"Saints" in The Liturgical Calendar
There is also no use of the title "saint" for anyone other than biblical persons (and even then the title is used with a certain degree of exclusivity). This is to prevent oddities of convention (such as St. Nicolaus Copernicus) as well as to underline the Lutheran emphasis on the priesthood of all believers. Nevertheless, individuals who typically have "saint" affixed to their given name are still referred to as such in common discourse (so that Francis of Assisi would still be called "St. Francis" rather than just "Francis").
In the New Testament, all Christians are referred to as saints. However, the use of "saint" as a title for an individual who had led a good and exemplary life or who had been martyred began to develop in Christianity. By the time of the Reformation, the use of "saint" was almost exclusively the restrictive, titular sense. One of the effects of the Reformation was to eliminate the abuses of the cult of saints, and as a result, it is a common misconception that Lutherans do not have (or rather, do not venerate) saints. However, the confessional documents of the Lutheran Church, particularly the Augsburg Confession, accept both the general and particular use of the word saints. In regards to the titular sense, the Augsburg Confession commends that "it should be taught among us that saints should be kept in remembrance so that our faith may be strengthened when we see what grace they received and how they were sustained in faith. Moreover, their good works are to be an example for us, each of us in his own calling." Article XXI of The Apology to the Augsburg Confession goes further to describe three types of honor which are due to the saints and acknowledgment that the saints pray for the Church. However, the Augsburg Confession opposes prayer to saints, stating, "Scripture does not teach calling on the saints or pleading for help from them. For it sets before us Christ alone as mediator, atoning sacrifice, high priest, and intercessor."
Read more about this topic: Liturgical Calendar (Lutheran)
Famous quotes containing the words saints, liturgical and/or calendar:
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)