In a religious sense, it means that which is set apart for or dedicated to God and therefore set apart from secular use. The word applies to people, places, and things (eg, the temple, vessels, garments, the city of Jerusalem, the priests). In a personal sense, it means holy.
In the NT, the word hagioi applies to both OT (Mat 27:52) and NT believers (eg, Act 26:10; Rom 8:27; Rom 12:13; Rom 16:2; 2Co 1:1; Eph 1:1; 1Th 3:13; Jude 1:3; Rev 13:7, Rev 13:10). The church is made up of people called out of the world (Rom 1:7; 1Co 1:2) by God’s gracious election to be his own people. All who are in a covenant relationship with him through repentance and faith in his Son are considered holy. Objectively, the saints are the peculiar and chosen people of God, belonging exclusively to him. Subjectively, they are separate from all contamination and sin and partakers of God’s holiness.
The saints are urged to live lives corresponding to their position (Eph 4:1, Eph 4:12; Eph 5:3; Col 1:10; compare 2Co 8:4).
Source: Hispanic World Bible Dictionary
a) See HOLINESS. b) HOLY, PLACE. (See TABERNÍ CULO, TEMPLE.)
Source: New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Term used by custom and tradition as a definition of consecration, segregation and dedication to God. It is the center of religious reference that is associated with a multitude of actions, place names, names and surnames of people or social entities.
It is also used in the feminine form (holy) and in superlative forms (holy, holy), the language being full of such terminological allusions both in the names of places, people or activities.
Some of the most significant expressions of the concept of “saint” can be the following:
– Santo Cristo, alluding to an image venerated by the faithful, such as the one from Limpias, the one from Burgos, the one painted by Velázquez, El Greco or Dalí.
– Holy Sepulchre, which recalls the place where the tomb of Jesus was and today occupies a preferential place in the Basilica of Jerusalem.
– Holy Shroud, or Holy Face, which alludes to the cloth that legend or tradition identified with the cloth with which Veronica wiped the face of Jesus on Calvary. The divine face was engraved on the cloth. The legend from the Middle Ages places it in the sanctum sanctorum of the church of San Juan de Letrán, in Rome, although other places have long disputed the possession of such a relic, as happens in the Monastery of the Holy Face, in the vicinity. From Valencia. The fact that such a legend is more or less fanciful does not prevent tradition from considering such a canvas holy.
– Holy Shroud, or Holy Shroud, which, also according to tradition, is kept in the Turin Cathedral. It would be, if true, the cloth or sheet with which the body of Christ was wrapped in the Sepulcher, waiting to shroud it when the Sabbath rest day passed. Such a relic was brought from the East and was in the possession of the Templars, which would explain its arrival in Turin, after various ups and downs.
– Holy Father, which alludes to the Pope as the highest authority of the Church and successor of Peter at the head of the apostolic body, sufficient traits to be considered holy the one that such succession represents.
– Holy Office, or court created in 1542 by Paul III to combat the Protestant Reformation. Within this Court there is a reference to other “holy” courts, such as the Roman Rota or, in other times, the Holy Inquisition.
– Santo Domingo de Silos, referring to the monastery founded in 919 by Count Fernán González in the Burgos area. It is one of the thousands of monasteries, sanctuaries, prayer or charity centers, in which holy things are done and holy figures are venerated, such as the hermit and monk Domingo, located and sanctified in the town of Silos.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
SUMMARY: I. Christian holiness consists in union with Christ: The teachings of Vatican II – II. Ontological holiness and moral holiness – lll. Holiness is one, but it must be cultivated according to the vocation of each one – IV. Eschatological dimension of holiness – V. Ecclesial dimension of holiness: union with those who belong to Christ – VI. Union and communion with those who are in Christ in glory.
To understand exactly what a saint is, what his relationship to us is, and therefore what our relationships are to him, it is necessary to go back to the reality of Christian holiness itself.
I. Christian holiness consists in union with Christ
Vatican II, wisely adapting to the customs of a prolonged conciliar praxis, did not want to give a technical definition, and much less an eschatological one, of the key concepts, among which we must list precisely that of holiness. Nor was it opportune to advance down that path, since this would have almost inevitably led to the need to adopt a position in the face of some correlative aspects of the problem that are the subject of opinions that are freely disputed between Catholic schools and theologians. However, even without giving a theoretical or scholastic definition, the council unequivocally proposed – in a positive way – a doctrine about the nature of Christian holiness, which, moreover, is in perfect harmony with tradition and with what it has taught in its authentic magisterium.
Indeed, although the authors who had dealt with this matter (in the systematic exposition of the theology of holiness) had proceeded differently, taking into consideration different formal aspects; Although the terminology used by them was far from being identical in all, for which multiple nuances were noted in the presentation and elaboration of this doctrine, nevertheless, it is undeniable that, ultimately, all Catholic theologians had taught more or less explicitly that Christian holiness consists in union with Christ, the Incarnate Word and our Redeemer, the only mediator between God and men, and the source of all grace and sanctification. One of the great merits of this council consists in having clearly exposed this doctrine and having inserted and developed it organically, in the light of renewed ecclesiology, in the dogmatic constitution on the Church.
THE TEACHINGS OF VAT. II – That in the constitution Lumen gentium the theme of our holiness and sanctification has been developed based on the category of our union with Christ, it is evident above all from the approach of the fifth chapter, which expressly deals with this theme. In fact, this chapter raises the underlying argument in the following terms: “The Church, whose mystery the sacred council exposes, is unfailingly holy in the opinion of all. Indeed, Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is proclaimed `the only holy one’, loved the Church as his bride, gave himself up for her to sanctify her (cf. Eph 5:25-26). and he united her to himself as his body, filling her with the gift of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. For this reason, all members of the Church, whether they belong to the hierarchy or are led by it, are called to holiness, according to the words of the Apostle: “Now this is the will of God: your sanctification” (1 Thes 4,3; cf Eph 1,4)” (LG 39).
Analyzing this text, we notice in the first place that the moral obligation to strive for holiness is common to all members of the Church, and is deduced precisely from their membership and ontological union with her, which is proclaimed as inevitably holy. All the faithful must be holy in their moral conduct, because they must act in accordance with what they are in the order of being: as men who live in the Church, which is holy. But, as is developed in the immediately following paragraph, the Church herself is holy because Christ, “the only holy one”, has loved her as his wife and has given himself to her to sanctify her. By this it is said that the holiness of the Church derives entirely from the holiness of Christ and from her love for her, love that prompted him to sacrifice on the cross so that she could be his wife. It should be noted that in this description of the relations existing between Christ and his Church, on which the holiness of the Church itself is based and from which it results, explicit recourse is made to the category of love, which, according to its nature, comes from of the desire for mutual union and establishes it in fact. Thus, the intensity and intimacy of this union is explained very accurately by resorting to the biblical image of the betrothal between God and his chosen people.
But even this description is not enough to express all the riches of the loving union that exists between Christ and his Church, nor the depth that derives from it for the holiness of the Church; that is why a second concept is introduced and it is said that Christ has joined him to himself as to his body. With this further specification, the holiness of the Church is described even more clearly and explicitly through the category of “union” with Christ, that is, through the category that eminently expresses the identification of Christ with his Church and that At the same time, it reveals with unsurpassed depth the mystery of the Church, its nature and purpose, its supernatural dynamism and the multiple manifestations of the vitality that characterizes it.
The third reason adduced to explain the holiness of the Church, that is, the fact that Christ has filled her with the gift of the Holy Spirit, is intimately and organically connected with the previous consideration; highlighting yet another aspect helps to better understand why the holiness of the Church consists precisely in union with Christ. Indeed, the Holy Spirit (who is presented as the principle of the holiness of the Church) is the soul of the mystical body, which penetrates everything and gives life to it by uniting it to Christ. In the light of Trinitarian theology and what it teaches about the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of love and bond of charity, the profound value of the doctrine is easily intuited, according to which the Holy Spirit communicates holiness to us precisely because and in how much unites us to Christ and in him makes us sharers in divine life.
Starting from this consideration of holiness, we will have to say, then, that God is called “holy” because, by virtue of his own divine nature, he is always in all his being and doing perfectly identical to himself, to his majesty, to his justice and goodness; Christ’s humanity is “holy” because he is hypostatically united to the person of the divine Word; the Church is “holy” because through the Holy Spirit she is united to Christ as to his mystical body; finally, human beings are “holy” because and insofar as they are united to Christ…