Compiled by Father Peter John Cameron, o.p. from the Magnificat October 2006
“It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself.” (CCC 957)
We do not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding to live in a manner worthy of the Lord, so as to be fully pleasing, in every good work bearing fruit and growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with every power, in accord with his glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. ~ Colossians 1:9-12
This litany is a meditation on what some of the saints have spoken or written. As we listen to these saints, we pray for a deeper personal participation in their sanctity. This litany represents only a small sampling of the vast communion of saints (the selection is limited due to space constraints). Feel free to add your favorites to it. One option is to sing the litany and its response.
Response: (Saint’s name), pray for us.
Holy Mary Mother of God “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word”
Saint Gabriel the Archangel “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
Saint Joseph [pause in reverent silence]
Saint John the Baptist “Jesus must increase; I must decrease”
Saint Peter “Lord, you know that I love you.”
Saint Paul “We had accepted within ourselves the sentence of death, that we might trust not in ourselves but in God who raises the dead?”
Saint Mary Magdalene “I have seen the Lord!”
Saint Ignatius of Antioch “There is water living and speaking in me, saying from within me, ‘Come to the Father?’”
Saint Justin Martyr “The greatest grace God can give someone is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers — and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved”
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons “The glory of God is man fully alive?”
Saint Agatha “Lord Jesus Christ, you created me, you have watched over me from infancy, kept my body from defilement, preserved me from love of the world, made me able to withstand torture, and granted me the virtue of patience in the midst of torments.”
Saint Cyprian “Our union with Christ unifies affections and wills.”
Saint Athanasius “It is the Father’s glory that man, made and then lost, should be found again; and, when done to death, that he should be made alive, and should become God’s temple”
Saint Ephrem of Syrian “0 Jesus, in that hour when darkness like a cloak shall be spread over all things, may your grace shine on us in place of the earthly sun.”
Saint Cecilia “To die for Christ is not to sacrifice one’s youth, but to renew it. Jesus Christ returns a hundredfold for all offered him, and adds to it eternal life.”
Saint Basil “Through the Holy Spirit paradise is restored. We can address God as our Father with confidence; we can share in the grace of Christ.”
Saint Gregory Nazianzen “Each of us can say to the tempter, ‘Unlike you, I have not yet become an outcast from heaven through my pride. By my baptism I have become one with him. It is you that should fall prostrate before me.’”
Saint Gregory of Nyssa “Ideas create idols; only wonder leads to knowing.”
Saint Ambrose “Every soul who has believed both conceives and generates the Word of God and recognizes his works. Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you to magnify the Lord.”
Saint John Chrysostom “Jesus Christ gave you all; he left nothing for himself.”
Saint Augustine “We have been promised something we do not yet possess. It is good for us to persevere in longing until we receive what was promised, and yearning is over.”
Saint Peter Chrysologus “Peace is the plenitude that fulfills our desires. As Christ left the world, he wished to leave the gift he wanted to find when he returned.”
Saint Leo the Great “Let us be raised to the one who made the dust of our lowliness into the body of his glory.”
Saint Patrick “I arise today through the strength of Christ with his baptism, through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, through the strength of his Resurrection with his Ascension.”
Saint Benedict “What is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.”
Saint Columba “Loving Savior, inspire in us the depth of love that is fitting for you to receive as God.”
Saint Gregory the Great “We have been truly set free from subjection to sin because we are united to him who is truly free”
Saint Maximos the Confessor “God made us so that we might become partakers of the divine nature and sharers in his eternity, and so that we might come to be like him through deification by grace.”
Saint Bede the Venerable “We should rejoice that the Lord deigns to visit our hearts, and that he deigns to illumine this Passover of our good actions by his benevolent presence.”
Saint Anselm “God who made all things made himself of Mary, and thus he refashioned everything he had made.”
Saint Bernard “In the measure that grace’s kingdom is extended, sin’s power is weakened.”
Saint Dominic “I shall be more useful to you after my death and I shall help you more effectively than during my life.”
Saint Francis of Assisi “May I feel in my heart, as far as possible, that abundance of love with which you, Son of God, were inflamed.”
Saint Anthony of Padua “Let us pray that the Lord Jesus Christ pour his grace into us by means of which we ask for and receive the fullness of true joy.”
Saint Claire “Live and hope in the Lord, and let your service be according to reason.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas “The life of man consists in the love that principally sustains him and in which he finds his greatest satisfaction.”
Saint Gertrude the Great ”Once again I give you thanks for your merciful love, kindest Lord, for having found another way of arousing me from my inertia.”
Saint Bonaventure “God created all things not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it.”
Saint Catherine of Siena “When we love something we don’t care what sort of abuse or injury or pain we might have to endure to get it; we are concerned only with satisfying our desire for the thing we love.”
Saint Joan of Arc “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”
Saint Bernardine of Siena “If we but recollect the name of Jesus, it is to fight with confidence — for this name subjects all the fury of our enemies to us.”
Saint Catherine of Genoa “God lets the soul share his goodness so that it becomes one with him. The nearer the soul comes to him, the more it partakes of what is his”
Saint Thomas More “The brothers of the patriarch Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.”
Saint Angela of Merici “Strengthen, 0 Lord, my senses and my affections that they may not stray into any betrayal of trust.”
Saint Francis Xavier “God our Lord knows the intentions which he in his mercy has wished to place in us, and the great hope and confidence which he in his goodness has wished that we should have in him.”
Saint Ignatius of Loyola “As long as obedience is flourishing, all the other virtues will be seen to flourish and to bear fruit.”
Saint Teresa of Avila “Be joyful for there is someone who loves your God as he deserves, who knows him as her only Son.”
Saint Charles Borromeo “The candle that gives light to others must itself be consumed. Thus we also have to act. We ourselves are consumed to give a good example to others.”
Saint Catherine De’ Ricci “You have been reborn with him through a holy desire to live a new life, looking at yourselves as reflected in his life.”
Saint John of the Cross “You considered that one hair fluttering at my neck; You gazed at it upon my neck And it captivated You.”
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga “As God is above all created things, honors, possessions, so should our internal esteem of his Divine Majesty surpass our esteem or idea of anything whatever.”
Saint Philip Neri “My Jesus, if you want me, cut the fetters that keep me from you.”
Saint Robert Southwell “Jesus, possess my mind with your presence and ravish it with your love, that my delight may be to be embraced in the arms of your protection.”
Saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi “Who doesn’t know what God is, should apply to Mary. Who doesn’t find mercy in God, should apply to Mary. Who doesn’t have conformity of will, should apply to Mary”
Saint Francis de Sales “We must fight our battle between fear and hope in the knowledge that hope is always the stronger because he who comes to our help is almighty.”
Saint Jane Frances de Chantall “Oh, how happy is the soul that freely lets herself be molded to the liking of this divine Savior!”
Saint Isaac Jogues “My hope is in God, who needs not us to accomplish his designs. We must endeavor to be faithful to him.”
Saint Peter Claver “Man’s salvation and perfection consists in doing the will of God, which he must have in view in all things, and at every moment of his life.”
Saint Vincent de Paul “But for divine grace I would be in temper hard and repellant, rough and crabbed.”
Saint John Eudes “With his own hand God the Father has impressed on Mary’s heart a perfect semblance of the divine qualities of his love.”
Saint Claude de la Colombiere “My Jesus, let me live in your heart and pour all my bitterness into it where it will be utterly consumed.”
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque “All my pleasure in this land of exile is that of having every kind of suffering found on the cross, deprived of every other consolation except that of the Sacred Heart.”
Saint Louis de Montfort “In Mary alone, by the grace of Jesus Christ, man is made godlike as far as human nature is capable of it.”
Saint Paul of the Cross “The soul whom God wants to draw to deepest union with him by means of holy prayer must pass through the way of suffering during prayer.”
Saint Alphonsus Liguori “We must love God in the way that pleases him, and just not in a way that suits ourselves. God wishes people to empty themselves of everything and to be filled with his divine love.”
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton “O Jesus, sure joy of my soul, give me but a true love of you. Let me seek you as my only good.”
Saint John Vianney “The soul can feed only on God; only God can suffice it; only God can fill it; only God can satiate its hunger. Its God is absolutely necessary to it.”
Saint John Neumann “Though God hates sin more than any other thing, he loves us poor miserable sinners. He ardently desires the welfare of our souls as if his own happiness depended on it.”
Saint Peter Julian Eymard “Abide in the home of the divine and fatherly goodness of God like his child who knows nothing, does nothing, makes a mess of everything, but nevertheless lives in his goodness.”
Saint John Bosco “What tenderness there is in Jesus’ love for man! In his infinite goodness, he established, with each of us, bonds of sublime love! His love has no limits.”
Saint Therese of Lisieux “You alone, 0 Jesus, could satisfy a soul that needed to love even to the infinite.”
Saint Bernadette Soubirous “O Mary, Mother of Sorrows, I am the child of your sorrows. My tender Mother, here is your child, who can do no more. Have pity on me.”
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini “Stretch every fiber of my being, dear Lord, that I may more easily fly towards you. May your Spirit which once breathed over the chaos of the earth give life to all the powers of my soul.”
Saint Maximilian Kolbe “Shall the urge for complete and total happiness, inherent to human nature, be the only need to remain unfulfilled and unsatisfied? No, even this longing can be fulfilled by the infinite and eternal God.”
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross “Holy realism has a certain affinity with the realism of the child who receives and responds to impressions with unimpaired vigor and vitality, and with uninhibited simplicity.”
Saint Katharine Drexel “May your faith be increased so as to realize the fact that you are never alone, wheresoever you may be, that the great God is with you, in you.”
Saint Faustina “Jesus, I trust in you.”
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina “If the soul longs for nothing else than to love its God, then don’t worry and be quite sure that this soul possesses everything, that it possesses God himself.”
