The Symbols of the Saints - Fr. Aaron Hess

A few weeks back, I was able to put on a game night for Sts. Peter and Paul’s CCD family night.  We split the students and their families into two groups and had them compete in a variety of things over the night.  And since they are named after two saints, I thought, that’s perfect!  I’m going to name one team the St. Peter team and the other St. Paul.  So I got poster boards and wrote the names of students on each team and then in the middle of each wrote their saint and then drew the symbol traditionally associated with each: for St. Peter, he got the two crossed keys, and for St. Paul, a sword.  Well, a couple weeks later I was praying at St. Michaels, which has a statue of these two saints in their high altar, and it struck me that they were holding these symbols: the keys and the sword!  So I figured, okay, there’s a vicar’s corner ready to write (and now you get a little insight into some of my thought process!)

St. Peter has the keys as his symbol because Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  This was actually a very powerful gesture, because Jesus was handing over the authority over His house, the Church, to Peter.  Peter, as the first pope, then becomes the caretaker, the guardian, the steward.  Obviously it is still Christ’s church, not Peter’s, but this apostle, by receiving keys, now has free reign to take care of it as best he can while Christ is on His heavenly throne.

St. Paul is depicted often as carrying a sword, although we do not know that he was ever a soldier of any kind.  Instead, the symbol comes from his letter he wrote to the Ephesians, where he famously describes the armor of God that we are to wear as Christians.  During that passage, he writes, “And take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  We see St. Paul make this analogy between the Word of God and the sword in a few other places in Paul’s writings, and so it commonly became associated with Paul, who wrote not only these analogies but a vast amount of the New Testament.  In addition to this, there is a tradition that martyred saints are depicted with the instrument of their death.  Paul, at the end of his life, was decapitated with a sword outside the walls of Rome.

Many saints are depicted with symbols in paintings or statues, and they almost always represent something about that Saint.  St. Joseph usually has either carpentry tools to show his profession or a lily which represents his purity.  St. Boniface often has an ax with which he chopped down an oak tree that pagan Germanic tribes thought was sacred.  St. Michael is often depicted above a dragon or a demon, representing his role as defender against the armies of evil.  St. Lucy is commonly shown holding a tray with her eyes on it--I’ll let you look up why that is!  There are so many symbols that help us remember the stories, the example, and the influence of the holy men and women who have gone before us, and it is worth getting to know more and more about the symbols so as to get to know the saints and their lives on a deeper level.