Sanctes immortales

I love epic. I know that's probably not surprising if you know me very well, but it's true. I loved The Oddysee, The Aeneid and Beowulf. I loved reading The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Teban Saga. The myths and legends of days of yore fascinate me. The heroes and demigods of lore have captured my attention. I suppose it's the grandeur and honor attributed to them. The human condition is very clearly manifested in the ways that Homer, Vergil and Sophocles shape their characters and story lines.
What seems more incredible to me is how they've lasted throughout the ages. Achilles, the fiercest warrior of the Trojan War, has given his name to a tendon in the body that was made infamous in his death. Ajax, another warrior, was given a constellation and a household cleaning product. Odysseus' name has become synonymous with voyages. Hector is a name still given to our children today. Paris is the most famous city in France and one of the most famous in the world. And we don't even know that all of these people actually lived, or if Homer was just fabricating an elaborate fairytale.
In the Christian World we have similar legends and great figureheads. These, though, are the Saints, and with the exception of Ss George, Joan of Arc and Michael, and others, were not generally warriors. In fact, the most notorious and blessed of our honored were those who gave their lives for their beliefs, not killed others for them.
But the idea of Saints has never been an easy one for me. In the old Greek polytheistic system, it was believed that mortals could become gods, like Hercules and Ganymede. Then once could pray to them, just as he would pray to Zeus, Hera or Athena. But as Christians, I have been uneasy about praying to Saints the same way that I pray to God.
Perhaps this is why, even after I was baptized, I have yet to lift a prayer to any Saint besides Mary, even my own patron. One of my mentors, and I would argue a chief catalyst for my conversion, Father Tom Gaughan, once told me that in praying to a Saint, we are not actually praying to the Saint as if he or she was God, but rather petitioning the Saint to send our prayers to God. This idea still didn't satisfy me. God is said to be no respecter of persons (Rom. 2:11), meaning that all men and women of all races, creeds, ethnicities and sexual orientations are all His children and He loves them all equally. Why, then, would a Saint's prayer be more valuable than the own prayer uttered from my very lips?
Then I realized something. At Mass, we all stand together after we recite the Creed and we lift our petitions to God. All people in the congregation repeat after the specific request "Lord hear our prayer." So, in our prayers, we ask for more people to pray for us, not because we think God will hear certain people's prayers more than others, but we believe in the power of prayer, and the power prayer has to bring people together. So we pray to the Saints in communion with them, to have the favor of all of God's people.
It is true that sometimes Saints become almost idolized, but when we understand first and foremost that, as the Muslims state "لا اللاه ال الله" (No gods but God), then we know that even if we pray to our Saints, we are not asking them to do what God will not, but only praying so that they can lift up their voices with us. Perhaps also, we should use the Saints as examples to us, just as Greek warriors of the Classic period looked to warriors like Achilles and Hector, we can look to the Saints for courage, for wisdom, for example and for a model how to live our own lives. If we need to know how to help the poor, we can look to St Francis. If we need to know how to grow in wisdom and knowledge, we can look to St Thomas Aquinas. If we need to know how to stand up for our faith in the midst of tyranny and intimidation, we can look to Ss Perpetua and Felicity.
In our faith, we have our own Epic heroes and heroines. In our faith we should look to them as great examples of living the truly Christian life.