What Is the 'Communion of Saints'?

Two words in this phrase need unpacking, and both hold a surprise. First, “saints.” In common usage, a saint is a spiritual superstar—a canonized hero of unusual holiness. But in the New Testament, “saints” simply means all believers, everyone set apart by God in Christ. Paul addresses ordinary, struggling congregations as “saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2)—not because they were morally spectacular (Corinth certainly wasn’t), but because they were made holy by Christ. So if you trust in Jesus, you are a saint, not by your own goodness but by his gift. The saints are not a special class above you; they are the whole company of the baptized, you included.

Second, “communion” means fellowship, sharing, a common life together. So “the communion of saints” is the deep spiritual fellowship that unites all believers in Christ. It is really an unpacking of the line just before it in the Creed, “the holy catholic Church”—the communion of saints is the Church, seen from the inside: not an institution but a living fellowship of people bound together by their shared union with Christ and with one another. “You are… fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).

Here is the part that lifts the eyes and comforts the grieving: this communion is not limited to the Christians you can see on Sunday. It spans the whole Church—across every place on earth and across the boundary of death. Those who have died in Christ are not lost to the fellowship; they are part of it still, at rest with the Lord. Hebrews pictures us “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), and Revelation shows the countless multitude “from every nation” gathered before the throne (Revelation 7:9). When you gather to worship, you are not a small group in a small room; you are joining “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven,” as the liturgy says—one great assembly, the Church of every age, united in Christ.

So the communion of saints means you are never alone in the faith. You belong to a family that includes believers around the world you’ve never met and believers now with the Lord whom you’ll one day meet—all held together in the one Christ who is the life of them all.