Introduction to Every Single Saint
Manage episode 404841379 series 3556089
Hello and welcome to Every Single Saint. This is a podcast where we are going to hear the stories and learn of the lives of every single saint in Christian history. That means we are starting at year zero, roughly, when B. C. becomes A. D. That's where we're starting. We're going all the way to today. 2024 and maybe into the future because there are more Saints every single day every single year all the time so this is the intro episode where I want to go over some of the terminology and Just provide some information on Saints in general that a first time listener may not know.
So what is a Saint? We get the word from the latin word Sanctus, which means holy And the word saint is used in scripture to, refer to a person, both in the Old Testament and in New Testament, someone who is following God, and is one of God's disciples. Also, it can refer to someone that is on Earth and someone in Heaven. And in this podcast, we're mainly going to be focusing on, those that are in Heaven.
We can say that anyone in Heaven is a saint. The stories of the people that we will hear, they will mainly be canonized Saints with a capital S. You know, St. Luke, St. John, St. Mark, and if they have been officially canonized, that means we believe, we truly believe that they are in heaven and full communion with God and their lives are worthy of imitation.
So how does learning about the Saints bring us closer to God? Because that is the goal of the podcast, to help the listener grow closer to the Lord, hear stories of holy men and women, and use that as motivation in their own spiritual life. So, how does hearing about the saints help? And that is just the same as hearing any person's testimony, I'm sure we've all had times in our lives where we've heard someone's testimony and the story invoked to the Holy Spirit to motivate us in our own lives to apply aspects of the story and the testimony to challenges in our own spiritual life.
So that is the goal is that as we listen to each story, you find something in the story that can be spiritually motivating for yourself. Yeah, just grow closer to the Lord. So what are feast days? You're going to hear that a lot at the end of each saint. I'm going to give you the feast day. And that is typically the day that the saint died, which also means to us that it's the day that they earned their heavenly reward.
So how does celebrating feast days Bring us closer to Jesus. And that is that celebrating feast days and, the anniversary of a holy person's death, it reminds us of a common theme in Christianity. And that is that death is not to be feared. You know, when a loved one dies, we mourn the loss of their company and that we will continue this life here without them.
However, we also rejoice that they have entered full communion with God. So the less we fear death, the more positioned our hearts are towards heaven and towards God. And also, Celebrating a feast day also gives us the opportunity to be reminded of that person's life and testimony, and as I said, that's the goal, is that these stories and these testimonies, lead to us growing in our holiness and faithfulness.
So those are the things that I wanted to go over in the introduction to the podcast, mainly so that The listener has a good idea of the objective moving forward, and that is simply to become more holy. Heavenly Father, I pray that you send your Holy Spirit on the listeners of this podcast, and on myself, and on this entire project, that all of us can hear these stories and grow in our admiration for you, grow in our thankfulness for you, and continue to be amazed at the blessings that you bestow on us. And ultimately that we grow in our love and closeness to you and patron saint of the podcast, St. Nicholas pray for us.
30 episodes