Meaning Of "saint"

[Guest cmcuffman]

When the term "saint" is used in Roman Catholicism, does it always mean the same thing? Can it only refer to the dead? Must it only refer to someone who didn't sin after baptism? Is the term derived from the Greek "hagios" or "holy one"? If so, in what sense is the "holy one" set apart?

[Theoketos]

The Catholic Church holds definitively that Mary as the Immaculate Conception and Jesus Christ as the Incarnation of the Word and second Person of the Trinity did not sin after birth. There are some pius traditions of other saints, specifically Saint Joseph.

However as you point out a Saint is any one who is a member of the Body Christ. So indeed the saint does not always mean the same things.

More often than not it refers to some one who has been Canonized by the Pope.

[Theoketos]

Further from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

828 By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors.303 "The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history."304 Indeed, "holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal."305

829 "But while in the most Blessed Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle, the faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in holiness. And so they turn their eyes to Mary":306 in her, the Church is already the "all-holy."

2030 It is in the Church, in communion with all the baptized, that the Christian fulfills his vocation. From the Church he receives the Word of God containing the teachings of "the law of Christ."72 From the Church he receives the grace of the sacraments that sustains him on the "way." From the Church he learns the example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary; he discerns it in the authentic witness of those who live it; he discovers it in the spiritual tradition and long history of the saints who have gone before him and whom the liturgy celebrates in the rhythms of the sanctoral cycle

304 John Paul II, Christifideles Laici 16,3.
305 CL 17, 3.
306 Lumen Gentium 65; cf. Eph 5:26-27.

72 Gal 6:2.