I stopped at a Catholic church today to have a quiet moment and to light candles for some friends who are having a tough time. But I’d forgotten that some churches shroud the statues with cloth during Lent. There were two side altars, one off to either side of the main altar. I chose the one on the left, but there was no way for me to know who was going to be warmed by the little flames I left behind. Is there a usual layout for this sort of thing? I haven’t been to church in a decade or more, and I have never been to this particular church before.
What’s the usual setup for the candle area? Are there usually two? If there’s only one, whose statue will be there? Does that little altar have a name? When there are two, is it always, say, Mary on the left and Jesus on the right? Is one of them usually the saint the church is named for? Or is it different depending on the church?
It doesn’t really matter, and I can go back in a few weeks to see for myself how it’s set up, but I was just curious to know whether it’s done the same way everywhere.
Could be anything. In the church I attend there is a statue of Mary stage right and a statue of Joseph stage left. They both have their own personal (baby) Jesus.
Just to confuse things there is also a statue of St. Agnes (for whom the church is named) on the right and a different statue of Mary (Our Lady of Fatima) on the left.
There’s no set rule, I don’t think. Our childhood parish (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) had the titular Lady on the right side altar (which would be stage left, I guess) and St. Anthony of Padua on the left side altar.
Covering statues during Lent is now optional. (Why cover them? Because when Lent was a much more ascetic and penitential season, statues were thought to be too festive.)
No set rule that I know of. My parish church has moved the candles to a separate room with a statue of Jesus. The university church in the same town has their candles underneath a painting of Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe, and my daughter’s church has two areas. One is under a painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and I’m not sure of the other because I always go to the first.
I’ve never seen them covered.
If a church has sculptures beyond the main altar, the one in the center will usually but not always be the saint after which the church is named; sometimes the saint in question will be on a side as in jayjay’s and cher3’s examples, or not have an image anywhere. Some religious orders avoid images and may have only a naked cross or not even that; churches which are not linked to a specific order will have whichever images the congregation or succesive pastors / deans / bishops got; and some images or groups thereof are much more common for certain orders than for others. You may get the same saint several times: not just Our Lady under different names, but say, the original image of St Michael (now on a side chapel), the new image of St Michael (main altar) and the painting of St Michael as Captain of the Heavenly Host (central dome).
Having the titular on the side is more common in more modern churches than in older ones, because in modern times there isn’t as much of an expectation of using the church’s decoration as a teaching aid.
As for which images get candleholders, it will be up to the pastor to arrange, but I’ve also seen candles left directly on the floor when the holders were full or there weren’t any (in the church or in front of that specific image).
While we’re on the subject of Catholic saints, can I interject a question I’ve long wondered about?
(I’m not a Catholic nor even a Christian, so I know nothing of these mysteries.)
What exactly is a saint?
Is a saint the soul of a deceased virtuous person that is now in heaven, regardless of whether any living human knows it or not? That is, does a soul become a saint as soon as it ascends to heaven, regardless of whether the Church has recognized or declared the soul’s sainthood?
Or does a soul become a saint only when the Church officially recognizes it as such? Does the Church create saints or merely recognize existing saints? When a soul goes through the Church’s steps toward sainthood (beatification, etc.), are these the steps towards creating a saint, or the steps towards recognizing a saint?
There’s no rule. St. Patrick’s, here in New York, must have about fifteen side altars (small chapels, I guess you’d call them), all of which have a rack of candles in front of them, each devoted to a different saint or to Our Lady, or to something especially sacred (there’s an Altar of the Holy Face, which is Veronica’s Veil).
The parish in which I grew up was St. Joan of Arc parish in New York, and the parish church (considerably smaller than St. Pat’s) had two side altars. One, naturally, was devoted to St. Joan. I actually forget who the other was devoted to. But they both had candle racks, and churchgoers would pray and light candles at them.
Catholics tend to pray at the altar of a saint who is considered to be particularly sympathetic to whatever it is they’re praying for. They are actually praying to the saint, asking the saint to intercede with God for them. This is call intercessory prayer, and Protestants take a very dim view of this kind of prayer.
A soul is a saint when it (he, she) enters heaven. However, some saints have been “officially” recognized by the Church as such. The culmination of the process of declaring someone a saint is canonization, after canonization, churches may be named after that saint, he or she will be assigned a saint’s day, and the saint may be venerated (Catholics may pray to saints, but they do not worship saints).
Some early saints were simply canonized by acclamation, so to speak. The faithful sort of decided en masse that someone was a saint. Nowadays, though, it’s a pretty rigorous process.
Afterthought: The Church recognizes saints. The saint got into heaven under his or her own power.
I’m sure Bricker or someone will be along with a more thorough answer, but your first paragraph is correct. A person becomes a saint as soon as they ascend to heaven, regardless of whether the Church has or ever will recognize them as such. The Chuch canonizes a saint only when it is absolutely sure they are in heaven, requiring, among other things, two affirmed miracles attributed to the saint’s intercession. Beatification is one of the steps towards recognizing a saint, not creating one.
Part of the creed is that we believe in the “communion of saints” meaning the community of all the faithful, on earth, in heaven and in Purgatory.
“We believe in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church; and we believe that in this communion, the merciful love of God and his saints is always [attentive] to our prayers”
Specific people are canonized as Saints because they meet criteria that mean they are in all likelihood in heaven.
A co-worker and his wife (she is Catholic but I don’t believe he is) had their baby baptized at our church and he was tickled when Father referred to the baby as a saint (since he was baptized and wouldn’t sin till he hit the age of reason).
ETA: OP, Were there still real candles, or were they electric? It always felt a little odd to pay to light an electric candle Our current church doesn’t have a candle area at all.
Saintly Loser (who I guess should know :D), Silophant, and gigi, thanks for your answers. I’ve wondered about that for a long time. Your answers are what I would have expected, as that makes a lot more sense than having the Church create saints by decree.
“Saint” literally means “holy one.” St. Paul addresses the living members of his communities as “saints of God.”
So, “saints of heaven” means the members of the community who have died and gone to heaven.
The church believes in immediate and bodily (in a glorified form) resurrection. And as mentioned above, there is communion with them since they’re alive and with God and God is with us, therefore, we’re connected with them through God.
When people say, “I know granma’s looking down on me…”, then they are expressing a belief in the saints of heaven.
As they’ve said, the Church doesn’t make saints, only recognize them. I was taught this is the main reason behind the feast of All Saints: it’s the feast that covers “anybody else who is in Heaven but the RCC either doesn’t know about them or hasn’t finished the paperwork”.
In the early days, the Church met European pagans halfway. Instead of a patron god for every vocation and interest, there is a patron saint for this purpose. God is really busy and can’t effectively answer every prayer to everybody’s satisfaction, so many Catholics direct the prayer to a patron saint. I’m in a bar right now, so the appropriate saints are Gambrinas and Arnoldus the Strong.
And while this is not Rome’s official stance (God being omnipotent means, among other things, that He won’t run out of batteries; omniscient, that He has enough attention to spare for everybody), it’s one I’ve heard from many people, although more often along the lines of “ah, don’t wanna bother Him with my little things!”; also, some people reckon that a person that they knew was at some point in a situation similar to the one they face will be able to help/mediate with The Big Guy better than someone who didn’t live it. So, a mother who’s worried for her child will pray to a saint who was herself a mother.
Sainthood reflecting just whether the person’s in Heaven also explains the expression you may have heard “my sainted mother”, or the like. That’s the speaker saying that his mother has died, but that he’s confident that she’s in Heaven.
And saints are for our benefit, not God’s. If you want to skip the intermediaries and pray to God directly, that’s fine. But a lot of people are more comfortable praying to someone more or less like themselves.
In theory, their main “function” isn’t as a prayer conduit, though, even if many people can’t even tell why they prefer that saint to that other one: it’s as examples. And not even examples of “perfect lives”: St Augustine used to drive his sainted mother* up a wall and down another; St Paul Miki was a convicted murderer; St Solomon (King) and St David (King) certainly can’t be accused of being overly chaste - and David’s betrayal of Uriah is very much an example of “how not to organize a battle”, “how not to conduct a courtship” and “how not to treat one’s subordinates”. They’re examples of people who the RCC considers “did good”, warts and all. If sainthood required perfection, well… there once was a perfect man, and He died on the Cross.
Excellent answers above from Saintly Loser (ha!) and Silophant.
I’ll just add that there is, in concept, not much difference between asking your church group for their prayers and asking a saint for his prayers. Catholics believe the saint, being in Heaven, may have better insight and thus we attain more comfort knowing he is praying for us, interceding on our behalf with God. But that doesn’t close the door of our prayers to God, any more than asking neighbors to pray for your ailing mother does.
Our current church doesn’t have a candle area at all.