritual union of all the members of the church from long ago to today. That's the faithful on earth, which the church calls historically the church militant,

the souls in purgatory. That's another show. That is the church suffering. Those are the people that are being cleansed and purified for that bridal. race in heaven. And then the saints in heaven, that's the church triumphant, right? So now the catechism gives us some good guidance in this, in this area. Paragraph 946 says this. After confessing the Holy Catholic Church, the Apostles' Creed adds the communion of saints. That phrase, the communion of saints. In a certain sense, this article is a further explanation of the preceding. What is

the church, if not the assembly of all the saints. The communion of saints. That is the church. And the catechism goes on and tells us that since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others. That's an important point right there. Okay. And this comes right out of St. Thomas Aquinas. Since all the member of the body of Christ, by the way, in the communion of saints, that angelic doctor, since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others. We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the church, a communion of goods. But the most important member is Christ, since he is the head. Therefore, the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members

through the sacraments. As this church is governed by one and the same spirit, all the goods she has received necessarily become a communion fund. I like that. Just say that. I mean, isn't that great? Let me say it again. As this church is governed by one and the same spirit,

all the goods she has received necessarily become a common fund. A common fund. Have you ever? You know what a mutual fund is, don't you? want you. A mutual fund is where assets, stocks, bonds, treasury notes, everything is brought together into a mutual fund. And you and I have a mutual fund. And that's why the name of this show is the real mutual fund, the communion of saints. We bring all of the goods together for the betterment of the community. Now, the term communion of saints, therefore, has

two closely linked meanings, communion in holy things, sancta, and among holy persons. And so we have holy things among holy persons. Now, in the primitive community of Jerusalem, the catechism goes on, the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. And the prayers. Now, there is a deep theological foundation for the communion of saints. You know, the church teaches that those in heaven are not cut off from us. Instead, they are part of the communion of saints or this mutual fund, this common fund of all the good. And they're alive in Christ. They're not dead. They are alive in Christ. That has always bothered me when I hear people arguing against the communion of saints.

they feel in some way that we are stealing from Jesus and taking his glory and Mary's taking his glory away. Hardly. As if God, as if Jesus, as if the Holy Spirit was insecure and was bothered by us paying attention to somebody else in his family. Imagine being a saint in heaven and listening to whether people believe you are real or that you are of any benefit. You imagine that? I can hear St. Augustine right now. guys guys I'm here I'm not taking anything away from Jesus I'm supporting his agenda I'm praying for you I'm interceding for you for his glory I can pray for you hey hey I'm over here in heaven I can imagine that but it's so funny how we we have this idea that anything we do that points to the beauty of the bride

is going to take away from the bridegroom no I've been married for 46 years and when Emily and I we got married back in June 3rd, 1978. Chanhassen, Minnesota. Can you imagine the month after we got married, somebody looking at the pictures of our wedding saying, Emily is so beautiful. Look at that wedding dress. Look at that smile. Look at that. And I respond with, hey, hey, hey, what about me? I'm the one that asked her to marry me. You'd think I was some kind of rude. I mean, you probably wouldn't want anything to do with me. No, I am happy when people will say, wow, look how beautiful she is. And that's the way God is. We are his workmanship. We are not separated from him in competition with him. We are his handy work. We are his, as it says in Greek in Ephesians, we are his poem.

Read it. And we, in a good way. St. John Paul II said in his general audience and writings, upheld the traditional belief that saints, being united with God, participate, actually participate in his knowledge and love, which includes knowing about our needs and praying for us, all pointing to his will being done, not just a wishing well, not just an opportunity for you to tell God what you want. No, but what? It's all pointing to his will being done. It is a participation in his knowledge. It's a participation in his love. It's a participation in his family plan. That's what John Paul II taught a lot about. Same with Pope Benedict. So the saints, what do they do? Well, let's take a break right now, shall we're going to take a break when I come

back. I want to talk to you about saints interceding for us. And what does that mean? You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. I want to tell you about an exciting new resource that will deepen your journey through the catechism. Ascension has just come out with its newest study called The Foundations of Faith, a Journey Through the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is the only video-based program that takes you to over 40 extraordinary places around the world across 11 countries and four continents to bring the story of the catechism to life. Led by voices, you know, like Dr. Edsri and Jeff Kavens, Dr. Marshallina Dambrojo and myself,

Foundations of Faith is actually more than a study. It is a pilgrimage that will transform how you understand and live the Catholic faith. Check it out at ascensionpress.com slash catechism study. That's ascensionpress.com slash catechism study. Welcome back, you fellow member of the Mutual Fund of Heaven. I'm Jeff Kavins and I'm a member of you. I'm a member of the church. I'm a member of this communion of saints.

It is what we're talking about, the ultimate mutual. mutual fund, the common good that God has brought together in his kingdom, and we participate in it. It's great to be Catholic. I'll tell you that. It is wonderful. So the saints, we're talking about the saints. And before the break, I was mentioning to you about how we really share all these things in common with one another. We're united with God. And we participated in knowledge and love. And this includes knowing about, our needs and our prayers. And we have the opportunity to ask brothers and sisters who have gone before us and the church recognizes as being in heaven, we can ask for their intercession. Just like

you could ask for my intercession. I would never resist that. I would never say, oh, no, no, no, no, don't ask me to pray for you. You go straight to Jesus. Well, you certainly can go straight to Jesus, right? But we have been given a common fund of good and we can participate in. it. You know, we believe that the saints pray for us in heaven and that we can ask for their intercession, just as we might ask a holy friend to pray for us here on earth. In Omaha, Des Moines, Santa Cruz, California, Seattle, Washington, Boston, anywhere. So why pray? Why pray? Why say, St. Augustine, pray for me? St. Athanasius pray for me. St. Therese, pray for me. Well, God shares all things with us. And this is an important point. God does not separate himself from us as if we

were in a petri dish watching us grow and evolve. God shares everything with us. That is, he shares his will, he shares his life, he shares his plan, he shares heaven. He shares everything, including his messianic mission. He didn't just come to die for us. He came to die for us and to adopt as sons and daughters, not as robots and computers, but sons and daughters. And sons and daughters are members of family. God shares all things with us, including the movement of his kingdom and the transformation of all that he has created. He shares all of this with us. Now, maybe you can start to see how silly it is, how unreasonable it is, that if God shares everything with us and we are a communion of people, how silly and how unreasonable it would be for God to cut us off from everything

that he's done in the past. It's utterly ridiculous and it's unscriptural. There isn't anything in the Bible that would say that whatsoever. In fact, what we have is the obvious. opposite. Now, paragraph 956 in the catechism talks about the intercession of saints. It says, being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole church more firmly in holiness. They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth and through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus. So by their fraternal, it's family, so by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped. That's because they, listen, the saints, I hope you're going to get this, the saints

have a fraternal concern regarding our weakness. And they want to help as the catechism says greatly help. Isn't that amazing? St. Dominic, when he was dying with his brothers, he said, Do not weep, for I shall be more useful to you after my death. And I shall help you then more effectively than during my life. Man, I think I need to say that again. St. Dominic dying with his brothers around him says, hey, guys, don't weep.

I'm going to be more useful. to you after my death and I shall help you then more effectively than even during my life. Oh, it's just amazing. This is St. Teresa Lassu, this line, I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth. Isn't that amazing? I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth. Well, how are you going to do that? Pray, intercede for all you people on earth, you struggling people on earth, you people who don't have examples. You don't have wisdom. You don't have direction. You don't have power. I want to intercede for you so that you can come to be where I am. Isn't that beautiful? And wouldn't you know it? I'm going to put it in the show notes. Oh, that is so, so good.

So St. John Paul's teaching on this was so clear throughout the years. While he may not have directly said the saints hear us, his theology, particularly in the context of the the communion of saints presumes their awareness of and loving response to the faithful on earth. And he affirmed a number of things in his teaching. One, saints are not passive. Saints are not passive. Number two, they are active in the church's life, helping us by their prayers and example. In Isangelis, in 1997, he encouraged the faithful to invoke the saints confidently, confidently, not in a

weak way or kind of a guessing game or I hope so type of arrow prayer shot up but confidently he was consistent in his teaching and taught that saints in heaven can see us hear us pray for us not by their own power but by being fully alive in union with God that's the that's the trick right there that's the key who allows them to share in his divine knowledge and love really beautiful Now, in the scriptures, you do see quite a bit of this. I'll just give you a couple here. Revelation 5-8 describes the saints in heaven as doing what? Offering the prayers of the holy ones to God.

I didn't write it. That's the Bible. Hebrews 12-1 speaks of a great cloud of witnesses that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Therefore, run the race, right? Therefore, go forward. You're surrounded. We got your back, says the saints. It's an amazing thing.

It's an amazing thing. 9.56 in the catechism, 956, they do not cease to intercede with a father for us by their fraternal concern for our weakness. And I shared that with you a little bit earlier on. And so the saints are tremendous brothers and sisters. And by the way, they're also models of holiness for us. The church presents saints as examples of virtue, showing. how we too can grow in holiness. In fact, it was John Paul II

who said that, you know, that there's more saints now being ordained because we have a need for them more than at any other time. Carlos Kutis coming up for young people on the internet. Need a model. They need someone that can walk with them,

text with them, and surf with them, and try to help when it comes to being online. In paragraph 828 of the catechism, by canonizing some of the faithful the church recognizes the power of the spirit of holiness and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as what, as models and intercessors. Now, real quickly, we do not worship saints. We don't worship Mary.

We don't worship Joseph. Catholics venerate that's honor, just like the military does, just like you're own family does. I can walk into your home right now and see pictures of family members on the wall. You're not worshipping them. You're venerating them. It's honor, honor. And so, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, but we don't worship them. Worship is due to God alone. Now it says in paragraph 971, speaking of Mary, but applicable, I think, to saints generally, the church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship. this very special devotion differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate

word which is jesus very different we worship god we honor the saints in our lives well i hope that's been helpful for you in some way and kind of pave the the road for next week's show when i'm going to unveil my posse i'm going to share with you the five who are in my posse my crew and why I chose them and how I interact with them on a daily basis. That's right, a daily basis. And next week I'm going to offer you a list of maybe I'll try to get a hundred names for you that you can look at, pray about a lot of saints out there that are more than willing to be part of this fund, this common fund, this communion.

So let's pray. Name of the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, I thank you for my friend, and I lift my friend up to you now, and Lord, I intercede for them, and I ask you, Lord, to continue to lead and guide them, to stir their heart concerning the vastness of the body of Christ and the power of the body of Christ and the riches of your love, O God, in providing for us examples to emulate and to brothers and sisters to ask for their participation in our lives as members of your kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. God bless you. Look forward to next week.