What Is the Communion of Saints?

A phrase that holds heaven and earth together in one sentence

It comes right after "I believe in the holy catholic Church," said in the same breath, in the same unhurried rhythm most Christians learned as children: "I believe in the communion of saints." Say it a thousand times, and it can start to sound like scenery — words that pass by on the way to something else. Stop and actually ask what it means, though, and the phrase turns out to be doing more work than almost anything else in the Apostles' Creed. It is quietly claiming that death has not managed to separate the family of believers, and that whatever "Church" means, it is bigger than the people currently in the room.

This article is part of our library on the saints, following our pillar guide Who Are the Saints and Why Do Catholics Pray to Them?, which introduces the broader topic of sainthood and intercession. Here, the focus narrows to one specific article of the Creed: what "communion of saints" has meant historically, what it means for Catholics today, and how Orthodox and Protestant Christians read the same ancient words.

The Communion of Saints is the Christian doctrine that those who belong to Christ share in one communion through Him — a communion of holy persons and of the spiritual goods of the Church. In Catholic teaching this includes believers on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven; Orthodox and Protestant traditions affirm Christian communion as well, while differing over how that communion extends across death and what devotional practices follow from it.

Where the Phrase Comes From

The Latin phrase is communio sanctorum, and it was not part of the earliest versions of the Apostles' Creed. Scholars generally date its addition to somewhere in the late fourth or early fifth century, appearing in Gaul and the surrounding regions before spreading through the wider Latin-speaking Church. Among the earliest writers known to comment on it directly is Nicetas of Remesiana, a bishop in the Balkans who died around AD 414, whose surviving explanation of the Creed treats the phrase as a natural extension of belief in "the holy catholic Church" — as if the Creed's authors felt that confessing the Church was not complete without also confessing what held it together.

By the time the Creed reached the form Western Christians recite today, the phrase had settled into its now-familiar place directly after "the holy catholic Church," and the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the two clauses as inseparable: "the communion of saints is the Church" (CCC 946). In other words, this is not a separate belief bolted onto the doctrine of the Church. It is, in Catholic teaching, a further explanation of what the Church actually is.

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Two Meanings in One Latin Phrase

Here is a detail that surprises even lifelong churchgoers: the Latin phrase communio sanctorum can be understood in two closely related ways. The form sanctorum can refer to holy persons — the saints — or to holy things, giving the sense of communion in sacred realities. The Catechism explicitly preserves both readings: communion among holy persons (sancti) and communion in holy things (sancta), above all the faith, sacraments, charisms, charity, and especially the Eucharist shared by the Church.

The Catechism treats both meanings as valid and connected rather than competing (CCC 948). Communion in holy things comes first in the Church's own logic: it is because Christians share the same faith, the same sacraments, and above all the same Eucharist that they can be said to form a genuine communion of persons at all. This is why, in many Eastern liturgies, the celebrant lifts the consecrated gifts before communion and proclaims Sancta sanctis — "God's holy gifts for God's holy people" — a single ancient phrase that captures both meanings of the word at once.

One old sentence, it turns out, can hold two true things without needing to choose between them.

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The Three States of the Church

Catholic theology describes the Communion of Saints as embracing three conditions, or "states," in which members of the one Church currently exist. The Catechism describes them plainly, without the older Latin titles, as those who "are pilgrims on earth," those who "have died and are being purified," and those who "are in glory, contemplating 'in full light, God himself'" (CCC 954). The classical names for these three states — still widely used in devotional and catechetical writing — are the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant.

"Militant" here has nothing to do with aggression toward other people. It comes from the Latin miles, meaning "soldier," and describes a Christian on earth as someone still in the field, still contending with sin and temptation rather than someone who has already reached the goal. The word "suffering" in the second state does not mean that Catholic teaching imagines the faithful departed as abandoned by God; it refers to the final purification of those destined for heaven. Catholic teaching also points to 2 Maccabees 12:44–46, where prayer and atonement are offered for the dead, as biblical support for the practice of praying for the departed.

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How Communion Is Believed to Work Across the Three States

The doctrine only becomes interesting once you ask what actually flows between these three states, and Catholic teaching describes something genuinely reciprocal rather than one-directional charity trickling downward from heaven. The Church on earth prays for the faithful departed, trusting that such prayer can assist those undergoing purification. The saints already in glory intercede for those still on the journey, adding their prayer to the prayers already being offered on earth. And the whole exchange, the Catechism insists, happens "through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus" (CCC 956) — never around him, never as a competing channel of grace, but as one body drawing on the same source.

This mutuality is what distinguishes the Communion of Saints from a vague sentiment that Christians remain spiritually connected to people who have died. Catholic teaching speaks instead of an "exchange of spiritual goods": believers on earth pray for one another and for the departed, while the saints in heaven intercede for the Church. The relationship is not imagined as a second spiritual system running beside Christ. Its entire logic depends on the members remaining united to the same head, Jesus Christ, and sharing what they receive through Him.

The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (1964) reaffirmed this teaching for the modern Church, describing the union between the pilgrim Church and those who have gone before as "strengthened by an exchange of spiritual goods." Readers wanting the fuller picture of how this plays out in daily devotion — asking a specific saint by name for prayer, wearing a medal, keeping a novena — will find that covered in our pillar guide on who the saints are and why Catholics ask for their prayers.

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How This Differs From the Intercession of Saints

It is worth being precise here, because the two ideas are often used interchangeably and they are not quite the same thing. The Communion of Saints is the broad doctrine: in Catholic teaching, the whole Church across its three states remains one family bound together in Christ. The intercession of saints is one practice that flows from that doctrine — asking a particular saint in heaven to pray for a particular need. The Church's formal recognition of particular men and women as saints is another related but distinct question, covered in How Are Saints Canonized?.

Think of it the way a family tree relates to any one conversation within that family. The Communion of Saints is the tree itself — the larger structure of relationship and belonging. Asking Saint Anthony or Saint Monica to intercede for a particular need is one request made within that much larger structure. This is also why Christians developed particular devotions around individual saints: the Saint Benedict Medal, for example, belongs to a specific history of Benedictine devotion rather than functioning as an independent source of spiritual power. Understanding the Communion of Saints explains the theological world in which such practices make sense.

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The Eastern Orthodox Understanding

Eastern Orthodox Christians share the essential architecture of this doctrine, often with even greater liturgical emphasis on its lived, present reality. Orthodox theology speaks less often in the precise Latin categories of "Militant, Suffering, Triumphant" and more in terms of the Church as a single living body that death does not interrupt — a continuity expressed constantly in Orthodox worship, where the saints are addressed directly and repeatedly as active participants in the liturgy rather than distant historical figures. The phrase sancta sanctis, still proclaimed in most Eastern liturgies at the elevation of the Eucharist, reflects the same two-layered meaning found in the Latin West: holy gifts, given to a holy people, binding both together in one act of communion.

Orthodox Christians do not define purgatory in the specifically Catholic form, but prayer for the departed is deeply embedded in Orthodox worship, including memorial services and prayers for the repose and forgiveness of those who have died. Orthodoxy also invokes the saints and understands the Church in heaven and on earth as one body in Christ, while expressing some questions about the condition and purification of the departed differently from Catholic theology.

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How Protestant Traditions Read the Same Phrase

The Apostles' Creed, including the phrase "communion of saints," is recited in many Protestant churches every bit as often as in Catholic ones — but the meaning attached to those words has genuinely diverged since the Reformation, and a fair article has to say so plainly. Reformers such as John Calvin treated the phrase primarily as a description of the mutual fellowship and shared benefits believers owe one another within the visible, living Church, rather than as a doctrine describing ongoing prayer exchanged with the dead. The Westminster Confession of Faith, a foundational document for many Reformed and Presbyterian churches, defines the communion of saints as believers united to Christ having "fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory," and sharing "communion in each other's gifts and graces" — language centered on the living body of believers rather than on intercession across death.

The Reformation therefore did not erase the phrase "communion of saints"; it changed how many Christians interpreted its practical consequences. Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and other Protestant traditions are not identical, but most reject the Catholic and Orthodox practice of invoking departed saints. Many understand the Creed's phrase primarily through union with Christ, fellowship among believers, and the spiritual gifts Christians share, while differing over how much can be said about active communion with the departed. The disagreement is therefore not over whether Christ has one people, but over what Scripture and apostolic tradition warrant Christians to do within that communion.

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Why This Doctrine Has Comforted Christians for Centuries

Set the historical councils and Latin declensions aside for a moment, and the doctrine answers something almost everyone eventually asks in grief: does belonging simply end at death? Catholic and Orthodox Christianity answer no. They do not teach that earthly relationships continue unchanged, nor that Christians possess a detailed map of the life to come. They do teach that death does not remove a person from Christ's body and that the Church's prayer reaches beyond the visible congregation. That conviction is one reason Christian remembrance of the dead has remained so persistent in liturgy, feast days, memorial prayer, and pilgrimage.

The Holy Land makes that continuity unusually tangible. Ancient churches in Jerusalem and elsewhere preserve the memory of apostles, martyrs, and generations of Christians who prayed before today's pilgrims arrived. The Gospel itself offers figures whose witness continues to shape Christian devotion: Mary Magdalene, remembered above all as a disciple and witness to the Resurrection, is one example of how a particular Christian life can remain part of the Church's living memory centuries after death.