As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm a big fan of the saints. Not a New Orleans football fan, mind you, but the saints of Christian history. They're like God's Hall of Fame--people who dedicated their lives to His work deserve a bit of credit and notoriety, if you ask me.

As a matter of definition, a "saint" is simply a person who made it to heaven. So in that respect, all Christians aspire to be saints--we'd all like to get our number called after we die. But this should not be confused with a "canonized saint", which is basically what most of us think about when we consider saints. Canonization is the formal process that the Church goes through to recognize saintliness and a feast day to added to the Church calendar-- to be listed in the "canon", if you will. There are millions and millions of saints, that is, souls in heaven. The number of "canonized" saints can change from time to time as the Church tinkers with her calendar--but saints given a feast day can be recognized on that day, even if the Church isn't going to mention it at Mass that day.

Today has a saint tied to it. Every day has a saint tied to it. In fact, every day has a NUMBER of saints tied to it, as a day might be shared by a dozen or more saints. But of course, some days and some saints are more notable than others.

Today is kind of a hodgepodge day, a mishmash of lesser-known saints like Saint Gallicanus and Saint William of Vercelli. Good people, I'm sure. But they're not exactly household names.

The process of canonization was not always a rigorous affair like it is today. Wikipedia has a nice description of the current process that has been developing since the 15th Century, but it wasn't always like that. People were declared saints by a kind of "popular acclaim". A bunch of living people who knew the dead person all kind of just agreed that that person was saintly. They'd share the deceased's stories with other people and it'd go from there. As you can imagine, sometimes the stories would get a little worked up. Take Saint Febronia of Nisibis, for example. Today is her feast day. Saint Febronia was almost certainly a real person--arrested for being a Christian in the dangerous days of early Christianity. She was likely tortured or murdered under the reign of the Roman Emperor Caesar Diocletian (how do you think Rome kept finding enough people to be slaughtered in the Coliseum?). Most of the verifiable story ends here, but Tradition sometimes goes further. We'll skip the extravagantly gruesome tales of torture and mutilation, but suffice to say that she's often pictured with a pair of shears used to cut off her breasts. It's a pretty gross story which was likely embellished in the retelling.

These were the days before journalism, sometimes history has some other stuff added in there.

Take the story of Saint Christopher--one of the most famous saints in the Christian tradition, despite some modern opinions that St. Christopher might have been more legend than human.

Saint Christopher, whose feast day is a month from today, is a perplexing figure. His story might be a conflation of several people, he might have been an exaggeration of an actual person, he might be a total figment. There is some verifiable evidence that an actual person was born in the 3rd Century named "Offero".

The story holds that Offero was a brute of a man who decided that if he was going to serve a king, he would serve the greatest king he could find. Offero found a strong and wealthy military ruler and enlisted in his army--but noticed that whenever mentioned the devil, the king worriedly blessed himself with the Sign of the Cross. Intrigued by this act, Offero decided to serve the devil--who was so powerful that a strong and wealthy king trembled in fear at the mere sound of his name. Offero found a group of bandits, one of whom claimed to be the devil. He joined their gang to rob travelers and abuse their countryside, when one day they came upon a cross at the side of the road. The one who claimed he was a devil ran in fear when he saw the cross--Offero wondered what the cross meant and why it made the strong devil into a running coward. So he left the gang and wandered alone until he found a hermit monk who taught him about Christ and told Offero that he was to find Jesus and serve Him. It was a confusing order for Offero, who could never actually find this person the hermit told him about. In the meantime, Offero went around helping and serving any person he came across, always seeking to serve Jesus Himself. One day, he came across a young boy by a river who asked Offero to help him across. The brute picked up the child, put him on his shoulders and set out to wade across the river, staff in hand. As the water got deeper and deeper, the boy became heavier and heavier. He was a crushing weight on Offero's shoulders and Offero struggled against the strong current. He exclaimed that this boy was like having the weight of the world on his shoulders and demanded to know who the child was--the child replied that he was Jesus Christ and that Offero would thenceforth be known as Christ's Bearer--or Christopher. The boy baptized Christopher with water from the river.

There was an actual martyr named Christopher who was captured and beheaded during the reign of the Roman Emperor Decius. Some historical evidence for this person exists and, like most fantastic stories, the fantasy is grounded in some measurable fact. But facts here are scarce and it's possible that most of the legend of Saint Christopher might simply be made up. Are he and Offero the same person? Again, it gets murky. Accordingly, Saint Christopher was de-listed in the Roman Canon and the Church no longer makes a big deal out of his feast day. This process, called de-canonization, does not mean that Christopher is no longer a saint, just that he's not a major part of the calendar anymore.

So what, then, is a Catholic to think of a possibly fictional saint? Saint Christopher is the patron of travelers, boatmen, bachelors, porters, toothaches and motorists; generations of Catholics have asked for Saint Christopher's intervention, they've held his medals during turbulent airplane rides and asked for his prayers on stormy seas. Was all of it for naught? Well, no. A saint is, simply, a person in heaven--and no calendar editing can change that! And if the story of a 3rd Century Christ-bearing giant is a fanciful tale, our Lord in heaven still hears our pleas and holds us closely.

Like the Irish (and those who aspire to be Irish) will always revere Saint Patrick on his day and how lovers (and those who aspire to be lovers) will always remember Saint Valentine on his day, so we can turn to the Communion of Saints every day of the year. They're to serve as role-models for our lives in some capacity or another--since we all aspire to go to Heaven in the end. It's our Hall of Fame, and we all hope to get that call one day.